l\ JLHsk*'*"' 
 
 MA*K~, J* *** 
 
 Ux^VlxtX^uJL

 
 THE MASTER AS I SAW HIM
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 AN INDIAN STUDY OF LOVE 
 AND DEATH 
 
 CRADLE TALES OF 
 HINDUISM 
 
 WITH FRONTISPIECE 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 
 LONDON AND NEW YORK
 
 THE MASTER 
 AS I SAW HIM 
 
 BEING PAGES FROM THE LIFE 
 OF THE SWAMI VIVEKANANDA 
 
 HIS DISCIPLE NIVEDITA 
 
 OF RAMAKRISHNA-VIVEKANANDA 
 
 LIFE, 
 ETC. 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 
 
 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 
 
 AND NEW YORK 
 
 IQIO 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 jtohttafrm t0 
 
 In sending out into the world this book 
 the tribute of her love and gratitude to 
 her Guru Nivedita has the blessings 
 and good wishes of all his brothers. 
 
 Bellur Math 
 Feb. ist. 1910. SARADANANDA, 
 
 2021288
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 -CHAPTER. PAGE * 
 
 A WORD TO WESTERN READERS, 
 
 I. THE SWAMI IN LONDON. 1895 . . -4 
 
 II. THE SWAMI IN LONDON. 1896 . . . -22 
 
 III. THE CONFLICT OF IDEALS 49 
 
 IV. THE SWAMI VIVEKANANDA AND THE ORDER 
 
 OF RAMAKRISHNA 74 
 
 V. WANDERINGS IN NORTHERN INDIA . . . II 3 
 
 VI. THE AWAKENER OF SOULS .... 128 
 
 VII. FLASHES FROM THE BEACON FIRE . . . 14 
 
 VIII. AMARNATH . . . . 1 53 
 
 IX. KSHIR BHOWANI l6l 
 
 X. CALCUTTA AND THE HOLY WOMEN . . .177 
 
 XL THE SWAMI AND MOTHER-WORSHIP . . 205 
 
 XII. HALF-WAY ACROSS THE WORLD . . . 22O 
 
 XIII. GLIMPSES OF THE SAINTS 235 
 
 XIV. PAST AND FUTURE IN INDIA .... 246
 
 CHAPTER. PAGE 
 
 XV. THE SWAMI ON HINDUISM .... 257 
 
 XVI. GLIMPSES IN THE WEST 275 
 
 XVII. THE SWAMl'S MISSION CONSIDERED AS A 
 
 WHOLE 289 
 
 XVIII. THE SWAMI VIVEKANANDA'S ATTITUDE TO 
 
 BUDDHA 3l8 
 
 XIX. HIS ESTIMATE OF HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY . 344 
 
 XX. WOMAN AND THE PEOPLE .... 355 
 
 XXI. HIS METHOD OF TRAINING A WESTERN WORKER 382 
 
 XXII. MONASTICISM AND MARRIAGE .... 406 
 
 xxin. OUR MASTER'S RELATION TO PSYCHIC PHE- 
 NOMENA, SO-CALLED 431 
 
 XXIV. HIS TEACHING ABOUT DEATH .... 448 
 
 XXV. SUPER-CONSCIOUSNESS . . . -475 
 
 XXVI. THE PASSING OF THE SWAMI .... 497 
 
 XXVII THE END 509
 
 APPENDICES. 
 
 A. NOTES OF A LECTURE DELIVERED IN LONDON. 
 
 NOV. 1 6, 1895 
 
 B. NOTES OF A LECTURE DELIVERED IN LONDON. 
 
 NOV. 23, 1895. 
 [ SEE CHAPTER I. Ante. ] 
 
 C. NOTES OF LECTURES DELIVERED AT THE VEDANTA 
 
 SOCIETY, NEW YORK, SUNDAY AFTERNOONS, JUNE 
 IOTH AND I7TH, 1900. 
 
 D. NOTES OF A LECTURE ON 'MOTHER-WORSHIP 5 DELIVER- 
 
 ED AT THE VEDANTA SOCIETY NEW YORK, SUNDAY 
 AFTERNOON, JUNE 24TH, 1 900. 
 
 [ SEE CHAPTER 1 6. Ante ] 
 
 PRINTED BY S. C. GHOSE AT THE LAKSHMI PRINTING WORKS, 
 64-1 & 64-2 SUKEA'S STREET, CALCUTTA.
 
 
 
 A WORD TO WESTERN READERS. 
 
 FROM the close of the era of the Bud- 
 dhist Missions, until the day when, as a 
 yellow-clad Sannyasin, the Swami Viveka- 
 nanda stood on the platform of the Parlia- 
 ment of Religions in the Chicago Exhibi- 
 tion of 1893, Hinduism had not thought of 
 herself as a missionary faith. Her profes- 
 sional teachers, the Brahmins, being citizens 
 and householders, formed a part of Hindu 
 society itself and as such were held to be 
 debarred from crossing the seas. And her 
 wandering Sadhus, who are, in the highest 
 cases, as much above the born Brahmin in 
 authority, as saint or incarnation may 
 be above priest or scholar, had simply 
 not thought of putting their freedom to such 
 use. Nor did the Swami Vivekananda
 
 A WORD TO WESTERN READERS 
 
 appear at the doors of Chicago with any 
 credentials. He had been sent across the 
 Pacific Ocean, as he might have wandered 
 from one Indian village to another, by the 
 eargerness and faith of a few disciples in 
 Madras. And with American hospitality 
 and frankness he was welcomed, and accord- 
 ed an opportunity of speaking. In his case, 
 as in that of the Buddhist missionaries, the 
 impelling force that drove him out to foreign 
 lands was the great personality of One at 
 whose feet he had sat, and whose life he had 
 shared, for many years. Yet, in the West, 
 he spoke of no personal teacher, he gave the 
 message of no limited sect. "The religious 
 ideas of the Hindus" were his theme at 
 Chicago ; and similarly, thereafter, it was 
 those elements which were common to, and 
 characteristic of, orthodox Hinduism in all 
 its parts, that formed the burden of his teach- 
 ing. Thus, for the first time in history, 
 Hinduism itself formed the subject of the
 
 A WORD TO WESTERN READERS 
 
 generalisations of a Hindu mind of the 
 highest order. 
 
 The Swami remained in America until 
 August of the year 1895, when he came to 
 -Europe for the first time. In September he 
 found his way to England, and a month or 
 so later, he began teaching in London.
 
 I. 
 
 IN LONDON, 1895. 
 
 It is strange to remember, and yet it was 
 surely my good fortune, that though I heard 
 the teachings of my Master, the Swami 
 Vivekananda, on both the occasions of his 
 visits to England, in 1895 an< ^ 1896, I yet 
 knew little or nothing of him in private life, 
 until I came to India, in the early days of 
 1898. For as the fruit of this want of ex- 
 perience I have it, that at each step of his- 
 self-revelation as a personality, my Master 
 stands out in my memory against his proper 
 background, of Indian forest, city, and high- 
 way, an Eastern teacher in an Eastern 
 world. Even in far a- way London indeed, 
 the first time I saw him, the occasion must 
 have stirred in his mind, as it does in mine, 
 recalling it now, a host of associations con- 
 nected with his own sun-steeped land. The
 
 THE SWAMIIN LONDON 
 
 -time was a cold Sunday afternoon in Novem- 
 ber, and the place, it is true, a West-end draw- 
 ing room. But he was seated, facing a half- 
 circle of listeners, with the fire on the 
 hearth behind him, and as he answered 
 question after question, breaking now and 
 then into the chanting of some Sanskrit text 
 in illustration of his reply, the scene must 
 have appeared to him, while twilight passed 
 into darkness, only as a curious variant upon 
 the Indian garden, or on the group of hearers 
 gathered at sundown round the Sadhu who 
 sits beside the well, or under the tree out- 
 side the village-bounds. Never again in 
 England did I see the Swami, as a teacher, 
 in such simple fashion. Later, he was al- 
 ways lecturing, or the questions he answer- 
 ed were put with formality by members of 
 larger audiences. Only this first time we 
 were but fifteen or sixteen guests, intimate 
 friends, many of us, and he sat amongst us, 
 in his crimson robe and girdle, as one
 
 THE SWAMf IN LONDON 
 
 bringing us news from a far land, with a curious 
 habit of saying now and again "Shiva ! 
 Shiva !" and wearing that look of mingled 
 gentleness and loftiness, that one sees on the 
 faces of those who live much in meditation, 
 that look, perhaps, that Raphael has painted 
 for us, on the brow of the Sistine Child. 
 
 That afternoon is now ten years ago, and; 
 fragments only of the talk come back to me. 
 But never to be forgotten are the Sanskrit 
 verses that he chanted for us, in those 
 wonderful Eastern tones, at once so reminis- 
 cent of, and yet so different from, the Gre- 
 gorian music of our own churches. 
 
 He was quite willing to answer a personal 
 question, and readily explained, in reply to- 
 some enquiry that he was in the West, be- 
 cause he believed that the time had come, 
 when nations were to exchange their ideals, 
 as they were already exchanging the commo- 
 dities of the market. From this point on- 
 wards, the talk was easy. He was elucidat-
 
 THE SWAM I IN LONDON 
 
 ing the idea of the Eastern Pantheism, pictur- 
 ing the various sense-impressions as but so 
 many different modes of the manifestation of 
 One, and he quoted from the Gita and then 
 translated into English: "All these are thread- 
 ed upon Me, as pearls upon a string." 
 
 He told us that love was recognised in 
 Hinduism as in Christianity, as the highest 
 religious emotion. 
 
 And he told us, a thing that struck me 
 very much, leading me during the following 
 winter to quite new lines of observation, 
 that both the mind and the body were regard- 
 ed by Hindus as moved and dominated by a 
 third, called the Self. 
 
 He was describing the difference between 
 Buddhism and Hinduism, and I remember 
 the quiet words, "the Buddhists accepted 
 the report of the senses." 
 
 In this respect then, Buddhism must have 
 been in strong contrast with modern agnos- 
 ticism, whose fundamental suspicion as to
 
 THE SWAM1 IN LONDON 
 
 the subjective illusion of the senses, and 
 therefore of all inference would surely bring 
 it more into line with Hinduism. 
 
 I remember that he objected to the word 
 "faith," insisting on "realisation" instead; 
 and speaking of sects, he quoted an Indian 
 proverb, " It is well to be born in a church, 
 but it is terrible to die there. " 
 
 I think that the doctrine of Re-incarnation 
 was probably touched upon in this talk. I 
 imagine that he spoke of Karma, Bhakti, 
 Jnana, as the three paths of the soul. I 
 know he dwelt for a while on the infinite 
 power of man. And he declared the one 
 message of all religions to lie in the call to 
 Renunciation. 
 
 There was a word to the effect that priests 
 and temples were .not associated in India 
 with the highest kind of religion : and the 
 statement that the desire to reach Heaven 
 was in that country regarded, by the 
 religious people , "as a little vulgar." 
 
 8
 
 THE SWAM/ IN LONDON 
 
 He must have made some statement of 
 the ideal of the freedom of the soul, which 
 brought it into apparent conflict with our 
 Western conception of the service of hu- 
 manity, as the goal of the individual. For 
 I remember very clearly that I heard him 
 use that word "society" for the first time 
 that afternoon, in the sense that I have 
 never been quite sure of having fully under- 
 stood. He had, as I suppose, stated the ideal, 
 and he hastened to anticipate our opposi- 
 tion. "You will say/' he said, "that this does 
 not benefit society. But before this objec- 
 tion can be admitted you will first have to 
 prove that the maintenance of society is an 
 object in itself." 
 
 At the time, I understood him to mean 
 'humanity' by 'society,' and to be preaching 
 the ultimate futility of the world, and there- 
 fore of the work done to aid it. Was this 
 his meaning ? In that case, how is one 
 *o reconcile it with the fact that the service
 
 THM SWAMI IN LONDON 
 
 of humanity was always his whole hope ?' 
 Or was he merely stating an idea, and 
 standing aside to give it its full value ? Or 
 was his word 'society,' again, only a faulty 
 translation of the curious Eastern word 
 Samaj, coloured, as that is, with theocratic 
 associations, and meaning something which 
 includes amongst other things, our idea of the 
 church ? 
 
 He touched on the question of his own 
 position, as a wandering teacher, and ex- 
 pressed the Indian diffidence with regard 
 to religious organisation, or, as some 
 one expresses it, 'with regard to a faith that 
 ends in a church.' "We believe," he said, 
 "that organisation 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 pro- 
 ceeds from truth to truth, and not from error 
 to truth." 
 
 10
 
 THE SWAMI IN LONDON 
 
 This was indeed the master-thought 
 which he continually approached from di- 
 fferent points of view, the equal truth of all 
 religions, and the impossibility for us, of 
 criticising any of the Divine Incarnations, 
 since all were equally forth-shinings of the 
 One. And here he quoted that greatest 
 of all verses of the Gita : "Whenever reli- 
 gion decays and irreligion prevails, then I 
 manifest Myself. For the protection of the / 
 good, for the destruction of the evil, for the 
 firm establishment of the truth, I AM BORN 
 
 AGAIN AND AGAIN." 
 
 We were not very orthodox, or open to 
 belief, we who had come to meet the Hindir 
 Yogi, as he was called in London at that 
 time. The white-haired lady, with the his- 
 toric name, who sat on the Swami's left, and 
 took the lead in questioning him, with such 
 exquisiteness of courtesy, was, perhaps, the 
 least uncoventional of the group in matters 
 of belief, and she had been a friend and 
 
 1 1
 
 THE SWAMI IN LONDON 
 
 disciple of Frederick Denison Maurice. Our 
 liostess and one or two others were interested 
 in those modern movements which have made 
 of an extended psychology the centre of a 
 faith. But most of us had, I incline to think, 
 been singled out for the afternoon's hospita- 
 lity, on the very score of our unwillingness 
 to believe, for the difficulty of convincing us 
 of the credibility of religious propaganda in 
 general. 
 
 Only this habit, born of the constant 
 need of protecting the judgment against ill- 
 considered enthusiasm, can, as I now think, 
 furnish any excuse for the coldness and pride 
 with which we al! gave our private verdicts 
 on the speaker at the end of our visit. "It 
 was not new," was our accusation, as one by 
 one we spoke with our host and hostess 
 before leaving. All these things had been 
 said before. 
 
 For my own part, however, as I went 
 about the tasks of that week, it dawned on 
 
 12
 
 THE SWAM I IN LONDON 
 
 me slowly that it was not only ungenerous, 
 it was also unjust, to dismiss in such fashion 
 the message of a new mind and a strange cul- 
 ture. It occurred to me that though each 
 separate dictum might find its echo or its 
 fellow amongst things already heard or 
 already thought, yet it had never before 
 fallen to my lot to meet with a thinker who^ 
 in one short hour had been able to express 
 all that I had hitherto regarded as highest 
 and best. I therefore took the only two 'op- 
 portunities that remained to me, of hearing 
 the Swami lecture, while he was still in-. 
 London. 
 
 The feeling that great music wakes in us, 
 grows and deepens with its repetition. And 
 similarly, as I read over the notes of those 
 two lectures now, they seem to me much 
 more wonderful than they did then. For 
 there was a quality of blindness in the 
 attitude I presented to my Master, that I 
 can never sufficiently regret. When he said
 
 THE SWAMI IN LONDON 
 
 "The universe is like a cobweb and minds 
 
 -are the spiders ; for mind is one as well as 
 
 many" : he was simply talking beyond 
 
 'iny comprehension. I noted what he said, 
 
 was interested in it, but could pass no 
 
 judgment upon it, much less accept it. And 
 
 this statement describes more or less 
 
 -accurately the whole of my relation to his 
 
 system of teaching, even in the following 
 
 year, when I had listened to a season's 
 
 lectures ; even, perhaps, on the day when 
 
 I landed in India. 
 
 There were many points in the Swami's 
 teachings of which one could see the truth 
 at once. The doctrine that while no religion 
 was true in the way commonly claimed, yet 
 -all were equally true in a very real way, 
 was one that commanded the immediate 
 assent of some of us. When he said that 
 'God, really Impersonal, seen through the 
 mists of sense became Personal, one was 
 .awed and touched by the beauty of the
 
 THE SWAM I IN LONDON 
 
 thought. When he said that the spirit 
 behind an act was more powerful than the 
 act itself, or when he commended vegetaria- 
 nism, it was possible to experiment. But his 
 system as a whole, I, for one, viewed with 
 suspicion, as forming only another of those 
 theologies which if a man should begin 
 by accepting, he would surely end by trans- 
 cending and rejecting. And one shrinks 
 from the pain and humiliation of spirit that 
 such experiences involve. 
 
 It is difficult at this point to be sufficient- 
 ly explicit. The time came, before the 
 Swami left England, when I addressed him 
 as " Master." I had recognised the heroic 
 fibre of the man, and desired to make my- 
 self the servant of his love for his own people. 
 But it was his character to which I had 
 thus done obeisance. As a religious teacher, 
 I saw that although he had a system of 
 thought to offer, nothing in that system 
 would claim him for a moment, if he found
 
 THE SWAM I IN LONDON 
 
 that truth led elsewhere. And to the extent 
 that this recognition implies, I became his 
 disciple. For the rest, I studied his teaching 
 sufficiently to become convinced of its 
 coherence, but never, till I had had experien- 
 ces that authenticated them, did I 
 inwardly cast in my lot with the final 
 justification of the things he came to say. 
 Nor did I at that time, though deeply attracted 
 by his personality, dream of the immense 
 distance which I was afterwards to see, as 
 between his development and that of any 
 other thinker or man of genius whom I 
 could name. 
 
 Referring to this scepticism of mine, 
 which was well known at the time to the 
 rest of the class, a more fortunate disciple,, 
 long afterwards, was teasing me, in the 
 Swami's presence, and claiming that she 
 had been able to accept every statement she 
 had ever heard him make. The Swami paid 
 little or no attention to the conversation 
 
 16
 
 THE PERSONIFICATION OF GOD 
 
 at the time, but afterwards he took a 
 quiet moment to say ''Let none regret that 
 they were difficult to convince ! I fought my 
 Master for six long years, with the result 
 that I know every inch of the way ! Every 
 inch of the way !" 
 
 One or two impressions, however, stand 
 out from those first discourses. Chris- 
 tianity had once meant to me the reali- 
 sation of God as the Father. But I had 
 long mourned over my own loss of faith 
 in this symbolism, and had desired to study 
 its value as an idea, apart from its objective 
 truth or untruth. For I suspected that 
 such a conception would have its own effect 
 on the character and perhaps on the civi- 
 lisation of those who held it. This ques- 
 tion, however, I had been unable to follow 
 up, for want of material of comparison . 
 And here was one who told us of no less 
 than five systems of worship, founded on 
 similar personifications of the divine idea
 
 FIRST VISIT TO LONDON 
 
 He preached a religion which began with 
 the classification of religious ideas ! 
 
 I was very much struck, further, by the 
 strangeness, as well as the dignity, of some 
 of the Indian conceptions which I now 
 heard of for the first time. The very newness 
 of these metaphors, and of the turn of 
 thought, made them an acquisition. There 
 was the tale, for instance, of the saint who 
 ran after a thief, with the vessels he had 
 dropped in his terror at being discovered, 
 and cast them all at his feet, crying, 
 "O Lord, I knew not that Thou wast there ! 
 Take them, they are Thine ! Pardon me 
 Thy child !" And again, of the same saint, 
 we heard how he described the bite of a 
 cobra, when at nightfall he recovered, by 
 saying *' A messenger came to me from the 
 Beloved." There was the inference, again, 
 that the Swami himself had drawn from the 
 mirage in the desert. Fifteen days he had 
 seen it, and taken it always to be water. 
 
 18
 
 INDIAN RELIGIOUS CONCEPTS 
 
 But now that he had been thirsty and found 
 it to be unreal, he might see it again for 
 fifteen days, but always henceforth he would 
 know it to be false. The experience to 
 which such achievements had been possible, 
 the philosophy that could draw some parallel 
 between this journey in the desert and life, 
 were such as it seemed an education to 
 understand. 
 
 But there was a third element in the 
 Swami's teaching, whose unexpectedness 
 occasioned me some surprise. It was easy 
 to see that he was no mere lecturer, like 
 some other propounders of advanced ideas 
 whom I had heard even from the pulpit. 
 It was by no means his intention to set 
 forth dainty dishes of poetry and intellect- 
 uality for the enjoyment of the rich and 
 idle classes. He was, to his own thinking 
 at least, as clearly an apostle, making an 
 appeal to men, as any poor evangelical 
 preacher, or Salvation Army officer, calling
 
 FIRST VISIT TO LONDON 
 
 on the world to enter into the kingdom 
 of God. And yet he took his stand on 
 what was noblest and best in us. I was 
 not thinking of his announcement that sin 
 was only an evil dream. I knew that 
 such a theory might merely be part of 
 a cumbrous system of theology, and no 
 more a reality to its elucidator than the 
 doctrine that when a man steals our coat 
 we should give to him our cloak also, was 
 to ourselves. The thing that I found 
 astonishing was a certain illustration urged 
 by him. His audience was composed for 
 the most part of fashionable young 
 mothers, and he spoke of their terror and 
 their flight, if a tiger should suddenly appear 
 before them in the street. "But suppose", he 
 said, with a sudden change of tone, "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." 
 These, then, were the things I remem- 
 
 20
 
 INDIAN RELIGIOUS CONCEPTS 
 
 bered and pondered over, concerning the 
 Swami, when he had left England, that 
 winter, for America, first, the breadth of 
 his religious culture ; second, the great 
 intellectual newness and interest of the 
 thought he had brought to us ; and thirdly, 
 the fact that his call was sounded in the name 
 of that which was strongest and finest, and 
 was not in any way dependent on the 
 meaner elements in man. 
 
 2!
 
 II. 
 
 THE SWAMI VIVEKANANDA IN 
 LONDON 1896. 
 
 The Swami returned to London, in 
 April of the year following, and taught 
 continuously, at the house where he was 
 living with his good friend, Mr. E. T. 
 Sturdy, in S. George's Road, and again, 
 after the summer holidays, in a large class- 
 room near Victoria Street. During July, 
 August, and September, he travelled in 
 France, Germany and Switzerland, with his 
 friends, Mr. and Mrs. Sevier, and Miss 
 H. F. Muller. In December, he left for 
 India, with some of his disciples, by way of 
 Rome, and arrived at Colombo, in Ceylon, 
 on January the i5th, 1897. 
 
 Many of the lectures which he gave 
 during the year 1896, have since been pub- 
 
 22
 
 SECOND VISIT TO LONDON' 
 lished, and in them, all the world may read 
 his message, and the interpretation by which 
 he sought to make it clear. He had come 
 to us as a missionary of the Hindu belief in 
 the Immanent God, and he called upon us to 
 realise the truth of his gospel for ourselves. 
 Neither then, nor at any after-time, did I 
 ever hear him advocate to his audience any 
 specialised form of religion. He would refer 
 freely enough to the Indian sects, or as I 
 would like to call them, ' churches, ' by 
 way of illustration of what he had to say. 
 But he never preached anything but that 
 philosophy which, to Indian thinking, under- 
 lies all creeds. He never quoted anything 
 but the Vedas, the Upanishads, and the 
 Bhagavad Gita. And he never, in public, 
 mentioned his own Master, nor spoke in 
 specific terms of any part of Hindu mythology. 
 He was deeply convinced of the need for 
 Indian thought, in order to enable the reli- 
 gious consciousness of the West to welcome
 
 SECOND VISIT TO LONDON 
 
 and assimilate the discoveries of modern 
 science, and to enable it also to survive that 
 destruction of local mythologies which is an 
 inevitable result of all world-consolidations. 
 He felt that what was wanted was a formu- 
 lation of faith which could hold its adherents 
 fearless of truth. " The salvation of Europe 
 depends on a rationalistic religion, " he ex- 
 claims, in the course of one of his lectures ; 
 and again, many times repeated, " The 
 materialist is right ! There is but One. 
 Only he calls that One Matter, and I call it 
 God !" In another, and longer passage, he 
 describes the growth of the religious idea, 
 and the relation of its various forms to one 
 another. " At first," he says, ''the goal 
 is far off, outside Nature, and far beyond 
 it, attracting us all towards it. This has to 
 be brought near, yet without being degraded 
 or degenerated, until, when it has come 
 closer and closer, the God of Heaven be- 
 comes the God in Nature, till the God in
 
 LECTURES ON MA YA 
 
 Nature becomes the God who is Nature, 
 and the God who is Nature, becomes the 
 God within this temple of the body, and 
 the God dwelling in the temple of the body 
 becomes the temple itself, becomes the 
 soul of man. Thus it reaches the last 
 words it can teach. He whom the sages 
 have sought in all these places, is in our 
 own hearts. Thou art He, O Man ! Thou 
 art He!" 
 
 He always considered, for his own part, 
 that his greatest intellectual achievement 
 during this period had consisted in his 
 lectures on Maya, and it is only by 
 reading these carefully, that an idea can 
 be formed of the difficulty of the task 
 he undertook, in trying to render the concep- 
 tion in modern English. Throughout the 
 chapters in question we feel that we are 
 in presence of a struggle to express an idea 
 which is clearly apprehended, in a language 
 which is not a fit vehicle for it. The
 
 SECOND VISIT TO LONDON 
 
 word is wrongly understood, says the Swami, 
 to mean 'delusion'. Originally it meant 
 something like ' magic, ' as " Indra through 
 his Maya assumed various forms." But this 
 meaning was subsequently dropped, and 
 the word went through many transformations. 
 A milestone in the series of conceptions 
 that finally determined its meaning is found 
 in the text, " Because we talk in vain, 
 and because we are satisfied with the things 
 of the senses, and because we are running 
 after desires, therefore we, as it were, cover 
 this reality with a mist" Finally the word 
 is seen to have assumed its ultimate meaning 
 in the quotation from the Svetasvatara 
 Upanishad. " Know Nature to be Maya. 
 And the mind, the ruler of this Maya, as the 
 Lord Himself." " The Maya of the 
 Vedanta," says the speaker, " in its latest 
 development, is a simple statement of facts 
 what we are, and what we see around us." 
 But that these words are not intended as 
 
 26
 
 LECTURES ON MA YA 
 
 a definition will be seen by anyone who 
 reads the whole of the lectures on Maya for 
 himself. It is there evident that the word 
 does not simply refer to the Universe as 
 known through the senses, but also describes 
 the tortuous, erroneous, and self- contradic- 
 tory character of that knowledge. " This is 
 a statement of fact, not a theory." says the 
 Swami, "that this world is a Tantalus' hell, 
 that we do not know anything about this 
 Universe, yet at the same time we cannot 
 say that we do not know. To walk in 
 the midst of a dream, half sleeping, half 
 waking, passing all our lives in a haze, this is 
 the fate of every one of us. This is the fate 
 of all sense knowledge. This is the Uni- 
 verse". We see here, as in many other of his 
 interpretations, that an Indian word is incap- 
 able of exact rendering into English, and that 
 the only way of arriving at an understanding 
 of it is to try to catch the conception which 
 the speaker is striving to express, rather than 
 
 27
 
 SECOND VISIT TO LONDON 
 
 to fasten the attention on a sentence or two 
 here or there. By Maya is thus meant that 
 shimmering, elusive, half-real half-unreal 
 complexity, in which there is no rest, no satis- 
 faction, no ultimate certainty, of which we be- 
 come aware through the senses, and through 
 the mind as dependent on the senses. At 
 the same time "And That by which all this 
 is pervaded, know That to be the Lord Him- 
 self!" In these two conceptions, placed side by 
 side, we have the whole theology of Hindu- 
 ism, as presented by the Swami Vivekananda, 
 in the West. All other teachings and ideas 
 -are subordinated to these two. Religion was 
 a matter of the growth of the individual, *'a 
 question always of being and becoming." 
 But such growth must presuppose the two 
 fundamental facts, and the gradual transfer 
 -ence of the centre of gravity, as it were, out 
 of the one into the other, out of Maya into 
 the Self. The condition of absorption in 
 Maya was " bondage" in the Eastern sense. 
 
 28
 
 RENUNCIATION OR CONQUEST 
 
 To have broken that bondage was "freedom" 
 or Mukti, or even Nii'vana. The path for 
 the would-be breaker of bondage must 
 always be by seeking for renunciation, 
 not by seeking for enjoyment. In this 
 matter, the Swami was, as he said himself, 
 only echoing what had been the burden of 
 all religions. For all religions, Indian 
 and other, have called a halt in the quest 
 for pleasure. All have sought to turn life 
 into a battlefield rather than a ball-room. 
 All have striven to make man strong for 
 death rather than for life. Where I think 
 that the Swami perhaps differed somewhat 
 from other teachers was in his acceptance 
 of every kind of mastery as a form of 
 renunciation. Towards the end of his life I 
 told him that 'renunciation' was the only 
 word I had ever heard from his lips. And 
 yet in truth I . think that ' conquer ! ' was 
 much more characteristic of him. For he 
 pointed out that it was by renunciation, 
 
 29
 
 SECOND VISIT TO LONDON 
 
 that is to say, by sustained and determined 
 effort, by absorption in hard problems 
 through lonely hours, by choosing toil and 
 refusing ease, that Stephenson, for instance, 
 invented the steam-engine. He pointed out 
 that the science of medicine represented as 
 strong a concentration of man's mind 
 upon healing as would be required for 
 a cure by prayer or by thought. He made 
 us feel that all study was an austerity direc- 
 ted to a given end of knowledge. And 
 above all, he preached that character, and 
 character alone, was the power that deter- 
 mined the permanence of a religious wave. 
 Resistance was to his mind the duty of the 
 citizen, non-resistance of the monk. And 
 this, because for all the supreme achievement, 
 was strength. ''Forgive," he said, "when 
 you also can bring legions of angels to an 
 easy victory." While victory was still doubt- 
 ful, however, only a coward, to his thinking, 
 would turn the other cheek. 
 
 30
 
 THE REAL AND THE UNREAL 
 
 One reads the same lesson in his Master's 
 story of the boy who for twenty years worked 
 to aquire the power to walk on water. "And 
 so," said a saint, "you have given twenty \ 
 years of effort to doing that for which others j 
 give the ferryman a penny !" The lad might/ 
 have answered that no ferryman could give 
 his passengers what he had acquired by 
 twenty years of patient striving. But the 
 fact remains that to these teachers, supreme- 
 ly sane, the world's art of navigation had its 
 own full value and its proper place. Years 
 afterwards, in Paris, some one approached 
 him with a question as to the general history 
 of the development of Indian ideas on these 
 subjects. "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 ?" he was asked. "Yes," 
 answered the Swami, "And what Rama- 
 krishna Paramahamsa and I have added to 
 this is, that the Many and the One are the
 
 SECOND VISIT TO LONDON 
 
 same Reality, perceived by the same mind 
 at different times and in different attitudes." 
 
 Gifted to an extraordinary degree with a 
 living utterance of metaphysic, drawing 
 always upon a classical literature of wonder- 
 ful depth and profundity, he stood in our 
 midst as, before all, the apostle of the inner 
 life, the prophet of the subordination of the 
 objective to the subjective. "Remember!" 
 he said once to a disciple, "Remember! the 
 message of India is always 'Not the soul 
 for Nature, but Nature for the soul T 
 And this was indeed the organ-note, as it 
 were, the deep fundamental vibration, that 
 began gradually to make itself heard through 
 all the intellectual interest of the things 
 he discussed, and the point of view he 
 revealed. Like the sound of the flute, heard 
 far away on the banks of some river in the 
 hour of dawn, and regarded as but one 
 amongst many sweet songs of the world : 
 and like the same strain when the listener
 
 THE LIFE OF THE SOUL. 
 
 has drawn nearer and nearer, and at last, 
 with his whole mind on the music, has be- 
 come himself the player may have seemed 
 to some who heard him long, the difference 
 between the life of the soul in Western 
 thinking and in Eastern. And with this 
 came the exaltation of renunciation. It was 
 not, perhaps, that the word occurred in 
 his teachings any oftener than it had done 
 before. It was rather that the reality of 
 that life, free, undimensioned, sovereign 
 in its mastery, was making itself directly 
 felt. A temptation that had to be fought 
 against was the impulse to go away, and 
 bind upon oneself intellectual shackles not 
 to be borne, in order to be able to enter 
 in its fulness upon the life of poverty 
 and silence. 
 
 An occasion came, when this call was 
 uttered with great force. Some dispute 
 occurred in the course of a question-class. 
 "What the world wants to-day", said the 
 
 33
 
 SECOND VISIT TO LONDON. 
 
 Swami, the determination to "throw a 
 bomb," as he called it, evidently taking sud- 
 den possession of him, "What the world 
 wants to-day, 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?" He had risen 
 to his feet by this time, and stood looking 
 round his audience as if begging some of 
 them to join him, "Why should one fear?" 
 And then, in tones of which, even now, I 
 can hear again the thunderous conviction, 
 "If this is true, what else could matter? 
 If it is not true, what do our lives matter ?" 
 "What the world wants is character," 
 he says, in a letter written at this time to a 
 member of his class. "The world is in need 
 of those whose life is one burning love self- 
 less. That love will make every word tell 
 like a thunder-bolt. Awake, awake, great 
 souls ! The world is burning in misery. 
 Can you sleep ?" 
 
 34
 
 THE SPIRIT BEHIND THE WORD. 
 
 I remember how new to myself at that 
 time was this Indian idea that it was charac- 
 ter that made a truth tell, the love expressed 
 that made aid successful, the degree of con- 
 centration behind a saying that gave it force 
 and constituted its power. Thus the text 
 'Consider the lilies, how they grow,' holds us, 
 said the Swami, not by the spell of its beauty, 
 but by the depth of renunciation that speaks 
 in it. 
 
 Was this true ? I felt that the question 
 might be tested by experience, and after 
 some time I came to the conclusion that 
 it was. A quiet word, from a mind that 
 put thought behind language, carried im- 
 mediate weight, when the same utterance 
 from the careless, would pass by unheeded. 
 I do not know a stronger instance of this 
 fact than a certain saying that is recorded 
 of the Caliph Ali. Many have heard, and 
 none surely without emotion, the words of 
 the Lion of Islam, " Thy place in life is 
 
 35
 
 SECOND VISIT TO LONDON. 
 
 seeking after thee. Therefore be thou at 
 rest from seeking after it ! " But never, 
 until we relate them to the speaker, four 
 times passed over in the succession to the 
 Caliphate, never until we know how the 
 man's whole life throbs through them, are 
 we able to explain the extraordinary power 
 of these simple sentences. 
 
 I found also that an utterance consciously 
 directed to the mind, instead of merely to 
 the hearing, of the listener, evoked more 
 response than the opposite. And having 
 begun to make these psychological dis- 
 coveries, I was led gradually to the percep- 
 tion that if indeed one's reason could, as 
 one had long thought, make no final line 
 of demarcation as between mind and matter, 
 yet at least that aspect of the One-substance 
 which we called Matter was rather the result 
 of that called Mind or Spirit, than the 
 reverse. The body, not the will, must be 
 regarded as a bye -product of the indivi- 
 
 36
 
 REALISATIONS. 
 
 duality. This in turn led to the conception of 
 a consciousness held above the body, a 
 life governing matter, and free of it, so 
 that it might conceivably disrobe and find 
 new garments, or cast off the form known 
 to us, as that form itself casts off a wounded 
 skin. Till at last I found my own mind 
 echoing the Swami's great pronouncement on 
 immortality, " The body comes and goes." 
 But this ripening of thought came 
 gradually and did not complete itself for 
 many months. 
 
 In the meantime, as I look back upon 
 that time, I feel that what we all really 
 entered upon in the Swami's classes was 
 not so much an intellectual exposition, as 
 a life of new and lofty emotions, or, as they 
 would be called in India, 'realisations.' 
 
 We heard the exclamation, in describing 
 
 the worship of God as a child, "do we want 
 anything from Him ?" We bowed to the 
 
 teaching that "love is always a manifestation 
 
 37
 
 SECOND VISIT TO LONDON. 
 
 of bliss," and that any pang of pain or regret 
 was therefore a mark of selfishness and 
 physicality. We accepted the austere ruling 
 that any, even the slightest, impulse of 
 differentiation, as between ourselves and 
 others was ' hatred,' and that only the 
 opposite of this was 'love.' Many who 
 have ceased to believe in the creed of their 
 childhood have felt that at least the good 
 of others was still an end in itself, and 
 that the possibility of service remained, to 
 give a motive to life. It is strange, now 
 that ten years have passed, to remember 
 the sense of surprise with which, holding 
 this opinion, we listened to the decorous 
 eastern teaching, that highest of all gifts 
 was spirituality, a degree lower, intellec- 
 tual knowledge, and that all kinds of phy- 
 sical and material help came last. All our 
 welling pity for sickness and for poverty 
 classified in this fashion ! It has taken 
 me years to find out, but I now know, 
 
 38
 
 PHYSICAL REFINEMENT IN INDIA. 
 
 that in train of the higher giving, the lower 
 must needs follow. 
 
 Similarly, to our Western fanaticism 
 about pure air and hygienic surroundings, as 
 if these were marks of saintliness, was 
 opposed the stern teaching of indifference to 
 the world. Here indeed, we came up 
 against a closed door, and had no key. 
 When the Swami said, in bold consciousness 
 of paradox, that the saints had lived on 
 mountain-tops " to enjoy the scenery, " and 
 when he advised his hearers to keep flowers 
 .and incense in their worship-rooms, and to 
 care much for the purity and cleansing of 
 food and person, we did not understand 
 enough to connect the two extremes. But 
 in fact he was preaching our own doctrine 
 of physical refinement, as it would be formu- 
 lated in India. And is it not true that until we 
 in the West have succeeded in cleansing the 
 slums of our great cities, our fastidiousness is 
 very like the self-worship of the privileged ? 
 
 39
 
 SECOND VISIT TO LONDON. 
 
 A like fate awaited our admiration for 
 such saints as knew how to order their worldly 
 affairs with conspicuous success and pru- 
 dence. True spirituality was indifferent to, 
 nay contemptuous and intolerant of, the 
 things of this world. This message the 
 Swami never mitigated. In giving it, he 
 never faltered. The highest spirituality 
 cannot tolerate the world. 
 
 We understood clearly enough that these 
 were the ideals of sainthood only. We 
 were learning chapter after chapter of a 
 great language which was to make it easy 
 for us to hold communion with the ends 
 of the earth. We gathered no confusion 
 as to those questions which concern the life 
 of citizenship and domestic virtue, and form 
 what may be regarded as the kindergarten of 
 the soul. The idea that one country might 
 best advance itself by learning to appre- 
 ciate those ideals of order and respon- 
 sibility which formed the glory of another 
 
 40
 
 SPIRITUALITY EAST AND WEST. 
 
 was in no wise discredited. At the same 
 time we were given, as the eternal watch- 
 word of the Indian ideals, "Spirituality 
 cannot tolerate the world." Did we, in 
 contradiction, point to monastic orders, well- 
 governed, highly organised, devoted to the 
 public good, and contrast our long roll 
 of abbots, bishops, and saintly lady-abbesses, 
 with a few ragged and God-intoxicated 
 beggars of the East? Yet we had to ad- 
 mit that even in the West, when the flame 
 of spirituality had blazed suddenly to its 
 brightest, it had taken their form. For 
 those who know the land of Meera Bae 
 and Chaitanya, of Tukaram and Ramanuja, 
 can hardly resist the impulse to clothe 
 with the yellow garb the memory of S. 
 Francis of Assissi also. 
 
 In one of the volumes of the English trans- 
 lation of the 'Jataka Birth-Tales', there 
 occur over and over again the words 'when 
 a man has come to that place where he dreads 
 
 41
 
 SECOND VISIT TO LONDON. 
 
 heaven as imick as hell" and I do not know 
 how the realisation that the Swami's pre- 
 sence brought could be better described. 
 Most of those who listened to him 
 in London, in the year 1896, caught 
 some glimpse, by which they were 
 led to understand a little of the meaning 
 of the eastern longing to escape from 
 incarnation. 
 
 But master of all these moods and 
 dominating them, was one that had barely 
 been hinted at, in the words "If this is 
 true, what other thing could matter? If 
 it is not true, what do our lives matter?" 
 For there was a power in this teacher to 
 sum up all the truths he himself had come 
 to teach, together with his own highest 
 hope, and to treat the whole as a mean 
 bribe, to be flung away fearlessly, if need 
 were, for the good of others. Years after, 
 this spoke more clearly in the indignant 
 reply with which he turned on some 
 
 42
 
 THE CROWN OF FREEDOM. 
 
 remark of my own, " Of course I 
 would commit a crime, and go to hell for 
 ever, if by that I could really help a human 
 being ! " It was the same impulse that spoke 
 also, in his constant repetition to some few 
 of us, as if it had a special bearing on the 
 present age, of the tale of that Bodhisattva, 
 who had held himself back from Nirvana till 
 the last grain of dust in the universe should 
 have gone in before him to salvation. 
 Does it mean that the final mark of freedom 
 lies in ceasing from the quest of freedom ? I 
 have found the same thing since, in many of 
 the Indian stories ; in Ramanuja, for instance, 
 breaking his vow, and proclaiming the sacred 
 mantram to all the pariahs ; in Buddha, 
 keeping no secret, but spending his whole 
 life in work ; in Shishupal, choosing to be 
 the enemy of God, that he might the sooner 
 return to him ; and in innumerable legends 
 of the saints fighting against the deities. 
 But the Swami was not always entirely 
 
 43
 
 SECOND VISIT TO LONDON. 
 
 impersonal. Once after a lecture he came 
 up to a small group of us, and said, a propos 
 of some subject that had been opened up, 
 " 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. " And then, lingering 
 on the point of departure, he drifted 
 into talk of his " old Master, " of whom 
 we then heard for the first time, and of 
 the girl who, wedded and forgotten, gave 
 her husband his freedom, with tears. His 
 voice had sunk lower, as he talked, till the 
 tones had become dream-like. But final- 
 ly, almost in soliloquy, he shook off the 
 mood that had stolen upon him, saying 
 with a long breath, " Yes, yes ! these 
 things have been, and they will again be. 
 Go in peace, my daughter, thy faith hath 
 made thee whole ! " 
 
 It was in the course of a conversation 
 much more casual than this, that he turned 
 
 44
 
 PERSONAL GLIMPSES. 
 
 to me and said, " I have plans for the women 
 of my own country in which you, I think, 
 could be of great help to me," and I knew 
 that I had heard a call which would change 
 my life. What these plans were, I did 
 not know, and the effort of abandoning 
 the accustomed perspective was for the 
 moment so great that I did not care to 
 -ask. But I had already gathered that there 
 was much to learn, if one's conception of the 
 world were to be made inclusive of the 
 view-point of foreign peoples. " And you 
 have blasted other cities !" had once been 
 the startling reply, when I had spoken of 
 the necessity of making London fair. For 
 to me the mystery and tragedy of London 
 had long been the microcosm of the human 
 problem, standing as the symbol of the 
 whole world's call. " And you have blasted 
 other cities, to make this city of yours 
 beautiful !" I could elicit no more, but the 
 words echoed in my ears for many days. 
 
 45
 
 SECOND VISIT TO LONDON. 
 
 In my eyes, our city was not beautiful. My 
 question had been misunderstood. But 
 through this misunderstanding, I had dis- 
 covered that there was another point of view. 
 "The English are born on an island, and 
 they are always trying to live on it," said 
 the Master once to me, and certainly the 
 remark seems true of myself, as I look back 
 on this period of my life, and see how 
 determinately insular even my ideals had 
 hitherto been. I learnt no more of the Indian 
 point of view, during my life in England. 
 The friend who afterwards called me to her 
 side in India, chose a certain evening in 
 London, when both the Swami and myself 
 were her guests for an hour, to tell him of my 
 willingness to help his work. He was evi- 
 dently surprised, but said quietly, " 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." 
 And the words stand in my own mind beside 
 
 46
 
 THE MESSAGE OF THE GURU. 
 
 those which he afterwards wrote to me on 
 the eve of my departure, "/ will standby 
 you unto death, whether you work for India 
 or not, whether you give up Vedanta, or 
 remain in it. The tusks of the elephant 
 come out, but they never go back. Even 
 so are the words of a man." 
 
 But these references to the Swami's 
 own people were merely personal, and as 
 such were strictly subordinate. In his classes, 
 in his teachings, his one longing seemed 
 to be for the salvation of men from ignorance. 
 Such love, such pity, those who heard him 
 never saw elsewhere. To him, his disciples 
 were his disciples. There was neither Indian 
 nor European there. And yet he was pro- 
 foundly conscious of the historic significance 
 of his own preaching. On the occasion of 
 his last appearance in London, [at the Royal 
 Society of Painters in Watercolours, on 
 Sunday afternoon, December the i5th, 1896] 
 he pointed out the fact that history repeats 
 
 47
 
 HISTORIC RELIGIONS. 
 
 itself, and that Christianity had been ren- 
 dered possible only by the Roman Peace. 
 And it may well have been that the Buddha- 
 like dignity and calm of bearing which 
 so impressed us, were but the expression 
 of his far outlook and serene conviction that 
 there would yet be seen a great army of 
 Indian preachers in the West, reaping the 
 harvest that he had sown so well, and making 
 ready in their turn new harvests, for the 
 more distant reaping of the future.
 
 III. 
 
 THE CONFLICT OF IDEALS. 
 
 "HE knew nothing of Vedanta, nothing of 
 theories ! He was contented to live that 
 great life, and to leave it to others to explain." 
 So said the Swami Vivekananda once, refer- 
 ring to his Master, Ramakrishna Parama- 
 hamsa. And, as an expression of the idea 
 that there may in a great life be elements 
 which he who lives it may not himself under- 
 stand, the words have often come back to me, 
 in reference to his own career. 
 
 In the West, the Swami had revealed 
 himself to us as a religious teacher only. 
 Even now, it needs but a moment's thought 
 and again one sees him in the old lecture- 
 room, on the seat slightly raised above his 
 class, and so enthroned, in Buddha-like calm, 
 once more in a modern world is heard 
 through his lips, the voice of the far past. 
 
 49
 
 THE DUALITY OF LIFE. 
 
 But renunciation, the thirst after freedom, 
 the breaking of bondage, the fire of purity, 
 the joy of the witness, the mergence of the 
 personal in the impersonal, these, and these 
 alone, had been the themes of that dis- 
 course. It is true that in a flash or two one 
 had seen a great patriot. Yet the secret 
 signal is sufficient where destiny calls, and 
 moments that to one form the turning-point 
 of a life, may pass before the eyes of a 
 hundred spectators, unperceived. It was as 
 the apostle of Hinduism, not as a worker for 
 India, that we saw the Swami in the West. 
 "Oh how calm," he exclaimed, " 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." And out of some 
 such fathomless peace had come all that 
 we had seen and heard of him. 
 
 From the moment of my landing in 
 India, however, I found something quite
 
 THE CONFLICT OF IDEALS. 
 
 unexpected underlying all this. It was not 
 Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, nor even the 
 ideas which were connected with him, that 
 formed so strange a revelation here. It was 
 the personality of my Master himself, in 
 all the fruitless torture and struggle of a lion 
 caught in a net. For, from the day that 
 he met me at the ship's side, till that last 
 serene moment, when, at the hour of cow- 
 dust, he passed out of the village of this 
 world, leaving the body behind him, like a 
 folded garment, I was always conscious of 
 this element inwoven with the other, in 
 his life. 
 
 But wherein lay the struggle ? whence 
 came the frequent sense of being baffled 
 and thwarted ? Was it a growing conscious- 
 ness of bodily weakness, conflicting with the 
 growing clearness of a great purpose ? 
 Amongst the echoes that had reached his 
 English friends of his triumphal reception 
 in India, this had been the, note carried by
 
 THE RELIGION OF WORK. 
 
 a man-friend to my own ear. Banished 
 to the Himalayas with shattered health, at 
 the very moment when his power had 
 reached its height, he had written a letter 
 to his friend which was a cry of despair. 
 And some of us became eager to take any 
 step that might make it possible to induce 
 him to return to the West, and leave his 
 Indian undertakings on other shoulders. In 
 making such arrangements, how little must 
 we have realised of the nature of those 
 undertakings, or of the difficulty and 
 complexity of the education that they 
 demanded ! 
 
 To what was the struggle actually 
 due ? Was it the terrible effort of translat- 
 ing what he had called the *su t rr-r~nsci- 
 ous' into the common life ? Undoubtedly 
 he had been born to a task which was in 
 this respect of heroic difficulty. Nothing 
 in this world is so terrible as to abandon 
 the safe paths of accepted ideals, in order
 
 THE CONFLICT OF IDEALS. 
 
 to work out some new realisation, by 
 methods apparently in conflict with the 
 -old. Once, in his boyhood, Sri Ramakrishna 
 had asked "Noren," as he was then called, 
 what was his highest ambition in life, and 
 he had promptly answered, 'to remain 
 always in Samad/ii.' His Master, it is 
 said, received this with a smile. "I thought 
 you had been born for something greater, 
 my boy !" was all his reply. We may take 
 it, I think, that the moment marked an 
 epoch in the disciple's career. Certainly 
 in years to come, in these last five and a 
 half years, particularly, which were his 
 crowning gift to his own people, he stood for 
 work without attachment, or work for im- 
 personal ends, as one . of the highest ex- 
 pressions of the religious life. And for 
 the first time in the history of India an order of 
 monks found themselves banded together, 
 with their faces set primarily towards the 
 evolution of new forms of civic duty. In 
 
 53
 
 SERVICE AS WORSHIP. 
 
 Europe, where the attainment of the direct 
 religious sense is so much rarer, and so 
 much less understood than in the East, such 
 labour ranks as devotional in the common 
 acceptance. But in India, the head and 
 front of the demand made on a monastic 
 order is that it produce saints. And the 
 value of the monk who, instead of devoting 
 himself to maintaining the great tradition of 
 the super-conscious life, turns back to help 
 society upwards, has not in the past been 
 clearly understood. 
 
 In the Swami's scheme of things how- 
 ever, it would almost seem as if such tasks 
 were to take that place in the spiritual edu- 
 cation which had previously been occupied 
 by systems of devotion. To the Adwaitin, 
 or strict believer in the Indian philosophy 
 of Vedanta, the goal lies in the attain- 
 ment of that mood in which all is One and 
 there is no second. To one who has reached 
 this, worship becomes impossible, for there 
 
 54
 
 THE CONFLICT OF IDEALS. 
 
 is none to worship, none to be worshipper ; 
 and, all acts being equally the expres- 
 sion of the Immanent Unity, none can be 
 distinguished as in any special sense con- 
 stituting adoration. Worship, worshipper, 
 and worshipped are one. Yet it is ad- 
 mitted, even by the Adwaitin, that systems 
 of praise and prayer have the power to 
 "purify the heart" of him who uses them. 
 For clearly, the thought of self is more 
 quickly restrained in relation to that of 
 God, than to any other. Worship is thus 
 regarded as the school, or preparation, for 
 higher stages of spiritual development. But 
 the self-same sequence would seem to have 
 held good in the eyes of the Swami, with 
 regard to work, or the service of man. 
 The "purifying of the heart" connoted 
 the burning out of selfishness. Worship 
 is the very antithesis of use. But service 
 or giving, is also its antithesis. Thus he 
 hallowed the act of aid, and hallowed, too, 
 
 55
 
 THE PUBLIC GOOD. 
 
 the name of man. Till I know of one 
 disciple, who, in the early days of the 
 Order, was so filled with the impulse of this 
 reverence that he sucked the sores of the 
 lepers to bring them ease. The nursing 
 of the sick and the feeding of the poor, 
 had indeed from the first been natural 
 activities of the Children of Ramkrishna. 
 But when the Swami Vivekananda returned 
 from the West these things took on a 
 larger aspect. They were considered from 
 a national point of view. Men would be 
 sent out from the Monastery to give relief 
 in famine-stricken areas, to direct the sanita- 
 tion of a town, or to nurse the sick and dying 
 at a pilgrim centre. One man started an 
 orphanage and industrial school at Murshida- 
 bad. Another established a teaching nucleus 
 in the South. These were, said the Swami, 
 the 'sappers and miners' of the army of 
 religion. His schemes however went much 
 further. He was consumed with a desire
 
 THE CONFLICT OF IDEALS. 
 
 for the education of Indian women, and for 
 the scientific and technical education of the 
 country. How the impersonal motive 
 multiplies the power to suffer, only those 
 who have seen can judge. Was his life 
 indeed a failure, as he was sometimes tempt- 
 ed to feel it, since there never came to 
 his hands that "twenty million pounds" 
 with which, as he used to say, he could have 
 set India on her feet ? Or were there 
 higher laws at work, that would eventually 
 make a far greater success than any that 
 could have been gathered within a single 
 lifetime ? 
 
 His view was penetrative as well as 
 comprehensive. He had analyzed the ele- 
 ments of the development to be brought 
 about. India must learn a new ideal of obe- 
 dience. The Math was placed, therefore, on 
 a basis of organization which was contrary to 
 all the current ideas of religious freedom. A 
 thousand new articles of use must be assimi- 
 
 57
 
 THE PAIN OF THE PIONEER 
 
 lated. Therefore, though his own habits 
 were of the simplest, two or three rooms were 
 provided with furniture. Digging, garden- 
 ing, rowing, gymnastic exercises, the keeping 
 of animals, all these were by degrees made a 
 part of the life of the young brahmachartns 
 and himself. And he would throw a world of 
 enthusiasm into a long course of experiments 
 on such problems as the sinking of a well or 
 the making of brown bread. On the last 
 Charok Puja day of his life a gymnastic society 
 came to the Math for sports and prizes, and he 
 spoke of his desire that the Hindu Lent 
 should be celebrated henceforth by special 
 courses of athletic exercises. The energy 
 which had hitherto gone into the mortifica- 
 tion of the body, might rightly, in his 
 opinion, under modern conditions, be direct- 
 ed to the training of the muscles. 
 
 To a western mind, it might well seem 
 that nothing in the Swami's life had been 
 more admirable than this. Long ago, he 
 
 58
 
 THE CONFLICT OF IDEALS. 
 
 had defined the mission of the Order of Rama- 
 krishna as that of realizing and exchanging 
 the highest ideals of the East and of the West. 
 And assuredly he here proved his own 
 power to engage in such an undertaking 
 as much by his gift of learning as by that 
 of teaching. But it was inevitable that 
 he himself should from time to time go 
 through the anguish of revolt. The Hindu 
 ideal of the religious life, as a reflection 
 on earth of that of the Great God in the 
 Divine Empyrean, the Unmoving, the Un- 
 touched, "pure, free, ever the Witness, "- 
 is so clear and so deeply established that only 
 at great cost to himself could a man carry 
 it into a fresh channel. Has any one 
 realized the pain endured by the sculptor 
 of a new ideal ? The very sensitiveness 
 and delicacy of perception that are neces- 
 sary to his task, that very moral exaltation 
 which is as the chisel in his hand, are 
 turned on himself in passive moments, to 
 
 59
 
 HIS DOUBT OF THE PRESENT. 
 
 become doubt, and terror of responsibility. 
 What a heaven of ease seems then, to such 
 a soul, even the hardest and sternest of 
 those lives that are understood and authenti- 
 cated by the imitative moral sense of the 
 crowd ! I have noticed in most experiences 
 this consciousness of being woven out of 
 two threads, one that is chosen and another 
 endured. But in this case the common 
 duality took the form of a play upon two 
 different ideals, of which either was highest 
 in its own world, and yet each, to those who 
 believed in its fellow, almost as a crime. 
 
 Occasionally, to one who was much with 
 him, a word, let fall unconsciously, would 
 betray the inner conflict. He was riding 
 on one occasion, with the Rajah of Khetri, 
 when he saw that his arm was bleeding pro- 
 fusely, and found that the wound had been caus- 
 ed by a thorny branch which he had held aside 
 for himself to pass. When the Swami ex- 
 postulated, the Rajput laughed the matter 
 
 60
 
 THE CONFLICT OF IDEALS. 
 
 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 sud- 
 denly I thought that perhaps they were 
 right after all. Who knows ? May be I 
 too am caught in the glare of this flashlight 
 of your modern civilisation, which is only 
 for a moment." " I have become entan- 
 gled," he said simply, to one who protested 
 that to his mind the wandering Sadku of 
 earlier years, who had scattered his know- 
 ledge 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." And I remem- 
 ber the story told by an American woman, 
 who said she could not bear to remember 
 his face, at that moment when her husband 
 explained to this strange guest that he must 
 make his way from their home to Chicago 
 
 61
 
 THE CONFLICT OF IDEALS. 
 
 with money which would be paid gladly to 
 hear him speak of religion. " It was," she 
 said "as if something had just broken 
 within him, that could never again be made 
 whole." One day he was talking, in the 
 West, of Meera Bae, that saint who once 
 upon a time was Queen of Chitore, and of 
 the freedom her husband had offered her, if on- 
 ly she would remain within the royal seclusion. 
 But she could not be bound. " But why 
 should she not?" some one asked, in asto- 
 nishment. " Why should she?" he retorted. 
 " Was she living down here in this mire ?" 
 And suddenly the listener caught his 
 thought, of the whole nexus of the personal 
 life, with its inter-relations and reaction 
 upon reactions, as intolerable bondage and 
 living anguish. 
 
 And so, side by side with that 
 sunlit serenity and child-like peace which 
 enwrapped the Swami as a religious teac'i:-;r, 
 I found in his own country another point 
 
 62
 
 THE CONFLICT OF IDEALS. 
 
 of view, from which he was very, very 
 human. And here, though the results of 
 his efforts may have been choicer, or more 
 enduring, than those of most of us, yet they 
 were wrought at the self-same cost of having 
 to toil on in darkness and uncertainty, and 
 only now and then emerging into light. Often 
 dogged by the sense of failure, often over- 
 taken by a loathing of the limitations 
 imposed alike by the instrument and the 
 material, he dared less and less, as years 
 went on, to make determinate plans, or to 
 dogmatize about the unknown. " After all, 
 what do we know?" he said once, "Mother 
 uses it all. But we are only fumbling 
 about." 
 
 This has not perhaps been an element 
 in the lives of the great teachers on which 
 their narrators have cared to dwell much. 
 Yet one catches a hint of it in the case of 
 Sri Ramakrishna, when we are told how he 
 turned on God with the reproach, "Oh Mother ! 
 
 63
 
 INDIA THE MOTHER. 
 
 what is this You have brought me to ? All 
 my heart is centred in these lads !" And in 
 the eleventh chapter of the Dhammapada 
 one can see still, though twenty-four 
 centuries have passed since then, the wave- 
 marks of similar storms on the shores of 
 the consciousness of another Teacher.* 
 
 There was one thing however, deep in 
 the Master's nature, that he himself never 
 knew how to adjust. This was his love 
 of his country and his resentment of her 
 suffering. Throughout those years in which 
 I saw him almost daily, the thought of India 
 was to him like the air he breathed. True, 
 he was a worker at foundations. He neither 
 used the word 'nationality,' nor proclaimed an 
 era of 'nation-making'. 'Man-making', he said, 
 
 * Seeking for the maker of this tabernacle, and not finding, 
 I must run through a course of many births ; and painful is birth 
 again and again. But now, maker of the tabernacle, thou hast been 
 seen ! Thou shall not again build up this tabernacle. All thy 
 rafters are fallen. Thy ridge-pole is broken. The mind, ap- 
 proaching the Eternal, has attained to the extinction of all desires. 
 
 6 4
 
 RESPONSE TO INDIA. 
 
 was his own task. But he was born a 
 lover, and the queen of his adoration 
 was his Motherland. Like some delicately- 
 poised bell, thrilled and vibrated by every 
 sound that falls upon it, was his heart 
 to all that concerned her. Not a sob 
 was heard within her shores that did 
 not find in him a responsive echo. There 
 was no cry of fear, no tremor of weak- 
 ness, no shrinking from mortification, that 
 he had not known and understood. He 
 was hard on her sins, unsparing of her 
 want of worldly wisdom, but only because he 
 felt these faults to be his own. And 
 none, on the contrary, was ever so possessed 
 by the vision of her greatness. To him, 
 she appeared as the giver of English civilsa- 
 tion. For what, he would ask, had been the 
 England of Elizabeth in comparison with 
 the India of Akbar ? Nay, what would 
 the England of Victoria have been, without 
 the wealth of India, behind her ? Where would
 
 THE CONFLICT OF IDEALS. 
 
 have been her refinement ? where would 
 have been her experience ? His country's 
 religion, history, geography, ethnology, pour- 
 ed from his lips in an inexhaustible stream. 
 With equal delight he treated of details 
 and of the whole, or so it would often seem 
 to those who listened. Indeed there would 
 sometimes come a point where none who 
 wished to remember what had been said 
 already, could afford to listen any longer. 
 And still, with mind detached, one 
 might note the unwearied stream of 
 analysis of the laws regarding female in- 
 heritance, or the details of caste customs 
 in different provinces, or some abstruse 
 system of metaphysics or theology, pro- 
 ceeding on and on for a couple of hours 
 longer. 
 
 In these talks of his, the heroism of 
 the Rajput, the faith of the Sikh, the 
 courage of the Mahratta, the devotion of 
 the saints, and the purity and steadfast- 
 
 66
 
 THE EPIC OF INDIA. 
 
 ness of noble women, all lived again. 
 Nor would he permit that the Moham- 
 medan should be passed over. Huma- 
 yoon, Sher Shah, Akbar, Shah Jehan, 
 each of these, and a hundred more, found 
 a day and a place in his bead-roll of glisten- 
 ing names. Now it was that coronation 
 song of Akbar which is still sung 
 about the streets of Delhi, that he would 
 give us, in the very tone and rhythm 
 of Thanasena. Again, he would ex- 
 plain how the widows of the Mogul 
 House never remarried, but lived like 
 Hindu women, absorbed in worship or 
 in study, through the lonely years. At 
 another time he would talk of the great 
 national genius that decreed the birth of 
 Indian sovereigns to be of a Moslem 
 father and of a Hindu mother. And 
 yet again he would hold us breathless, as 
 we lived through with him the bright, 
 but ill-starred reign, of Sirajud-Daulah ;
 
 THE CONFLICT OF IDEALS. 
 
 as we heard the exclamation at Plassy 
 of the Hindu general, listening to an 
 order sent in treachery, " Then is the 
 day lost ! " and saw him plunge, with his 
 horse, into the Ganges ; as, finally, we 
 lingered with the faithful wife, clad in 
 the white sari of the widow amongst 
 her own people, through long years tend- 
 ing the lamp above the grave of her 
 dead lord. 
 
 Sometimes the talk would be more 
 playful It would arise out of some 
 commonplace incident. The offering of 
 a sweetmeat, or the finding of a rare 
 commodity like musk or saffron, or events 
 simpler still, would be enough to start it. 
 He told us how he had longed, when 
 in the West, to stand once more at dusk 
 some little way outside an Indian village 
 and hear again the evening calls, the 
 noise of children growing sleepy at their 
 play, the evensong bells, the cries of the 
 
 68
 
 THE LOVE OF INDIA. 
 
 herdsmen, and the half-veiled sound of 
 voices through the quickly-passing twilight 
 How homesick he had been for the 
 sound of the July rains, as he had known 
 them in his childhood in Bengal ! How 
 wonderful was the sound of water, in rain, 
 or waterfall, or sea ! The most beautiful 
 sight he could remember was a mother whom 
 he had seen, passing from stepping-stone to 
 stepping-stone across a mountain brook, and 
 turning as she went, to play with and 
 caress the baby on her back. The ideal 
 death would be to lie on a ledge of rock 
 in the midst of Himalayan forests, and 
 hear the torrent beneath, as one passed 
 out of the body, chanting eternally 'Hara! 
 Hara! The Free! The Free!' 
 
 Like some great spiral of emotion, its 
 lowest circles held fast in love of soil 
 and love of nature ; its next embracing 
 every possible association of race, experi- 
 ence, history, and thought ; and the 
 
 69
 
 THE CONFLICT OF IDEALS. 
 
 whole converging and centring upon a 
 single definite point, was thus the Swami's 
 worship of his own land. And the point 
 in which it was focussed was the convic- 
 tion that India was not old and effete, 
 as her critics had supposed, but young, 
 ripe with potentiality, and standing, at 
 the beginning of the twentieth century, 
 on the threshold of even greater deve- 
 lopments than she had known in the 
 past. Only once, however, do I remem- 
 ber him to have given specific utterance 
 to this thought. " I feel myself" he said 
 in a moment of great quiet, " to be the 
 man born after many centuries. / see 
 that India is young." But in truth this 
 vision was implied in every word he 
 ever spoke. It throbbed in every story 
 he told. And when he would lose him- 
 self, in splendid scorn of apology for any- 
 thing Indian, in fiery repudiation of false 
 charge or contemptuous criticism, or in 
 
 70
 
 THE LO VE OF INDIA. 
 
 laying down for others the elements of 
 a faith and love that could never be 
 more than a pale reflection of his own, 
 how often did the habit of the monk 
 seem to slip away from him, and 
 the armour of the warrior stand re- 
 vealed ! 
 
 But it is not to be supposed that he 
 was unaware of the temptation which all 
 this implied. His Master had said of 
 him, in the years of his first discipleship, 
 " It is true that there is a film of igno- 
 rance upon his mind. My Mother has 
 placed it there, that Her work may be 
 done. And it is thin, as thin as a sheet 
 of tissue paper. It might be rent at any 
 moment ! " And so, as one who has for- 
 sworn them will struggle against thoughts 
 of home and family, he would endeavour, 
 time and again, to restrain and suppress 
 these thoughts of country and history, and 
 to make of himself only that poor religious
 
 THE CONFLICT OF IDEALS. 
 
 wanderer, to whom all countries and all 
 races should be alike. He came back, in 
 Kashmir, from one of the great experiences 
 of his life, saying, with the simplicity of a 
 child, "There must be no more of this anger. 
 Mother said ' What, even if the unbeliever 
 should enter My temples, and defile 
 My images, what is that to you ? Do 
 
 YOU PROTECT ME ? OR DO I PROTECT YOU ?" 
 
 His personal ideal was that sannyasin 
 of the Mutiny, who was stabbed by an 
 English soldier, and broke the silence of 
 fifteen years to say to his murderer " 
 And thou also art He !" 
 
 He was always striving to be faith- 
 ful to the banner of Ramkrishna, and the 
 utterance of a message of his own seemed 
 often to strike him as a lapse. Besides, 
 he believed that force spent in mere emo- 
 tion was dissipated, only force restrained 
 being conserved for expression in work. 
 Yet again the impulse to give all he had 
 
 72
 
 INSTINCT NOT THEORY. 
 
 would overtake him, and before he knew it, 
 he would once more be scattering those 
 thoughts of hope and love for his race 
 and for his country, which, apparently 
 without his knowledge, fell in so many 
 cases like seed upon soil prepared for it, 
 and have sprung up already, in widely 
 distant parts of India, into hearts and 
 lives of devotion to the Motherland. Just 
 as Sri Ramakrishna, in fact, without 
 knowing any books, had been a living 
 epitome of the Vedanta so was Viveka- 
 nanda of the national life. But of the 
 theory of this, he was unconscious. In 
 his own words, applied to his own Mas- 
 ter, "He was contented simply to live 
 that great life, and to leave it to others 
 to find the explanation !" 
 
 73
 
 Iv 
 
 THE SWAMI VIVEKANANDA AND 
 THE ORDER OF RAMA 
 KRISHNA 
 
 It was amongst the lawns and trees of 
 the Ganges-side that I came to know, in 
 a personal sense, the leader to whose work 
 my life was already given. At the time of 
 my landing in India (January 28th. 1898), 
 the ground and building had just been pur- 
 chased at Belur, which were afterwards 
 to be transformed into the Calcutta Monastery 
 of the Order of Ramakrishna. A few 
 weeks later still, a party of friends arrived 
 from America, and with characteristic in- 
 trepidity took possession of the half-ruined 
 cottage, to make it simply but pleasantly 
 habitable. It was as the guest of these 
 friends, here at Belur, and later, travelling in 
 Kumaon and in Kashmir, that I began, with 
 
 74
 
 THE ORDER OF RA MAKRISHNA. 
 
 them, the study of India, and something 1 
 also of the home-aspects and relationships 
 of the Swami's own life. 
 
 Our cottage stood on a low terrace, 
 built on the western bank of the river, a few 
 miles above Calcutta. At flood-tide the 
 little gondola-like boat, which to those 
 who live beside the Ganges serves the 
 purpose of a carriage, could come up to the 
 very foot of the steps, and the river between 
 us and the opposite village, was from half 
 to three-quarters of a mile broad. A mile 
 or so further up the eastern bank, could be 
 seen the towers and trees of Dakshineswar, 
 that temple-garden in which the Swami 
 and his brothers had once been boys, at 
 the feet of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. 
 The house which was in actual use at 
 that time as the Monastery, lay some half 
 mile or so to the south of our cottage, 
 and between us and it were several other 
 garden-houses, and at least one ravine, cross- 
 
 75
 
 MORNING TALKS. 
 
 ed by a doubtful-looking plank made out of 
 half of the stem of a palm tree. To our 
 cottage here, then, came the Swami daily, at 
 sunrise, alone or accompanied by some of his 
 brothers. And here, under the trees, long 
 after our early breakfast was ended, we might 
 still be found seated, listening to that 
 inexhaustible flow of interpretation, broken 
 but rarely by question and answer, in which 
 he would reveal to us some of the deepest 
 secrets of the Indian world. I am struck 
 afresh whenever I turn back upon this 
 memory, by the wonder as to how such 
 -a harvest of thought and experience could 
 possibly have been garnered, or how, when 
 once ingathered, could have come such 
 energy of impulse for its giving-forth. 
 Amongst brilliant conversationalists, the 
 Swami was peculiar in one respect. He was 
 never known to show the slightest impa- 
 tience at interruption. He was by no means 
 indifferent as to the minds he was address- 
 
 76
 
 THE ORDER OF RAMAKRISHNA. 
 
 ing. His deepest utterances were heard 
 only in the presence of such listeners 
 as brought a subtle sympathy and reverence 
 into the circle about him. But I do not 
 think he was himself aware of this, and 
 certainly no external circumstance seemed 
 to have power to ruffle him. Moods of 
 storm and strength there were in 
 plenty ; but they sprang, like those of sweet- 
 ness, from hidden sources ; they were entire- 
 ly general and impersonal in their occasion. 
 
 It was here that we learnt the great out- 
 standing watchwords and ideals of the 
 Indian striving. For the talks were, above 
 all, an exposition of ideals. Facts and 
 illustrations were gathered, it is true, 
 from history, from literature, and from a 
 thousand other sources. But the purpose 
 was always the same, to render some 
 Indian ideal of perfection clearer. Nor 
 were these ideals always so comprehensible 
 as might have been supposed. This was a 
 
 77
 
 EASTERN IDEALS. 
 
 world in which concentration of mind was 
 the object of more deliberate cultivation than 
 even the instincts of benevolence could require, 
 but the time was not yet come in which this 
 was to be argued as for or against India. 
 The attainment of the impersonal standpoint 
 was boldly proposed, in matters personal 
 "Be the Witness !" was a command heard 
 oftener than that which bids us pray for our 
 enemies The idea of recognizing an 
 enemy would have seemed to this mind a 
 proof of hatred. Love was not love, it was 
 insisted, unless it was 'without a reason,' 
 or without a 'motive,' as a western speaker 
 might have attempted, though perhaps with 
 less force, to express the same idea. Purity 
 and renunciation were analyzed untiringly. 
 The Great God, tempted by nothing not 
 kingship nor fatherhood ; not wealth nor 
 pleasure ; in all the worlds He had created, 
 proving on the contrary, in matters worldly, 
 'a very simple fellow,' incurious, easily 
 
 78
 
 THE ORDER OF RAMAKRISHNA. 
 
 deceived, and begging His daily handful 
 of rice from door to door, shone through all 
 our dreams. Titiksha, or non -correction of 
 evil, was a mark of the religious life, 
 and of this we might find a western 
 example in that monk who was a leper, 
 and who, when the maggots fell from 
 his finger-joints, stooped and replaced 
 them, saying, "Eat brothers !" The vision 
 of Raghunath was one of the perfec- 
 tions of the soul, and that saint had 
 had it, who fainted, when the bullocks 
 were beaten in his presence, while on 
 his back were found the weals made 
 by the lash. We were even called upon 
 to understand a thought immeasurably 
 foreign to all our past conceptions of 
 religion, in which sainthood finds expres- 
 sion in an unconsciousness of the body, 
 so profound that the saint is unaware 
 that he goes naked. For that delicate 
 discrimination of a higher significance 
 
 79
 
 EASTERN WAELS. 
 
 in certain cases of nudity, which, in 
 Europe, finds its expression in art, in 
 India finds it in religion. As we, in 
 the presence of a Greek statue, ex- 
 perience only reverence for the ideal of 
 beauty, so the Hindu sees in the naked 
 saint only a glorified and childlike purity. 
 
 There was one aspiration, however, 
 which was held, in this new thought- 
 world, to be of the same sovereign 
 and universal application in the religious 
 life as that of the concentration of the 
 mind. This was the freedom of the 
 individual soul, including all the minor 
 rights of thought, opinion, and action. 
 Here lay the one possession that the 
 monk was jealously to guard as his own, 
 the one property on which he must 
 brook the foot of no intruder ; and as 
 I watched the working out of this, in 
 daily life, I saw that it amounted to a 
 form of renunciation. To accept nothing, 
 
 80
 
 THE STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM. 
 
 however pleasant, if it concealed a fetter ; 
 at a word to stand ready to sever any 
 connection that gave a hint of bondage ; 
 how clear must be the mind that would 
 do this, how pure the will ! And yet 
 this ideal, too, was eloquent of many 
 things. One could not help seeing that 
 it accounted for the comparative non- 
 development of monasticism in India, 
 for the fact that the highest types of 
 the religious life, in the past, had been 
 solitary, whether as hermits or wander- 
 ers. In the monastery beside us there 
 were men, as we were told, who did 
 not approve of their leader's talking 
 with women ; there were others who objected 
 to all rites and ceremonies ; the religion 
 of one might be described as atheism 
 tempered by hero-worship ; that of another 
 led him to a round of practices which 
 to most of us would constitute an into- 
 lerable burden ; some lived in a world 
 
 81
 
 THE ORDER OF RAMAKRISHNA. 
 
 of saints, visions and miracles ; others 
 again could not away with such nonsense, 
 but must needs guide themselves by the 
 coldest logic. The fact that all these 
 could be bound together in a close con- 
 fraternity, bore silent witness to their 
 conception of the right of the soul to 
 choose its own path. It also, as I could 
 not help thinking, both then and after, 
 accounted for the failure, in certain res- 
 pects, of the old Indian forms of authority. 
 For, in order that the highest and most 
 disinterested characters may throw them- 
 selves into the work of the city and the 
 state, it is surely necessary that they 
 should sincerely hold the task of such 
 organisation to be the highest and most 
 honourable which they could aspire to 
 carry out. In the India of the past, 
 however, the best men had been too cons- 
 cious of the more remote spiritual ideals, and 
 amongst them, of this conception of freedom, 
 
 82
 
 THE EXCHANGE OF IDEALS. 
 
 to be capable of such an enthusiasm for the 
 assertion of the civic and national discipline. 
 And we cannot wonder that in spite of the 
 existence of ability and character, certain 
 advantages of the modern system have thus 
 been left for the moderns to demonstrate. 
 That Hinduism, nevertheless, is capable 
 enough of adding to her development that 
 of the inspiration and sustenance of such 
 activities, is shown, as I believe, in the very 
 fact of the rise of Ramakrishna and his 
 disciple Vivekananda, with their characteris- 
 tic contribution to the national thought. 
 
 It was perhaps as an instance of that 
 'exchange of ideals' which he had ever in 
 mind, that the Swami gravely warned us 
 again and again, as the great fault of the 
 Western character, against making any at- 
 tempt to force upon others that whieh we 
 had merely found to be good for ourselves. 
 And yet at the same time, when asked by 
 some of his own people what he considered, 
 
 83
 
 THE ORDER OF RAMAKRISHNA. 
 
 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'. 
 
 But it was not the Swami alone whom 
 we saw at Belur. We were accounted by 
 the monastery as a whole, as its guests. So 
 back and forth would toil the hospitable 
 monks, on errands of kindness and service 
 for us. They milked the cow that gave us- 
 our supply, and when the servant whose 
 duty it was at nightfall to carry the milk, 
 was frightened by the sight of a cobra in the 
 path, jand refused to go again, it was one of 
 the monks themselves who took his place in 
 this humble office. Some novice would be 
 deputed daily, to deal with the strange pro- 
 blems of our Indian house-keeping. Another 
 was appointed to give Bengali lessons. Visits 
 of ceremony and of kindness were frequently 
 paid us by the older members of the commu- 
 nity. And finally, when the Swami Viveka- 
 
 84
 
 MONASTIC HOSPITALITY. 
 
 nanda himself was absent for some weeks on 
 a journey, his place was always duly taken at 
 the morning tea-table by some one or 
 .another who felt responsible for the happi- 
 ness and entertainment of his guests. In 
 these and a thousand similar ways, we came 
 in touch with those who could reveal to us the 
 shining memory that formed the warp, on 
 which, as woof, were woven all these lives of 
 renunciation. 
 
 For they had only one theme, these 
 monastic visitants of ours, and that was their 
 Master Sri Ramakrishna and his great 
 disciple. The Swami had now been back 
 with them for thirteen or fourteen months 
 only, and scarcely yet had they recovered 
 from their first pleasure and surprise. 
 Before that he had been practically lost to 
 ,them for some six years. It was true that of 
 late he had corresponded with them freely, 
 .and that for no time had they been, long, 
 .altogether off his track. And yet, when his 
 
 85
 
 THE ORDER OF RAMAKRISHNA. 
 
 first success in America had been heard of,, 
 most of his brethren had had only their con- 
 fidence in the great mission foretold by his 
 Master, to tell them that it was he. 
 
 Those who have witnessed here or there 
 some great life of asceticism, will recognise 
 a mood of passionate longing to lose one's 
 own identity, to be united with the lowliest and 
 most hidden things, to go forth from amongst 
 men, and be no more remembered by them, 
 as an element in the impulse of renunciation. 
 This it is which explains, as I think, the long 
 silence and seclusion in caves ; the garb of 
 mud and ashes, so often worn as a man wan- 
 ders from forest to forest, and village to village; 
 and a thousand other features of this type of 
 religion, which to the Western onlooker 
 might seem inexplicable. This mood would 
 seem to have been much with the Swami in 
 the early years after the passingof his Master. 
 And again and again he must have left 
 the little band of brethren, in the hope never 
 
 86
 
 A FIRST RECRUIT. 
 
 to be heard of more. Once he was brought 
 back from such an expedition by the com- 
 munity itself, who heard that he was lying- ill 
 at a place called Hathras, and send to take 
 him home. For such was the love that 
 bound them all to each other, and espe- 
 cially to him, that they could not rest without 
 nursing him themselves. A few months 
 later he was followed to the monastery by a 
 disciple whom he had called to himself 
 during his wanderings. This man's name, 
 in religion, was Sadananda, and from his 
 account, with its strong broken English, I 
 glean the record of the life that was lived at 
 this period in the monastery. When he ar- 
 rived it had taken him some two or three 
 months, by means of railway service, to earn 
 his way to Calcutta from his old home he 
 found the Swami on the point of setting out 
 once more. But for his sake this journey 
 was abandoned, and the departure that was 
 to have taken place that evening did not
 
 THE ORDER OF RAMAKRISHNA. 
 
 occur till twelve months later. "The Swami's 
 mission began with me," says this first 
 disciple proudly, referring to this time. 
 
 During this year, he the Master, "would 
 work twenty-four hours at a time. He was 
 lunatic-like, he was so busy!" Early in the 
 morning, while it was still dark, he would 
 rise and call the others, singing, "Awake ! 
 Awake ! all ye who would drink of the divine 
 nectar !" Then all would proceed to medita- 
 tion, afterwards drifting almost unconsciously 
 into singing and talking, which would last 
 till noon, or even later. From hymns and 
 chanting they would pass into history. Some- 
 times it would be the story of Ignatius 
 Loyola ; again Joan of Are, or the Rani of 
 Jhansi ; and yet again the Swami would 
 recite long passages from Carlyle's French 
 Revolution, and they would all sway them- 
 selves backwards and forwards dreamily, 
 repeating together "Vive la Republique! Vive 
 la Republique !" Or the subject of their 
 
 88
 
 THE FIRST LOVE. 
 
 reveries might be S. Francis of Assisi, and 
 with the same unconscious instinct of the 
 dramatist, they would lose themselves in an 
 endless identification with his "Welcome, 
 Sister Death !" It might perhaps be one or two 
 o'clock when Ramakrishnananda the cook, 
 housekeeper, and ritualist of the communi- 
 ty would drive them all, with threats, to 
 bathe and eat. But after this, they would 
 "again group" again would go on the song 
 and talk, till at last evening had come, bring- 
 ing with it the time for the two hours of 
 Arrati to Sri Ramakrishna. As often as 
 not, even this would scarcely break the 
 absorption, again would follow song, and 
 talk of the Master ; again would come the 
 trances of meditation. Or on the roof, till 
 long after midnight it might be, they would 
 sit and chant ''Hail Sita-Rama !" The 
 special festivals of all religions brought each 
 their special forms of celebration. At 
 Christmas time, for instance, they would re- 
 
 89
 
 THE ORDER OF RAMAKRISHNA. 
 
 cline, with long shepherds' crooks, around a 
 lighted log, and talk in low tones of the 
 coming of the angels to the lonely watchers 
 by their flocks, and the singing of the world's 
 first Gloria. Very curious is the story of how 
 they kept Good Friday. Hour after hour had 
 gone by, and they had risen gradually to- 
 that terrible exaltation of spirit which comes 
 to those who give themselves to that day. 
 Food was not to be thought of, but they had 
 contrived to have by them a few grapes, and 
 the juice was squeezed out, and mixed with 
 water, to be drunk out of a single cup by all- 
 in the midst of such scenes, the voice of a 
 European was heard at the door, calling on 
 them, in the name of Christ. With inexpres- 
 sible delight they swarmed down on him, 
 twelve or fifteen men of them, eager to hear 
 of the day from the lips of a Christian. 
 " But he said he belonged to the Salvation 
 Army, and knew nothing about Good Friday. 
 They only kept General Booth's birthday,. 
 
 90
 
 THE GREAT PREPARATION. 
 
 and something else, I forget what", said 
 Sadananda, and in the cloud that overcast 
 the face and voice of the teller, one could 
 realize the sudden depression that fell, at 
 this discovery, upon the monks. It seems 
 that in their first disappointment, they 
 snatched his Bible from the unfortunate 
 missionary, saying he was not worthy to pos- 
 sess it, and drove him forth. It is said how- 
 ever that one of their number stole round by 
 another door and brought him back to eat, 
 and have his property secretly restored 
 to him. 
 
 "Those were hot days," says the teller of 
 the tale, with his face aglow, "there was no 
 minute of rest. Outsiders came and went, 
 pundits argued and discussed. But, he, the 
 Swami, was never for one moment idle,, 
 never dull. Sometimes he was left alone for 
 a while, and he would walk up and down,, 
 saying, 'Hari bol ! bol ! bol ! Call on the 
 Lord! Call! Call!' or 'Oh Mother!' in all
 
 THE ORDER OF RAMAKRISHNA. 
 
 these ways preparing himself for his great 
 work. And I watched all the time from a 
 distance, and in some interval said, 'Sir, 
 will you not eat ?' always to be answered 
 playfully." Sometimes the talk took place 
 while cooking was going on, or during the 
 service of the altar, offices in which all 
 shared without distinction. For in spite of 
 the poverty of those days, many came to 
 the monks to be fed. Their own resources 
 were scanty. They had only one piece of 
 .cloth amongst them that was good enough to 
 be worn across the shoulders, outside the 
 monastery. So this was kept on a line and 
 used by anyone who went out. And they 
 could afford no more. Yet food was found 
 somehow for the poor and for guests, and 
 many came for help or teaching. 
 They begged funds enough also, to buy 
 .and distribute some hundreds of copies 
 of the Bhagavad Gita, and the Imita- 
 tion, the two favourite books of the Order at 
 
 92
 
 GLIMPSES OF EARL Y DA YS. 
 
 that time. "Silence, all ye teachers! And 
 silence, ye prophets ! Speak Thou alone, O 
 Lord, unto my soul !" was, years after, a 
 sentence that the Swami quoted at a venture 
 as all that he then remembered of Thomas a 
 Kempis. For it is perhaps needless to say 
 that while this book took its place by degrees 
 amongst experiences remembered, the Gita 
 grew every day in fulness of power and 
 beauty in the minds of these Hindu children 
 of Ramakrishna. 
 
 So passed some twelve months. Then 
 the Swami went away to Ghazipur to visit 
 Pavhari Baba,* that saint whom he always 
 held second only to Ramakrishna. He came 
 back in a couple of months to share the 
 treasure he had gained with others. Sud- 
 denly news came that one of the brothers, by 
 name Yogananda, was lying ill with small- 
 
 * Pavhari Baba was a saint who lived near Ghazipur. He died 
 by burning, in 1898. 
 
 93
 
 THE ORDER OF RAMAKRISHNA. 
 
 pox at Allahabad, and a party, followed by 
 the Swami, started to nurse him. 
 
 At Allahabad, to take up once more 
 Sadananda's account, many days were passed 
 in religious education. It was as if Yoga- 
 nanda's sickness had been a mere incident, 
 .a call given through him, and the whole 
 town came and went in a great stirring. 
 Small groups would enter and leave, in a 
 ^constant succession, for days and nights toge- 
 ther, the Swami being always in his highest 
 .and greatest mood. On one occasion he saw a 
 Mohammedan saint, a Paramahamsa, "whose 
 -every line and curve told that he was a 
 Paramahamsa," and this was the occasion of 
 .a great hour. 
 
 "Sometimes naked, sometimes mad, 
 
 Now as a scholar, again as a fool, 
 
 Here a rebel, there a saint, 
 
 Thus they appear on the earth, the 
 Paramahamsas. " 
 
 So repeating " The Marks of the 
 
 94
 
 THE WANDERING FRIAR. 
 
 Paramahamsas " from the Viveka Chuda- 
 moni of Sankaracharya, there passed, as 
 the disciple would put it, "a whole night 
 fermenting." Such experiences lasted per- 
 haps for two weeks, and then the party left 
 Allahabad, and by twos and threes returned 
 to the monastery, in the village of Baranagore 
 on the banks of the Ganges. But now 
 there came a time, in the year 1890, when 
 the Swami left his brothers, not to return, till 
 the great triumph of the year 1897. 
 
 This time he set out with a monk known 
 as Akhandananda, who took him to Almora 
 and left him there, enjoying the hospitality 
 of a family who had formerly befriended 
 himself on a journey to Thibet. It is said 
 that on the way up the mountains, the Swami 
 one day fainted with hunger, when a poor 
 Mohammedan found him, and prepared 
 and gave him a cucumber, which practically 
 saved his life. How long the brothers had 
 been without food I do not know. It may 
 
 95
 
 THE ORDER OF RAMAKRISHNA. 
 
 have been that at this time, as certainly later,, 
 he was under the vow to ask for nothing, 
 waiting always for food and drink till they 
 were offered. He told some one who knew 
 him during that period and questioned 
 him, that the longest time he had ever 
 gone without food, under this austerity, was 
 five days. 
 
 After this, the thread of his wanderings was 
 lost. He wrote occasionally, but the monks 
 themselves were scattered. 'It had been 
 so dull after they lost him'! says the narrator. 
 And even the first home had to be abandon- 
 ed, for the landlord talked of rebuilding. 
 There was one monk, however, Rama- 
 krishnananda by name, who would not leave 
 the ashes of their Master, but vowed, with 
 rock-like determination, to keep a roof over- 
 head, come storm, come shine, so to speak, 
 for them and for his brothers, till they 
 should all foregather in their worship-room 
 once more. He, then, with Nirmalananda, 
 
 96
 
 THE LEADER LOST. 
 
 the occasional residence of one Premananda,. 
 and the new member of the fold, 'as dish- 
 washer', removed to a house some distance 
 away, but still in the immediate neighbour- 
 hood of Dakshineshwar, and the monastery 
 which had previously been at Baranagore 
 was now known as the Alum Bazar Math. 
 Akhandananda at this time was always 
 "chasing," always in pursuit of the absent 
 leader. Every now and then he would hear 
 of him in some town, and would arrive there, 
 only in time to hear that he was gone, leav- 
 ing no trace. Once the Swami Trigunatita 
 found himself in trouble in a Guzerati state, 
 when some one said that a Bengali Sadhu 
 was staying with the Prime Minister, and if 
 he appealed to him, would surely give him 
 aid. He made his appeal, and found that 
 the unknown Sadhu was the Swami himself. 
 But he, after rendering the assistance that was 
 needed, sent his brother onwards, and him- 
 self proceeded alone. The great words of 
 
 97
 
 THE ORDER OF RAMAKRISHNA. 
 
 Buddha, constantly quoted by him, "Even 
 as the lion, not trembling at noises, even as 
 the wind, not caught in a net, even as the 
 lotus-leaf untouched by the water, so do thou 
 wander alone, like the rhinoceros ! :> were the 
 guiding principle of his life at this time. 
 
 It had been at Almora, as we now know, 
 that news reached him, of the death, in pitiful 
 extremity, of the favourite sister of his 
 childhood, and he had fled into the wilder 
 mountains, leaving no clue. To one who, 
 years after, saw deep into his personal 
 experience, it seemed that this death had in- 
 flicted on the Swami's heart a wound, whose 
 quivering pain had never for one moment 
 ceased. And we may, perhaps, venture to 
 trace some part at least of his burning desire 
 for the education and development of Indian 
 women, to this sorrow. 
 
 At this time he passed some months in a 
 cave overhanging a mountain-village. Only 
 twice have I known him to allude to this
 
 A VOW OF PILGRIMAGE. 
 
 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 some one, "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 !" 
 
 It was perhaps at the end of this period, 
 and in expression of that propulsive energy 
 of which he spoke, that he made a vow 
 to worship the Mother at Cape Comorin. 
 In carrying this out, he was lavish of time, 
 yet it must have taken him only about 
 two years to accomplish the vow. In the 
 course of his wanderings towards this end, he 
 seems to have touched upon and studied 
 every phase of Indian life. The stories of 
 this period are never ended. The list of the 
 
 99
 
 THE ORDER OF RAMAKRISHNA. 
 
 friends he made is never full. He received 
 the initiation of the Sikhs ; studied the 
 Mimansa Philosophy with Mahratta pundits ; 
 and the Jain Scriptures with Jains ; was 
 accepted as their Guru by Rajput princes ; 
 lived for weeks with a family of sweepers, in 
 Central India ; was able to observe at first 
 hand such obscure questions as the caste- 
 customs of Malabar ; saw many of the 
 historic sights and natural beauties of his 
 Mother-land, and finally reached Cape 
 Comorin too poor to pay for a seat in a ferry- 
 boat to the shrine of Kanya Kumari, and 
 swam across the strait to the island, in spite 
 of sharks, to offer the worship he had vowed. 
 It was on his return northwards through 
 Madras, that he formed the strong group of 
 disciples who became the means of sending 
 him to America, for which country he sailed 
 finally from Bombay, about the beginning of 
 June 1893. 
 
 Even this however he was not eager 
 
 100
 
 THE CALL OF DESTINY. 
 
 to do. His disciples in Madras still tell how 
 the first five hundred rupees collected for the 
 object were immediately spent by him in 
 worship and charity, as if he would force on 
 his own destiny, as it were, the task of 
 driving him forth. Even when he reached 
 Bombay, he was still waiting for the feeling 
 of certainty. Struggling to refuse the 
 undertaking, he felt as if the form of his 
 own Master appeared to him constantly, and 
 urged him to go. At last he wrote secretly 
 to Sarada Devi, the widow of Sri Rama- 
 krishna, begging her, if she could, to advise 
 and bless him, and charging her to tell no 
 one of this new departure, till she should 
 hear from him again. It was only after 
 receiving, in answer to this letter, her warm 
 encouragement, and the assurance of her 
 prayers, that he actually left India for the 
 West. Now, at last, there was no escaping 
 fate. That quest of forgotten-ness that 
 had first borne him out of the doors of 
 
 lot
 
 THE ORDER OF RAMAKRISHNA. 
 
 the monastery, had led him also to change- 
 his name in each Indian village that he 
 reached. And in later years some one 
 heard from him how, after his first great 
 speech at Chicago, the mingling of the bitter- 
 ness of this defeat with the cup of his triumph- 
 ant achievement, racked his consciousness 
 all night long. He stood now in the glare of 
 publicity, The unknown beggar could remain 
 unknown no more ! 
 
 In these wanderings through India, I 
 find the third and final element, in my 
 Master's realization of that great body of 
 truth, which was to find in him at once its 
 witness and its demonstration. 
 
 There can be no doubt, I think, that the 
 formative influences in his life were 
 threefold : first his education in English and 
 Sanskrit literature ; second, the great per- 
 sonality of his Guru, illustrating and authen- 
 ticating that life which formed the theme of 
 all the sacred writings ; and thirdly, as I would 
 
 102
 
 FORMATIVE INFLUENCES. 
 
 maintain, his personal knowledge of India 
 and the Indian peoples, as an immense reli- 
 gious organism, of which his Master himself, 
 with all his greatness, had been only, as it 
 were, the personification and utterance. And 
 these three sources can, as I think, be dis- 
 tinctly traced in his various utterances. 
 When he preaches Vedanta and upholds be- 
 fore the world the philosophy of his people, 
 he is for the most part drawing upon the 
 Sanskrit books of past ages, though, it is 
 true, with a clearness and certainty of touch 
 that could only be the result of having seen 
 them summed up in a single wonderful life. 
 When he talks of Bhakti as of "a devotion 
 beginning, continuing and ending in love," or 
 when he analyzes Karma Yoga, 'the secret of 
 work,' we see before us the very personality 
 of the Master himself, we realize that the 
 disciple is but struggling to tell of that 
 glorified atmosphere in which he himself has 
 dwelt at the feet of another. But when we 
 
 103
 
 THE ORDER OF RAMAKRISHNA. 
 
 Tread his speech before the Chicago Con- 
 ference, or his equally remarkable "Reply to 
 the Madras Address," or the lectures in 
 which at Lahore, in 1897, he portrayed the 
 lineaments of a generalized and essential 
 Hinduism, we find ourselves in presence of 
 something gathered by his own labours, out 
 of his own experience. The power behind 
 all these utterances lay in those Indian 
 wanderings of which the tale can probably 
 never be complete. It was of this first- 
 hand knowledge, then, and not of vague sen- 
 timent or wilful blindness, that his reverence 
 for his own people and their land was born. 
 It was a robust and cumulative induction, 
 moreover, be it said, ever hungry for new 
 facts, and dauntless in the face of hostile 
 criticism. 'The common bases of Hinduism 
 had,' as he once said, 'been the study of his 
 whole life.' And more than this, it was the 
 same thorough and first-hand knowledge that 
 made the older and simpler elements in 
 
 104
 
 HIS LOVE OF THE PEOPLE. 
 
 Hindu civilization loom so large in all his 
 conceptions of his race and country. Pos- 
 sessed of a modern education that ranked with 
 the most advanced in his own country, he 
 yet could not, like some moderns, ignore the 
 Sannyasin or the peasant, the idolater or the 
 caste-ridden, as elements in the great whole 
 called India. And this determined inclusive- 
 ness was due to that life in which he had 
 for years together been united with them. 
 
 It must be remembered, however, that we 
 have not entirely analyzed a great career 
 when we have traced, to their origin in the 
 personal experience, those ideas which form 
 its dominant notes. There is still the orgi- 
 nal impulse, the endowment of perennial 
 energy that makes the world-spectacle so 
 much more full of meaning to one soul than 
 to another, to be accounted for. And I have 
 gathered that from his very cradle Viveka- 
 nanda had a secret instinct that told him he 
 was born to help his country. He was proud 
 
 105
 
 THE ORDER OF RAMAKRISHNA. 
 
 afterwards to remember that amidst the 
 temporal vicissitudes of his early days in 
 America, when sometimes he did not know 
 where to turn for the next meal, his letters U> 
 his disciples in India showed that this innate 
 faith of his had never wavered. Such an 
 indomitable hope resides assuredly in all 
 souls who are born to carry out any special 
 mission. It is a deep unspoken conscious- 
 ness of greatness, of which life itself is to be 
 the sole expression. To Hindu thinking, there 
 is a difference as of the poles, between such 
 consciousness of greatness and vanity, and 
 this is seen, as I think, in the Swami him- 
 self at the moment of his first meeting with 
 Sri Ramakrishna, when he was decidedly re- 
 pelled, rather than attracted, by what he 
 regarded as the old man's exaggerated esti- 
 mate of his powers and of himself. 
 
 He had come, a lad of fifteen, as a mem- 
 ber of a party visiting Dakshineshwar, and 
 some one, probably knowing the unusual 
 
 1 06
 
 THE MASTER'S RECOGNITION, 
 
 quality of his voice, and his knowledge of 
 music, sugggested that he should sing. He 
 responded with a song of Ram Mohun Roy's, 
 ending with the words, "And for support 
 keep the treasure in secret, purity." 
 
 This seems to have acted like a signal 
 "My boy ! my boy !" cried Sri Ramakrishna, 
 "I have been looking for you these three 
 years, and you have come at last !" From 
 that day the older man may be said to have 
 devoted himself to welding the lads about 
 him into a brotherhood whose devotion ta 
 "Noren," as the Swami was then called, 
 would be unswerving. He was never tired of 
 foretelling his great fame, nor of pointing out 
 the superiority of his genius. If most men 
 had two, or three, or even ten or twelve 
 gifts, he said, he could only say of Noren 
 that his numbered a thousand. He was in 
 fact "the thousand-petalled lotus." Even 
 amongst the great, while he would allow 
 that with one might be found some "two of 
 
 107
 
 THE ORDER OF RAMAKRISHNA. 
 
 those gifts which are the marks of Siva," 
 Noren had at least eighteen of such. 
 
 He was sensitive to the point of physical 
 pain himself, in his discrimination of hypo- 
 crisy, and on one occasion refused to accept 
 a man whose piety of life was regarded by 
 those about him as unimpugnable. The man, 
 he said, with all his decorum, was a whited 
 sepulchre. In spite of constant purification 
 his presence was contamination, while Noren, 
 on the other hand, if he were to eat beef in 
 an English hotel, would nevertheless be holy, 
 so holy that his very touch would convey 
 holiness to others. By such sayings he 
 sought constantly to build up an enduring 
 relation, based firmly on essentials, between 
 those who were to be his supporters, and 
 this disciple who was to lead. 
 
 It was his habit, when a new disciple 
 came to him, to examine him mentally and 
 physically in all possible ways. For the 
 human body was to his trained eye, as signifi- 
 
 108
 
 VI VEK AN AND AS PAST 
 
 cant in all its parts, as any model of a machine 
 to a skilled scientific observer. These exami- 
 nations moreover would include the throwing 
 of the newcomer into a sleep, in which he 
 had access to the subconscious mind. The 
 privileged, as I have been told, were per- 
 mitted in this condition to relate their own 
 story ; while from the less honoured it was 
 evoked by means of questions. It was after 
 such an examination of "Noren" that 
 the Master told all about him, that when the 
 day should come for this boy to realize who 
 and what he was, he would refuse for a mo- 
 ment longer to endure the bondage of bodi- 
 ly existence, going out from life, with its limi- 
 tations. And by this was always understood 
 by the disciples, the remembering by the lad 
 of what he had already attained, even in this 
 world, in lives anterior to his present con- 
 sciousness. No menial service to himself was 
 permitted by Sri Ramakrishna from this 
 particular follower. Fanning, the preparation 
 
 109
 
 THE ORDER OF RAMAKRISHNA. 
 
 of tobacco, and the thousand and one little 
 attentions commonly rendered to the Guru, 
 all these had to be offered to the Master by 
 others, 
 
 Amongst the many quaint-seeming customs 
 of the East, none is more deep-rooted than 
 the prejudice against eating food cooked by 
 one who is not respected. And on this point 
 the Swami's Master was as sensitive as a 
 woman. But what he would not eat him- 
 self he would give freely to his favourite dis- 
 ciple, for Noren, he said, was the "roaring 
 fire," burning up all impurity. The core of 
 divinity again, in this boy's nature was mas- 
 culine in its quality, as compared to his own 
 merely feminine. Thus, by an attitude of ad- 
 miration, not unmixed with actual reverence, 
 he created a belief in the destiny of this 
 particular lad, which, when he himself had 
 passed away, was to stand him in good stead, 
 in furnishing authenticity and support to his 
 work. For the Swami was nothing, if not a 
 
 no
 
 THE ROARING FIRE. 
 
 breaker of bondage. And it was essential 
 that there should be those about him who 
 understood the polar difference between 
 his breaches of custom and those of the 
 idly self-indulgent. Nothing in the early 
 days of my life in India, struck me so for- 
 cibly or so repeatedly as the steadiness with 
 which the other members of the Order fufilled 
 this part of the mission laid upon them. Men 
 whose own lives were cast in the strictest 
 mould of Hindu orthodoxy, or even of 
 asceticism, were willing to eat with the 
 Europeans whom their leader had accepted. 
 Was the Swami seen dining in Madras with 
 an Englishman and his wife ? Was it said that 
 while in the West he had touched beef or 
 wine ? Not a quiver was seen on the faces of 
 bis brethren. It was not for them to question, 
 not for them to explain, not even for them to 
 ask for final justification and excuse. What- 
 ever he did, wherever he might lead, it was 
 their place to be found unflinching at his side. 
 
 in
 
 THE ORDER OF R 
 
 And surely none can pass this spectacle in 
 review, without its being borne in upon him, 
 that meaningless as would have been the 
 Order of Ramakrishna without Vivekananda, 
 even so futile would have been the life and 
 labours of Vivekananda, without, behind him, 
 his brothers of the Order of Ramakrishna. 
 It was said to me lately by one of the older 
 generation that "Ramakrishna had lived for 
 the making of Vivekananda." Is it indeed so? 
 Or is it not rather impossible to distinguish 
 with such fixity betwen one part and another, 
 in a single mighty utterance of the Divine 
 Mother-heart? Often it appears to me, in 
 studying all these lives, that there has been 
 with us a soul named Ramakrishna-Viveka- 
 nanda, and that, in the penumbra of his be- 
 ing, appear many forms, some of which are 
 with us still, and of none of whom it could be 
 said with entire truth that here ends, in rela- 
 tion to him, the sphere of those others, or 
 that there begins his own. 
 
 112
 
 WANDERINGS IN NORTHERN 
 INDIA. 
 
 The summer of 1898 stands out in my" 
 memory as a series of pictures, painted like 
 old altar-pieces, against a golden back- 
 ground of religious ardour and simplicity, 
 and all alike glorified by the presence of one 
 who, to us in his immediate circle, formed 
 their central point. We were a party of four 
 Western women, one of whom was Mrs, 
 Ole Bull of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and 
 another a member of the higher official 
 world of Anglo-Indian Calcutta. Side by 
 side with us travelled the Swami, surrounded 
 by his brethren (or gurubhais) and disciples. 
 Once arived at Almora, he and his party 
 became the guests of Mr. and Mrs. Sevier, 
 who were then residing there, and we occupi- 
 ed a bungalow some distance away. Thus 
 
 "3
 
 IN NORTHERN INDIA. 
 
 pleasantly grouped, it was possible to combine 
 a high degree of freedom and intercourse. 
 But when, after a month or so, we left Almora 
 for Kashmir, the Swami went with us, as the 
 guest of Mrs. Ole Bull, and left behind him 
 all his attendants. 
 
 What scenes were those through which 
 we journeyed from the beginning of May 
 until the end of October ! And with what 
 passionate enthusiasm were we introduced 
 one by one to each point of interest, as we 
 reached it ! The ignorance of educated 
 Western people about India, excepting of 
 course those who have in some measure 
 specialised on the subject might almost be 
 described as illiteracy, and our object-lessons 
 began, I have no doubt, with Patna, the 
 ancient Pataliputra, itself. The river-front 
 of Benares, as one approaches it by railway 
 from the East, is amongst the sights of the 
 world, and could not fail of our leader's eager 
 praise. The industries and luxuries of 
 
 114
 
 THE PEASANTS WELCOME. 
 
 Lucknow must needs be dwelt upon and enu- 
 merated. But it was not only the great cities 
 of admitted beauty and historic importance, 
 that the Swami, in his eagerness, would 
 strive to impress on our memory. Perhaps 
 nowhere did his love seem more ardent, 
 or his absorption more intense, than as we 
 passed across the long stretches of the Plains, 
 covered with fields and farms and villages. 
 Here his thought was free to brood over the 
 land as a whole, and he would spend hours 
 explaining the communal system of agricul- 
 ture, or describing the daily life of the farm 
 housewife, with such details as that of the 
 pot-du-feu of mixed grains left boiling all 
 night, for the morning porridge. It was 
 the memory, doubtless, of his own days as a 
 wanderer, that so brightened his eyes and 
 thrilled in his voice, as he told us these 
 things. For I have heard it said by sadhus 
 that there is no hospitality in India like 
 that of the humble peasant home. True,
 
 IN NORTHERN INDIA. 
 
 the mistress has no better bedding to offer 
 than straw, no better shelter than an outhouse 
 built of mud. But it is she who steals in at 
 the last moment, before she goes to rest her- 
 self amongst her sleeping household, to place 
 a tooth-brush twig and a bowl of milk where 
 the guest will find them, on waking in the 
 morning, that he may go forth from beneath 
 her roof comforted and refreshed. 
 
 It would seem sometimes as if the Swami 
 lived and moved and had his very being in 
 the sense of his country's past. His historic 
 consciousness was extraordinarily developed. 
 Thus, as we journeyed across the Terai, in^ 
 the hot hours of an afternoon near the be- 
 ginning of the rains, we were made to feel 
 that this was the very earth on which had 
 passed the youth and renunciation of Buddha. 
 The wild peacocks spoke to us of Rajputana 
 and her ballad lore. An occasional elephant 
 was the text for tales of ancient battles, and 
 the story of an India that was never defeated,. 
 
 116
 
 A RIGHTEOUS RULER. 
 
 so long as she could oppose to the tide of 
 conquest the military walls of these living 
 artillery. 
 
 As we had crossed the boundary from 
 Bengal into the North- West Provinces, the 
 Swami had stopped to tell us of the wisdom 
 .and methods of the great and merciful En- 
 glish ruler who was at that time at the head 
 of their administration. "Unlike others," he 
 said, in words that impressed my memory at 
 the time, "he understands the need of per- 
 sonal government in Oriental countries, 
 where a strong public opinion is not yet de- 
 veloped, so no hospital, no college, no office 
 knows the day when he will pay it a visit of 
 inspection. And even the poorest believes 
 that if only he can reach him personally, he 
 will receive justice at his hands." This idea 
 -of the importance of personality in Eastern 
 governments often came uppermost in his 
 talk. He constantly spoke of a democracy 
 as theoretically the worst form for an impe- 
 
 117
 
 IN NORTHERN INDIA. 
 
 rial government to take. And one of his fa- 
 vourite speculations was that it had been a 
 perception of this truth that had urged 
 Julius Caesar on, to aspire to the imperial 
 authority, We realised sometimes, as we 
 listened to him, how hard it had been for the 
 Indian poor, to understand the transition from 
 the personal rule of sovereigns, always acces- 
 sible to appeal, always open to the impulse of 
 mercy, and able to exercise a supreme dis- 
 cretion, to the cold bureaucratic methods of 
 a series of departments. For we heard from 
 him the personal histories of innumerable 
 simple folk, who, in the early years of British 
 rule, had spent their all in the vain hope of 
 reaching the Queen, and gaining her ear, at 
 Windsor. Heart-broken pilgrims for the 
 most part, who died, of want and disillusion- 
 ment, far from the homes and villages that 
 they would never see again ! 
 
 It was as we passed into the Punjab, 
 Rowever, that we caught our deepest glimpse 
 
 118
 
 LOVE OF THE PUNJAB. 
 
 of the Master's love of his own land. Any 
 one who had seen him here, would have 
 supposed him to have been born in the pro- 
 vince, so intensely had he identified himself 
 with it. It would seem that he had been 
 deeply bound to the people there by many 
 ties of love and reverence ; had received 
 much and given much ; for there were some 
 amongst them who urged that they found in 
 him a rare mixture of 'Guru Nanak and Guru 
 Govind," their first teacher and their last. 
 Even the most suspicious amongst them 
 trusted him. And if they refused to credit 
 his judgment, or endorse his outflowing sym- 
 pathy, in regard to those Europeans whom 
 he had made his own, he, it may have been, 
 loved the wayward hearts all the more for 
 their inflexible condemnation and incorrup- 
 tible sternness. His American disciples 
 were already familiar with his picture that 
 called to his own face a dreamy delight, 
 of the Punjabi maiden at her spinning 
 
 119
 
 IN NORTHERN INDIA. 
 
 wheel, listening to its "Sivoham ! Sivoham ! 
 I am He ! I am He !" Yet at the same 
 time, I must not forget to tell that it 
 was here, on entering the Punjab, even as, 
 near the end of his life, he is said to have 
 done again at Benares, that he called to 
 him i Mussulman vendor of sweetmeats, 
 and bought and ate from his hand Moham- 
 medan food. 
 
 As we went through some village, he 
 would point out to us those strings of mari- 
 golds above the door, that distinguished the 
 Hindu homes. Again he would show us the 
 pure golden tint of skin, so different from 
 the pink and white of the European ideal, 
 that constitutes the 'fairness' admired by the 
 Indian races. Or as one drove beside him in 
 a tonga, he would forget all, in that tale of 
 which he never wearied, of Siva, the Great 
 God, silent, remote upon the mountains, ask- 
 ing nothing of men but solitude, and ''lost 
 in one eternal meditation.' 
 
 1 20
 
 BEAUTY OF KASHMIR. 
 
 We drove from Rawalpindi to Murree, 
 where we spent a few days. And then, partly 
 by tonga, partly by boat, we proceeded to 
 Srinagar in Kashmir, and made it our centre 
 and headquarters, during the wanderings of 
 the following months. 
 
 It would be easy to lose oneself here in 
 the beauty of our journeys, in descriptions 
 of mountain-forests on the road to Almora, or 
 of cathedral-rocks and corn-embosomed 
 villages in the Jhelum Pass. For, as one 
 returns upon that time, its record is found in 
 a constant succession of scenes of loveliness. 
 Not least of these pictures is the memory of 
 the handsome old woman, wearing the crim- 
 son coronet and white veil of Kashmiri 
 peasants, who sat at her spinning-wheel 
 under a great chenaar-tree *in a farm-yard, 
 surrounded by her daughters-in-law, when 
 we passed that, way, and stopped to visit her. 
 It was the Swami's second call on her. He 
 
 * The Chenaar-tree is the Orie ntal Plane. 
 
 121
 
 IN NORTHERN INDIA. 
 
 had received some small kindness at her hands 
 the year before, and had never tired of telling 
 how, after this, when he had asked, before 
 saying farewell, " And, mother, of what 
 religion are you ?" her whole face had 
 lighted up with pride and joy, and her 
 old voice had rung out in triumph as 
 she answered loudly and clearly, "I thank 
 our God, by the mercy of the Lord, I am 
 a Mussulman !" 
 
 Or I might tell of the avenue of lofty 
 Lombardy poplars outside Srinagar, so like 
 the well-known picture by Hobbema, where 
 we listened to discourse after discourse on 
 India and the Faith. 
 
 Or I might linger over the harvest merri- 
 ment of the villagers, playing in reaped fields 
 on moonlit evenings ; or talk of the red bronze 
 of amaranth crops, or the green of young rice 
 under tall poplars at Islamabad. For-get-me- 
 nots of a brilliant blue form the commonest 
 wild flower of the Kashmiri fields in summer - r 
 
 122
 
 APPLE-TREES AND IRISES. 
 
 but in autumn and spring, fields and river 
 banks are violet-tinged with small purple irises, 
 and one walks amongst their spear-like leaves 
 as if they were grass. How infinitely tender 
 are the suggestions of those little iris-covered 
 hillocks, rounding off the rise of some road-side 
 against the sky, that mark the burial places 
 of the Mussulman dead ! 
 
 Here and there, too, amidst grass and 
 irises, one comes on groups of gnarled apple 
 trees, or pear, or plum, the remains of the 
 village orchards which the State, once upon 
 a time, supplied to all its subjects free of 
 cost. Walking here once, at twilight, along 
 the high banks of the river, I watched a party 
 of Mussulman herdsmen, crooks in hand, 
 driving a small flock of long-haired goats 
 before them to their village. And then, as 
 they came to a knot of apple-trees, they 
 stopped awhile, and spreading a blanket for 
 praying-carpet, they proceeded to offer their 
 evening-worship in the deepening dusk. 
 
 123
 
 IN NORTHERN INDIA. 
 
 Verily, says my heart, there is no end of 
 .beauty. There is no end ! 
 
 But in good sooth it is not of these 
 things that I am attempting, in the course 
 <of the present pages, to speak. Mine is the 
 broken and faltering witness of one who is 
 fain to tell not of geography nor of politics, 
 nor yet of the ways and customs of interest- 
 ing peoples and unknown races, but rather of 
 the glimpses vouchsafed to her of a great 
 religious life of the ancient order, living it- 
 self out, amidst the full and torturing cons- 
 ciousness of all the anomalies and perplexi- 
 ties of the Modern Transition. Sri Rama- 
 krishna had been, as the Swami himself said 
 once of him, "like a flower," living apart 
 in the garden of a temple, simple, half-naked, 
 orthodox, the ideal of the old time in India, 
 suddenly burst into bloom, in a world that 
 had thought to dismiss its very memory. It 
 was at once the greatness and the tragedy of 
 my own Master's !ife that he was not of this 
 
 124
 
 THE MODERN DESPAIR. 
 
 type. His was the modern mind in its 
 completeness. In his consciousness, the 
 ancient light of the mood in which man 
 comes face to face with God might shine, but 
 it shone on all those questions and all those 
 puzzles which are present to the thinkers and 
 workers of the modern world. His hope 
 could not pass by unheeded, it might include 
 or it might reject the hope of men of the 
 nineteenth century. That sudden revelation 
 of the misery and struggle of humanity as a 
 whole, which has been the first result of the 
 limelight irradiation of facts by the organisa- 
 tion of knowledge, had been made to him 
 also, as to the European mind. We know 
 the verdict that Europe has passed on it all. 
 Our art, our science, our poetry, for the 
 last sixty years or more, are filled with the 
 voices of our despair. A world summed up 
 in the growing satisfaction and vulgarity of 
 privilege, and the growing sadness and 
 pain of the dispossessed ; and a will of maa 
 
 125
 
 IN NORTHERN INDIA. 
 
 too noble and high to condone the evil, 
 yet too feeble to avert or arrest it, this is the 
 spectacle of which our greatest minds 
 are aware. Reluctant, wringing her hands, 
 it is true, yet seeing no other way, the 
 culture of the West can but stand and cry, 
 "To him that hath shall be given, and from 
 him that hath not shall be taken away even 
 that which he hath. Vae Victis ! Woe to 
 the vanquished !" 
 
 Is this also the verdict of the Eastern 
 wisdom ? If so, what hope is there for 
 humanity ? I find in my Master's life an 
 answer to this question. I see in him the 
 heir to the spiritual discoveries and religious 
 struggles of innumerable teachers and saints 
 in the past of India and the world, and at 
 the same time the pioneer and prophet of a 
 new and future order of development. In 
 the place which a problem took in his mind 
 I find evidence regarding its final solution 
 which short of my own definite arrival at 
 
 126
 
 THE ANSWER OF THE EAST. 
 
 an opposite conclusion, as he himself would 
 have been the first to point out is of the 
 highest value to myself. And thinking thus, 
 I believe that each trace of those higher and 
 uncommon modes of thought and conscious- 
 ness to which he held the key, has its 
 significance for the modern age. I believe 
 that much which has passed myself by, un- 
 comprehending, will fall on its proper soil in 
 other lives. And I pray only to give 
 always true witness, without added interpola- 
 tion, or falsifying colour. 
 
 127
 
 VI 
 
 THE AWAKENER OF 
 SOULS. 
 
 I had heard of "the spiritual life" in 
 Calcutta, as of a thing definite and accessible, 
 to be chosen deliberately, and attained by 
 following certain well-known paths. I found 
 it, on reaching the mountains, to have its 
 roots deep in a yearning love of God, in an 
 anguished pursuit of the Infinite, of which I 
 cannot hope to give any description. For 
 this was characteristic of our Master. 
 Where others would talk of ways and means, 
 he knew how to light a fire. Where others 
 gave directions, he would show the thing 
 itself. 
 
 I wish here to be exceedingly explicit. 
 My own part, throughout the years of my 
 discipleship, appears to me to have been 
 
 128
 
 PERSONAL RESERVE. 
 
 something like that of a thought-reader. 
 The only claim that I can make is that I 
 was able to enter sufficiently into the circuit 
 of my Master's energy to be able to give 
 evidence regarding it from direct perception. 
 And since I believe that such an experience 
 is subject to laws as definite as those of any 
 physical force, I must endeavour to describe 
 accurately the conditions under which this 
 happened to me. 
 
 The Swami himself was, on personal 
 subjects, intensely reserved. He had re- 
 ceived confessions, of course, in many parts 
 of the world, yet no one ever lived who 
 more anxiously sought to escape the office 
 of spiritual director. A hot flush and an 
 accession of delicate hauteur were his 
 immediate response, even to such merely 
 theoretical questions as appeared to him to 
 demand too intimate a revelation of the 
 personal experience. I have sometimes 
 heard enquiries forced upon him in his 
 
 129
 
 THE AWAKENER OF SOULS. 
 
 London classes as to such matters as the 
 feeling which accompanies Samadki, for ins- 
 tance, when it was clear to all listeners 
 that he would rather have endured a 
 careless touch upon an exposed nerve. 
 
 He had himself suggested my joining 
 his travelling party, for the purpose of re- 
 ceiving his personal training for the work he 
 wished me to do in India. But the method 
 of this training proved entirely general. 
 We would sit all together in garden or 
 verandah, and listen, all together, to the 
 discourse of the hour, each appropriating 
 as much as she chose, and studying after- 
 wards as she liked. 
 
 In all that year of 1898 I can remember 
 only one occasion when the Swami invited 
 me to walk alone with him for half an hour, 
 and then our conversation for it was 
 towards the end of the summer, when I had 
 begun to understand my own position 
 a little was rather of the policy and
 
 THE DRAMA OF THOUGHT. 
 
 aims of the future, than of anything more 
 subjective. 
 
 Undoubtedly, in the circle that gathers 
 round a distinguished thinker, there are hid- 
 den emotional relationships which form the 
 channels, as it were, along which his ideas 
 circulate and are received. Even a mathe- 
 matician will succeed in impressing himself 
 on his generation, only in proportion to the 
 radiance of feeling on which his thought is 
 carried. But these expressions are wholly 
 impersonal, and are appreciated by different 
 receivers in very different ways. One holds 
 himself as servant; another, as brother, friend, 
 or comrade ; a third may even regard the 
 master-personality as that of a beloved child. 
 These things have been made into a perfect 
 science in India, and it is there boldly under- 
 stood and accepted that without some such 
 dramatisation of their own relation to it, 
 ordinary minds cannot be made susceptible 
 of a great religious impulse. In my own case
 
 THE AWAKENER OF SOULS. 
 
 the position ultimately taken proved that 
 most happy one of a spiritual daughter, and 
 as such I was regarded by all the Indian 
 people and communities, whom I met 
 during my Master's life. 
 
 But at the beginning of these journeys, 
 before this and other things became clear to 
 me, my mind was wholly in bewilderment, 
 and it was my great good fortune that I was 
 given at this time, as my daily teacher, in 
 Bengali and in Hindu religious literature, the 
 young monk known as the Swami Swarupa- 
 nanda. For I have always thought that it 
 was to the fact that I found myself on the 
 line of communication between his mind and 
 that of our Master, as on the pathway of 
 interaction between some major and minor 
 heliograph, that I owed my ability there- 
 after to read and understand a little 
 of those feelings and ideas with which 
 the air about us was charged. 
 
 The Swami Swarupananda had been re- 
 
 132
 
 THE SWAM I SVVARUPANANDA. 
 
 ceived at the Monastery, within a few days 
 of my own admission, in the chapel there, 
 to the vows of a novice. But he, after some 
 few weeks of probation, had received the 
 yellow cloth, and taken the rank of a Sann- 
 yasin, at the hands of the Swami. The 
 story of his mental development was of ex- 
 traordinary interest to me. For this man had 
 been brought up in his childhood in the 
 Vaishnava faith, that is to say, in an idea of 
 God as the kind and loving Lord and Pre- 
 server of men, and of Krishna as the Saviour 
 and Divine Incarnation, which is practically 
 tantamount to the Christianity of the West. 
 The usual revulsion, familiar to all of us, had 
 been encountered. In the early and most 
 chivalrous years of manhood he had witness- 
 ed a few instances of the injustice of life, had 
 seen bitter proof that the battle in this world 
 was to the strong, and found himself unable 
 to believe longer in the sweet myth of his 
 childhood, of an all-kind Providence. One 
 
 133
 
 THE AWAKENER OF SOULS. 
 
 of these stories I remember. Passing through 
 a crowded street one day, he found a poor 
 woman kneeling and crying softly, as, grain 
 by grain, she picked up from the dust a hand- 
 ful of rice, that had been jostled out of the 
 bowl in her hand, by a passer-by. And then 
 the man found himself in his passionate 
 pity, crying indignantly, "What the Devil 
 would God be doing, if He existed, to let 
 such things happen ?" 
 
 Two or three such experiences precipita- 
 ted him upon a year of mental suffering so 
 keen that he never again knew perfect 
 health. But he emerged from it in the 
 peace that comes of a settled attitude towards 
 life. He would break the dream. In other 
 words, he had reached the conclusion that 
 thousands of Indian students have arrived 
 at, both before and since the time of Buddha. 
 It was henceforth impossible to him to ima- 
 gine' that the solution of the problem might 
 ultimately be found in any picture of God 
 
 134
 
 THE DREAM OF DUALITY, 
 
 seated on a throne, and the soul of man, in 
 any attitude or relation, kneeling before 
 Him. Rather, he saw in the ignorance and 
 selfishness of the mind itself, the source of all 
 such dreams as this, and of those further 
 dreams, of pain and pleasure, of justice and 
 injustice, of which the world, as we know it, 
 is made up. And he determined to conquer 
 this illusion, to reach the point of utmost in- 
 sight and certainty, to gain deliverance from 
 the perception of opposites, and to attain 
 to that permanent realisation of One-ness 
 which is known, in the Hindu conception of 
 life, as Mukti. 
 
 From this time on, his schooling of him- 
 self to reach the highest would appear to 
 have become a passion. One came to under- 
 stand, in many ways, that the remaining years 
 of his life in his father's house had been al- 
 most more severe than those spent in most 
 monasteries. And I, reading the Bhagavad 
 Gita under his guidance, long afterwards at 
 
 135
 
 THE AWAKENER OF SOULS. 
 
 Almora, was made able to conceive of what 
 we call the love of God as a burning 
 thirst. 
 
 Under the influence of the Swami Swa- 
 rupananda, I began seriously the attempt at 
 meditation. And if it had not been for this 
 help of his, one of the greatest hours of my 
 life would have passed me by. My relation 
 to our Master at this time can only be des- 
 cribed as one of clash and conflict. I can see 
 now how much there was to learn, and how 
 short was the time for learning to be, and 
 the first of lessons doubtless is the destroy- 
 ing of self-sufficiency in the mind of the 
 taught. But I had been little prepared for 
 that constant rebuke and attack upon all my 
 most cherished prepossessions which was 
 now my lot. Suffering is often illogical, and 
 I cannot attempt to justify by reason the de- 
 gree of unhappiness which I experienced at 
 this time, as I saw the dream of a friendly 
 and beloved leader falling away from me, 
 
 136
 
 THE BIRTH OF PEACE. 
 
 .and the picture of one who would be at least 
 indifferent, and possibly, silently hostile, subs- 
 tituting itself instead. 
 
 Fortunately it never occurred to me to 
 retract my own proffered service, but I was 
 made to realise, as the days went by, that in 
 this there would be no personal sweetness. 
 And then a time came when one of the older 
 ladies of our party, thinking perhaps that 
 such intensity of pain inflicted might easily 
 go too far, interceded kindly and gravely 
 with the Swami. He listened silently and 
 went away. At evening, however, he return- 
 ed, and finding us together in the verandah, 
 he turned to her and said, with the simplicity 
 of a child, "You were right. There must be a 
 change. I am going away into the forests to 
 be alone, and when I come back I shall bring 
 peace." Then he turned and saw that above 
 .us the moon was new, and a sudden exalta- 
 tion came into his voice as he said, "See ! the 
 Mohammedans think much of the new moon. 
 
 137
 
 THE AWAKENER OF SOULS. 
 
 Let us also with the new moon begin a new 
 life !" As the words ended, he lifted his hands 
 and blessed, with silent depths of blessing, 
 his most rebellious disciple, by this time 
 kneeling before him.... It was assuredly a 
 moment of wonderful sweetness of reconcilia- 
 tion. But such a moment may heal a wound. 
 It cannot restore an illusion that has been 
 broken into fragments. And I have told its 
 story, only that I may touch upon its sequel.. 
 Long, long ago, Sri Ramakrishna had 
 told his disciples that the day would come 
 when his beloved "Noren" would manifest 
 his own great gift of bestowing knowledge 
 with a touch. That evening at Almora, I 
 proved the truth of his prophecy. For alone, 
 in meditation, I found myself gazing deep in- 
 to an Infinite Good, to the recognition of 
 which no egoistic reasoning had led me. I 
 learnt, too, on the physical plane, the simple 
 everyday reality of the experience related 
 in the Hindu books on religious psycho-
 
 THE BIRTH OF PEACE. 
 
 logy. And I understood, for the first 
 
 time, that the greatest teachers may 
 
 destroy in us a personal relation only 
 
 in order to bestow the Impersonal Vision 
 in its place. 
 
 139
 
 VII 
 
 FLASHES FROM THE BEACON- 
 FIRE. 
 
 This was not perhaps the only experience 
 of its kind, but it was certainly the only one 
 to which I need refer in detail; and the whole 
 incident of which it formed a part gave me 
 the clue to the attitude which the Eastern 
 teacher demands of a disciple. Before all things 
 this attitude must be one of passivity. I have 
 also heard it urged, that it must be one of 
 personal service. Under these conditions, it is 
 said, the thoughts of the master become as 
 seeds, and germinate in the mind of the pupil. 
 I cannot tell. My own offerings in this kind 
 were limited to very brief and very occasion- 
 al requisitions of the needle or the pen. A 
 daughter must not at any time act, said the 
 Swami, as if in her father's house were too 
 few servants ! Yet I do believe for in some 
 
 140
 
 THE WORSHIP OF THE GURU. 
 
 cases I have known its truth that by the 
 loving performance of humble offices for those 
 above us, we may enter into spiritual and 
 intellectual communion with them, which 
 may bear strange and beautiful fruit in 
 our own lives. 
 
 The feeling which people of certain 
 schools in the West devote to the Church, 
 that mixture of perfect faith and adoring love, 
 the Eastern disciple is called upon to render 
 to his guru, or spiritual master. It is he and 
 his achievement, which are the power behind 
 his follower. And the unpardonable sacrilege 
 is a failure to acknowledge, or a repudiation 
 of, this debt. Each will express his devotion 
 in his own way. Greatest of all gurus is he 
 who realises most deeply the freedom of the 
 disciple. But devotion to the uttermost there 
 must be. And dry-rot, it is believed, invades 
 that spiritual life which seeks to base its 
 message on itself. 
 
 We had at this time, it will be remember- 
 
 141
 
 FLASHES FROM THE BEACON-FIRE. 
 
 ed, become part of a society in which solitude 
 was regarded as the greatest medium of self- 
 development. Nothing, said the Swami, bet- 
 ter illustrated to his own mind, the difference 
 between Eastern and Western methods of 
 thought, than the European idea that a man 
 could not live alone for twenty years, and re- 
 main quite sane, taken side by side with the 
 Indian notion that till a man had been alone 
 for twenty years, he could not be regarded as 
 perfectly himself. And the contrast, though 
 necessarily expressed with some exaggeration, 
 is nevertheless essentially correct. To Hindu 
 thinking it is only in silence and alone-ness 
 that we can drink so deep of the Impersonal 
 Self that all the facets and angles of our per- 
 sonal littleness are rounded out, as by growth 
 from within. Thus, the faces of the Buddhas, 
 in the hour of Nirvana, are always calm. The 
 world, in all its aspects and relations, is but a 
 childish interruption of the flow of thought. 
 Behind everything is felt to be that unutter- 
 
 142
 
 HINDU VIRTUES. 
 
 able fulness, of which the thing seen is so 
 paltry and distorted an expression. Human 
 relations are too poor to tempt those who 
 have bathed in the wellspring of all such re- 
 lations at the Ultimate Source. And this 
 Ultimate Source is not thought of here, it 
 must be remembered, as love or compassion 
 or heroism, though all these may be roads by 
 which to reach it, but as the perception of 
 Oneness, and that alone. I have always 
 thought that this is the reason why steadiness 
 and quiet and self-effacement are virtues so 
 much more central, in the Hindu conception, 
 than the more active and aggressive charac- 
 teristics prized in the West. Every respect in 
 which we, being persons, can yet be consis- 
 tently indifferent to our own personality, is so 
 much gained. 
 
 Under the domination of these ideas, then, 
 it appeared self-evident to all of us, in that 
 wonderful summer of 1898, that far beyond 
 any of the Saviours-made-visible, were those 
 
 143
 
 FLASHES FROM THE BEACON FIRE. 
 
 greater souls who had entered into the Im- 
 personal and the Unmanifested, never to re- 
 turn. "It is a sin even to think of the body," 
 the Swami would say, now and again; or, 
 "It is wrong to manifest power !" And even 
 in the compassion of a Buddha there was 
 memory of persons ! Even in the purity of 
 Jesus there was manifestation ! 
 
 This last thought seems to form a com- 
 mon motive with Indian Sadkus, for on one 
 occasion when our tents had been pitched in- 
 discreetly near a pilgrims' camp, and the 
 Swami was half-minded to insist, against 
 hundreds of obstreperous complainants, on 
 leaving them where they were, a strange 
 monk came up to him, and said in a low 
 voice, "You have this power, Swamiji, but 
 you ought not to manifest it !" And he at 
 once had them removed. 
 
 As to the power of silence and retirement 
 to make illumination visible, we had many 
 opportunities of judging. For over and over
 
 CONTEMPT OF THE UNREAL. 
 
 again the Swami would break away, to return 
 unexpectedly. It sometimes seemed as if life 
 in society were an agony to him. He grew 
 nervous under the gaze of numbers of admir- 
 ers who had heard of his great fame, and 
 would enter his boat and sit watching him, 
 leaving him no privacy. The life of the silent 
 ashen-clad wanderer, or the hidden hermit, 
 he thought of, it would now and then seem, 
 as the lover might think of the beloved. At 
 no time would it have surprised us, had some 
 one told us that to-day or tomorrow he 
 would be gone for ever; that we were now lis- 
 tening to his voice for the last time. He, and 
 necessarily we, in all that depended on him, 
 were as straws carried on the Ganges of the 
 Eternal Will. At any moment It might reveal 
 Itself to him as silence. At any moment, life 
 in the world might end for him. 
 
 This plan-less-ness was not an accident. 
 Never can I forget the disgust with which he 
 turned on myself once, a couple of years later,
 
 FLASHES FROM THE BEACON FIRE. 
 
 when I had offered him some piece of world- 
 ly wisdom regarding his own answer to a 
 letter which he had brought for me to see. 
 "Plans ! Plans !" he exclaimed in indignation. 
 "That is why you Western people can never 
 create a religion ! If any of you ever did, it 
 was only a few Catholic saints, who had no 
 plans. Religion was never never preached by 
 planners!" 
 
 As it was, in the course of that pleasant 
 summer-journey, we were always liable to 
 hear from the servants that the Swami's boat 
 had left its moorings an hour ago, and would 
 not return to-day. He might be away, in fact, 
 either one or many days. We never knew. 
 But always he returned from these lonely re- 
 treats with shining of radiance and peace, 
 and ever-deepening utterance of knowledge. 
 To all the disciples of Ramakrishna, religious 
 customs consecrated by the faith of others, 
 have great significance. One of them speaks 
 of the Scala Santa in Rome as moving him 
 
 146
 
 HOLY PLACES. 
 
 deeply. The ideal of the Order moreover, is 
 to participate in the worship of the accustom- 
 ed devotees in every detail. Thus I have seen 
 my own Master, when visiting holy places, 
 make the same offerings of milk and rice, or 
 tell his beads in the same manner, as the 
 humblest of the women about him. The 
 minutest rules of conduct, both secular and 
 religious, would be scrupulously observed by 
 him on these occasions. Thus he one-d him- 
 self with the people, before rising to his own 
 greatest heights. 
 
 Two places in Kashmir are regarded as 
 extremely sacred, one is Kshir Bhowani, a 
 spring at which the Divine Motherhood is 
 worshipped, and the other Amarnath, a moun- 
 tain-cave in which there is an ice-emblem of 
 Siva. And the most notable events of our 
 summer were his pilgrimages to these two 
 shrines. But we also were ambitious. We 
 desired to be taught to meditate, in system- 
 atic fashion, and begged to be allowed to
 
 FLASHES FROM THE BEACON FIRE. 
 
 make a retreat in some lonely place, where 
 we might keep hours of silence, and make 
 our attempts under definite direction. For 
 this season, tents were brought, and we camp- 
 ed for a week on the edge of a forest, at 
 a place called Achhabal, in the beginning of 
 September. The pilgrimage to Amarnath had 
 been made at the beginning of August, and 
 the Swami left us for Kshir Bhowani on the 
 thirtieth of September. Finally we parted 
 from him, and our journey was over, at Bara- 
 mulla, October the twelfth. 
 
 Even apart from the greater revelations 
 and experiences, flashes from the beacon-fire 
 of that life in whose shadow we dwelt, fell 
 constantly upon us. Once he had just return- 
 ed from an absence, and as he sat talking of 
 bhakti, a servant came to say his meal was 
 ready. But we could see how intolerable was 
 the thought of food, to one who was still liv- 
 ing on the heights of the love of God. Agaia 
 it was evening, and we women-folk were 
 
 148
 
 THE COSMOS AS PLA Y. 
 
 seated in the boat of Sthir Mata, as we call- 
 ed our hostess, chatting in low tones, in the 
 falling dusk, when suddenly he came in to 
 spend a few minutes with us. The talk turn- 
 ed on the approaching departure for Europe; 
 but it soon ended; and then one who expect- 
 ed to be left alone in India, spoke of how the 
 others would be missed. The Swami turned 
 on her with a wonderful gentleness. "But why 
 so serious about it ?" he said. "Why not 
 touch hands and part with a smile ? You are 
 so morbid, you Westerns ! You worship 
 sorrow ! All through your country I found 
 that. Social life in the West is like a peal of 
 laughter, but underneath, it is a wail. 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 out- 
 side, but underneath are carelessness and 
 merriment. 
 
 "You know, we have a theory that the 
 Universe is God's manifestation of Himself, 
 
 149
 
 FLASHES FROM THE BEACON FIRE. 
 
 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 any- 
 thing ?" And then, without another word, he 
 turned and went out into the starlight, and 
 passed into his own boat. And we also, in the 
 hush of the river, said goodnight and parted. 
 One evening, in our week of retreat, we 
 sat under the great trees beside the stream, 
 and it was of leadership that he talked. He 
 began by comparing certain notable move- 
 ments of the hour, of which one had grown 
 daily during the lifetime of its founder, both 
 in numbers and complexity, while the other 
 had been seen breaking up into its compon- 
 ent parts. Finally he said "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 a leader, lies in holding widely 
 
 150
 
 LIFE AND THE IDEA. 
 
 different people together, along the line of 
 their common sympathies. And this can only 
 be done unconsciously, never by trying." 
 
 From this, the talk somehow strayed to 
 Plato, and someone asked for an explanation 
 of the doctrine of Ideas. He gave this, and 
 as he ended, he said, addressing one of the 
 group in particular, "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 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." 
 
 "I cannot feel the longing to get out of 
 life that Hindus feel," said one on another 
 occasion, in response to something he had 
 said about breaking the bonds of life. "I 
 think I would a great deal rather come back 
 and help the causes that interest me, than 
 achieve personal salvation." "That's because 
 you cannot overcome the idea of progress,"
 
 FLASHES FROM THE BEACON FIRE. 
 
 he retorted quickly. "But things do not grow 
 better. They remain as they were, and we 
 grow better, by the changes we make 
 in them. ' 
 
 This last sentence has to myself the ring 
 of a Veda. "We grow better, by the changes 
 we make in them." Similiarly, when we were 
 at Almora, I remember a certain elderly man 
 with a face full of amiable weakness, who 
 came to put to 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 surpris- 
 ed indignation. "Why thrash the strong, of 
 course !" he said. "You forget your own part 
 in this karma. Yours is always the right to 
 rebel ! 
 
 152
 
 VIII 
 AMARNATH. 
 
 IT was in the course of an open-air meal 
 in the Mogul Gardens at Achhabal, that 
 the Swami suddenly announced that he would 
 go to Amarnath with the pilgrims, and take 
 his daughter with him. Within our little 
 party, there was too much feeling of delight- 
 ed congratulation, for any obstacle to be put 
 in the way of the fortunate member. And 
 aided thus, as well as by the State officer, 
 in charge of the journey, preparations went 
 forward for this unique experience. 
 
 Kashmir seemed, in those weeks, to be 
 full of pilgrims. We left Achhabal, and 
 returned to our boats at Islamabad, for final 
 arrangements, and everywhere we saw the 
 march of gathering hosts. It was all very 
 quiet and orderly and picturesque. Two or 
 three thousand people would encamp in a 
 
 153
 
 AMARNATH. 
 
 field, and leave It before dawn, with no 
 trace of their occupation, save the ashes 
 of their cooking-fires. They carried a bazaar 
 with them, and at each halting place, the 
 pitching of tents, and opening of shops, 
 took place with incredible rapidity. Organi- 
 sation appeared to be instinctive. A broad 
 street would run through the middle of one 
 part of the camp, and here one could buy 
 dried fruits, milk, dahls, and rice. The tent 
 of the Tehsildar, with that of the Swami 
 on one side, and my own on the other, was 
 generally placed near some advantageous 
 spot for the lighting of the evening fire, and 
 thus his neighbourhood tended to form a 
 social centre. 
 
 There were hundreds of monks, of all 
 the orders, with their Gerrua tents, some 
 no larger than a good-sized umbrella, and 
 amongst these, the Swami's influence appeared 
 to be magnetic. The more learned of them 
 swarmed about him at every halting place, 
 
 154
 
 THE TALK OF SADHUS. 
 
 filling his tent, and remaining absorbed in 
 conversation, throughout the hours of day 
 light. The talk on their side, he told us 
 afterwards, had been all of Siva, and they 
 had remonstrated with him seriously, when 
 he had insisted, occasionally, on drawing 
 their attention to the world about them. 
 Even foreigners, they urged, were men. 
 Why make such distinctions between Swadesk 
 and bidesh ? Nor could many of them under- 
 stand the warmth of his love and sympathy 
 for Mohammedanism. The same other-world- 
 liness that made Swadesh and bidesh indis- 
 tinguishable, also prevented these simple souls 
 from formally conceiving of a unity, in which 
 Hindu and Mohammedan were but rival 
 elements. The soil of the Punjaub, they 
 argued, was drenched with the blood of those 
 who had died for the faith. Here, at least, 
 let him practise a narrow orthodoxy! In 
 answer to this, as became one who was, in 
 fact 'an anachronism of the future', the 
 
 J55
 
 AMARNATH. 
 
 Swami made those practical concessions of 
 the moment that were expressive of his 
 love for the brethren, and drove his prin- 
 ciples home to their minds with the greater 
 force and vehemence. But, as he told the 
 tale of his warm discussions, the foreign mind 
 could not help, with some amusement, noting 
 the paradox that the Tehsildar himself, and 
 many officers and servants of the pilgrimage, 
 had been Mussulmans, and that no one had 
 dreamt of objecting to their entering the 
 Cave with the Hindu worshippers, on the 
 ultimate arrival at the shrine. The Tehsildar 
 came afterwards, indeed, with a group of 
 friends, begging formal acceptance by the 
 Swami as disciples ; and in this, no one 
 seemed to find anything incongruous or 
 surprising. 
 
 Leaving Islamabad, we caught up some- 
 where with the pilgrimage, and camped 
 with it, for that night, at Pawan, a place 
 famous for its holy springs. I can remember 
 
 156
 
 MO UNTAIN- VILLA GES. 
 
 yet the brilliance of the lights reflected in 
 the clear black waters of the tank that 
 evening, and throngs of pilgrims proceeding 
 in little groups from shrine to shrine. 
 
 At Pahlgam the village of the shepherds 
 the camp halted for a day, to keep 
 ekadasi. It was a beautiful little ravine 
 floored, for the most part with sandy islands 
 in the pebble-worn bed of a mountain 
 stream. The slopes about it were dark with 
 pine-trees, and over the mountain at its head 
 was seen, at sunset, the moon, not yet 
 full. It was the scenery of Switzerland or 
 Norway, at their gentlest and loveliest* 
 Here we saw the last of human dwellings, a 
 bridge, a farm house, with its ploughed fields, 
 and a few saeter-huts. And here, on a 
 grassy knoll, when the final march began, we 
 left the rest of our party encamped. 
 
 Through scenes of indescribable beauty, 
 three thousand of us ascended the valleys 
 that opened before us as we went. The first 
 
 157
 
 AMARNATH. 
 
 day we camped in a pine-wood ; the next, 
 we had passed the snow-line, and pitched our 
 tents beside a frozen river. That night, the 
 great camp-fire was made of juniper, and 
 the next evening, at still greater heights, the 
 servants had to wander many miles, in search 
 of this scanty fuel. At last the regular pathway 
 came to an end, and we had to scramble up 
 and down, along goat-paths, on the face of 
 steep declivities, till we reached the boulder- 
 strewn gorge, in which the Cave of Amar- 
 nath was situated. As we 'ascended this, we 
 had before us the snow-peaks covered with a 
 white veil, newly-fallen ; and in the Cave 
 itself, in a niche never reached by sunlight, 
 shone the great ice-lingam, that [must have 
 seemed, to the awestruck peasants who 
 first came upon it, like the waiting Presence 
 of God. 
 
 The Swami had observed every rite of 
 the pilgrimage, as he came along. He had 
 told his beads, kept fasts, and bathed in the 
 
 158
 
 THE SHRINE. 
 
 ice-cold waters of five streams in succession, 
 crossing the river-gravels on our second day. 
 And now, as he entered the Cave, it seemed 
 to him, as if he saw Siva made visible before 
 him. Amidst the buzzing, swarming noise of 
 the pilgrim-crowd, and the overhead fluttering 
 of the pigeons, he knelt and prostrated two or 
 three times, unnoticed ; and then, afraid lest 
 emotion might overcome him, he rose and 
 silently withdrew. He said afterwards that 
 in these brief moments he had received from 
 Siva the gift of Amar, not to die, until he 
 himself had willed it, In this way, possibly, 
 was defeated or fulfilled that presentiment 
 which had haunted him from childhood, that 
 he would meet with death, in a Siva temple 
 amongst the mountains. 
 
 Outside the Cave, there was no Brahminic 
 exploitation of the helpless people. Amar- 
 nath is remarkable for its simplicity and close- 
 ness to nature. But the pilgrimage culminates 
 -on the great day of Rakhibandhan, and our 
 
 159
 
 AMARNATH. 
 
 wrists were tied with the red and yellow 
 threads of that sacrament. Afterwards, we 
 rested and had a meal, on some high boulders 
 beside the stream, before returning to our tents. 
 
 The Swami was full of the place. He 
 felt that he had never been to anything 
 so beautiful. He sat long silent. Then 
 he said dreamily, "I can well imagine 
 how this Cave was first discovered. A party 
 of shepherds, one summer day, must have 
 lost their flocks, and wandered in here in 
 search of them. jThen, when they came 
 home to the valleys, they told how they had 
 suddenly come upon Mahadev ! " 
 
 Of my Master himself, in any case, a like 
 story was true. The purity and whiteness 
 of the ice-pillar had startled and enwrapt him. 
 The cavern had revealed itself to him as the 
 secret of Kailas. And for the rest of his life, 
 he cherished the memory of how he had en- 
 tered a mountain-cave, and come face to face 
 there with the Lord Himself. 
 
 1 60
 
 IX 
 KSHIR BHOWANI 
 
 Everything in our life up to the time of 
 the pilgrimage to Amarnath had beerf 
 associated with the thought of Siva. 
 Each step had seemed to draw us closer to 
 the great snow-mountains that were at 
 once His image and His home. The 
 young moon resting at night-fall above the 
 glacier-cleft and the tossing pines, had 
 suggested irresistibly the brow of the Great 
 God. Above all, that world of meditation 
 on whose outskirts we dwelt, had Him as its 
 heart and centre, rapt and silent, "above all 
 qualities and] beyond the reach of thought." 
 Undoubtedly this Hindu idea of Siva is the 
 highest conception of God as approached by 
 the spiritual intuition of man. He is the 
 Divine accessible within, and purified of all 
 externals. 
 
 161
 
 KSHIR BHOWANI 
 
 It may possibly be, that in the pursuit of 
 uttermost knowledge, this personification 
 of the unmanifesting, is necessarily succeeded 
 by the opposite conception of God as the 
 power behind all manifestation. It is clear 
 at least that he who has sounded the depths 
 of both these, will be capable of understand- 
 ing the significance, of every possible human 
 symbol of the divine, since all must be 
 included in one or other of the two. If the 
 Supreme is thought of by man at all, it 
 must be either as Infinite Being or as 
 Infinite Power. Whether there is any such 
 law of nature behind the fact or not, must 
 remain a speculation. In some imperceptible 
 way, at all events, the Swami's attention 
 appeared to shift, during the month of 
 August, from Siva to the Mother. He was 
 always singing the songs of Ram Prasad, as 
 if he would saturate his own mind with the 
 conception of himself as a child. He told 
 some of us once, that wherever he turned 
 
 162
 
 THE PAIRS OF OPPOSITES 
 
 he was conscious of the presence of the 
 Mother, as if She were a person in the room. 
 It was always his habit to speak simply and 
 naturally of ''Mother," and some of the 
 older members of the party caught this, so 
 that such phrases as "Well, well ! Mother 
 knows best !" were a constant mode of 
 thought and speech amongst us, when, for 
 instance, some cherished intention had to be 
 abandoned. 
 
 Gradually, however, his absorption 
 became more intense. He complained 
 bitterly of the malady of thought, which 
 would consume a man, leaving him no time 
 for sleep or rest, and would often become as 
 insistent as a human voice. He had con- 
 ' stantly striven to make clear to us the ideal 
 of rising beyond the pairs of opposites, 
 beyond pain and pleasure, good and evil 
 alike, that conception which forms the 
 Hindu solution of the problem of sin, but 
 now he seemed to fasten his whole attention 
 
 163
 
 KSHIR BHOWANI 
 
 on the dark, the painful, and the inscrutable, 
 in the world, with the determination to reach 
 by this particular road the One Behind 
 Phenomena. Baffled as he found himself 
 in the object of his visit to Kashmir,* "the 
 worship of the Terrible" now became his 
 whole cry. Illness or pain would always draw 
 forth the reminder that "She is the organ. 
 She is the pain. And She is the Giver of 
 pain, Kali ! Kali ! Kali ! " 
 
 His brain was teeming with thoughts, he 
 said one day, and his fingers would not rest 
 till they were written down. It was that same 
 evening that we came back to our houseboat 
 from some expedition, and found waiting for 
 us, where he had called and left them, his 
 manuscript lines on "Kali the Mother. 1 * 
 Writing in a fever of inspiration, he had 
 fallen on the floor, when he had finished 
 
 * He had come, at the express invitation of the Maharajah, 
 to choose a piece of land, for the establishment of a math and Sans- 
 krit college. But his choice was twice vetoed, on the list of agenda 
 for Council by Sir Adalbert Talbot, then acting as Resident. Thus 
 it could not even be discussed. 
 
 164
 
 KALI THE MOTHER 
 
 as we learnt afterwards, exhausted with 
 his own intensity. 
 
 KALI THE MOTHER 
 
 The stars are blotted out 
 The clouds are covering clouds, 
 It is darkness vibrant, sonant. 
 In the roaring, whirling wind, 
 Are the souls of a million lunatics, 
 Just loosed from the prison house, 
 Wrenching trees by the roots 
 Sweeping all from the path. 
 The sea has joined the fray 
 And swirls up mountain waves, 
 To reach the pitchy sky. 
 The flash of lurid light 
 Reveals on every side 
 A thousand, thousand shades 
 Of death, begrimed and black. 
 
 Scattering plagues and sorrows, 
 
 Dancing mad with joy, 
 
 Come, Mother, come ! 
 
 165
 
 KSHIR BHOWANI 
 
 For Terror is Thy name. 
 
 Death is in Thy breath. 
 
 And every shaking step 
 
 Destroys a world for e'er. 
 
 Thou "Time" the All- Destroyer ! 
 Come, O Mother, come ! 
 
 Who dares misery love, 
 
 Dance in destruction's dance, 
 
 And hug the form of death, 
 
 To him the Mother comes. 
 
 About this time, he had taken his boat 
 away from our vicinity, and only a young 
 Brahmo doctor, who was also living in 
 Kashmir that summer, and whose kindness 
 and devotion to him were beyond all praise, 
 was allowed to know where he was, and 
 to enquire about his daily needs. The next 
 evening the doctor went, as usual, but find- 
 ing him lost in thought, retired without 
 speaking, and the following day, September 
 the thirtieth, he had gone, leaving word that 
 he was not to be followed, to Kshir Bhowani, 
 
 1 66
 
 THE RETURN 
 
 the coloured springs. He was away, from 
 that day till October the sixth. 
 
 * * *= * 
 
 In the afternoon of that day we saw him 
 coming back to us, up the river. He stood in 
 front of the dunga, grasping with one hand the 
 bamboo roof-pole, and with the other holding 
 yellow flowers. He entered our houseboat, 
 a transfigured presence, and silently passed 
 from one to another blessing us, and putting 
 the marigolds on our heads. "I offered them 
 to Mother," he said at last, as he ended by 
 handing the garland to one of us. Then 
 he sat down. "No more 'Hari Om !' It is all 
 'Mother,' now !" he said, with a smile. We 
 all sat silent. Had we tried to speak, we 
 should have failed, so tense was the spot, 
 with something that stilled thought. He 
 opened his lips again. "All my patriotism is 
 gone. Everything is gone. Now it's only 
 'Mother Mother !' 
 
 "I have been very wrong," he said 
 
 167
 
 KSHIR BHOWANI 
 
 simply, after another pause. "Mother said 
 to me 'What, even if unbelievers should 
 enter My temples, and defile My images ! 
 What is that to you ? Do you protect ME ? 
 Or do I protect you ?' So there is no more 
 patriotism. I am only a little child !" 
 
 Then he spoke on indifferent matters, 
 about the departure for Calcutta, which he 
 desired to make at once, with a word or two 
 as to the experience of physical ill into 
 which his perplexities of mind had translated 
 themselves, throughout the past week. "I 
 may not tell you more now : it is not in order," 
 he said gently, adding, before he left us, 
 "But spiritually, spiritually, I was not 
 bound down !" 
 
 We saw very little of the Swami, during" 
 the next few days. Before breakfast the 
 next morning, indeed, two of us were with 
 him on the river-bank for a moment, when, 
 seeing the barber, he said "All this must go !" 
 and left us, to come out again half-an-hour 
 
 1 68
 
 HOUSEHOLDER VERSUS SANNYASIN 
 
 later, without a hair. Somehow, in ways 
 and words that could scarcely be recounted, 
 came to us now and then a detail of that 
 austerity, by which, in the past week, such 
 illumination had come. We could picture 
 the fasting ; the offering of milk and rice 
 and almonds daily, in the spring ; and the 
 morning worship of a Brahmin pundit's little 
 daughter, as Uma Kumari the Divine 
 Virgin ; the whole, meanwhile, in such a pas- 
 sion of self-renunciation, that not one wave 
 of reaction could be found in his conscious- 
 ness for any injury, however great. 
 
 A man came one day to ask a question, 
 and the Swami, in monastic dress and with 
 shaven head, happened to enter. "Ought 
 one to seek an opportunity of death, in de- 
 fence of right, or ought one to take the 
 lesson of the Gita,* and learn never to 
 react ?" was the problem put to him. "I am 
 
 * It is perhaps worth while to say that for my own part I 
 could never understand how this enquirer gathered this particular 
 lessun from the Gita ! 
 
 169
 
 KSHIR BHOWANI 
 
 for no reaction," said the Swami, speaking 
 slowly, and with a long pause. Then he 
 added " for Sannyasins. Self-defence for 
 the householder !" 
 
 The mood seemed to grow upon him, 
 and deepen. He spoke of this time once, 
 as 'a crisis in his life.' Again, he called him- 
 self a child, seated on the lap of the Mother, 
 and being caressed. And the thought came 
 to us, unspoken, that these Her kisses might 
 make themselves known to mind and nerves 
 as anguish, yet be welcomed with rapture of 
 recognition. Did he not say "There could 
 be bliss in torture" 
 
 As soon as it could be arranged, we left 
 for Baramulla, which we reached on Tuesday 
 evening, October the eleventh. It had 
 been settled that he would go on to Lahore 
 the following afternoon, while we waited 
 some days longer. On the way down the 
 river, we saw very little of him. He was 
 almost entirely silent, and took long walks by 
 
 170
 
 THE FAREWELL 
 
 the riverside alone, rarely even entering our 
 houseboat for a moment. His health had 
 been completely broken, by the labours of 
 his return to India ; and the physical ebb of 
 the great experience through which he had 
 just passed for even suffering becomes im- 
 possible, when a given point of weariness is 
 reached ; and similarly, the body refuses to 
 harbour a certain intensity of the spiritual 
 life for an indefinite period ! was leaving 
 him, doubtless, more exhausted than he him- 
 self suspected. All this contributed, one ima- 
 gines, to a feeling that none of us knew for 
 how long a time we might now be parting, 
 and it was this thought, perhaps, that brought 
 him to say goodbye on Wednesday morning, 
 as we finished breakfast, and made him stay 
 to talk. 
 
 Hour after hour went by, that morning, 
 and it is easier to tell of the general 
 impression created, than to build it up again 
 detail by detail. We who listened, seemed 
 
 171
 
 KSHIR BHOWANI 
 
 to be carried into an innermost sanctuary. 
 Sometimes he would sing and translate some 
 snatch or other of devotional poetry, always to 
 the Mother. And it was always Kali, with 
 Her foot on the heart of Her worshipper, 
 Who grew clearer to our minds ; though he 
 dwelt much, and over and over again, on the 
 thought of the Mother, seated in the market- 
 place of this world, playing amongst the 
 players ; flying Her own kite, and in a 
 hundred thousand cutting the strings of 
 only one or two. 
 
 "Scattering plagues and sorrows," he 
 quoted from his own verses, 
 
 "Dancing mad with joy, 
 
 Come, Oh 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. 
 
 172
 
 ILLUSION 
 
 "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 !" 
 
 He spoke of the future. There was 
 nothing to be desired, but the life of the 
 wanderer, in silence and nudity, on the banks 
 of the Ganges. He would have nothing. 
 "Swamiji" was dead and gone. Who was 
 he, that he should feel responsible for teach- 
 ing the world ? It was all fuss and vanity. 
 The Mother had no need of him, but only 
 he of Her. Even work, when one had seen 
 this, was nothing but illusion. 
 
 There was no way but love. If people 
 sinned against us, we must love them till it 
 was impossible for them to resist it. That 
 was all. Yet, as I write the words, I know 
 well that I can give no idea of the vastness 
 of which all this was utterance, as if no 
 
 173
 
 KSHIR BHOWANI 
 
 blow, to any in the world, could pass and 
 leave our Master's heart untouched ; as if no 
 pain, even to that of death, could elicit any- 
 thing but love and blessing. 
 
 He told us the story of Vasishtha 
 and Viswamitra ; of Vasishtha's hundred 
 descendants slain ; and the king left alone, 
 landless and crownless, to live out his life. 
 Then he pictured the hut standing in the 
 moonlight, amongst the trees, and Vasishtha 
 and his wife within. He is poring intently 
 over some precious page, written by his great 
 rival, when she draws near and hangs over him 
 for a moment, saying, "Look, how bright is 
 the moon tonight !" and he, without looking 
 up, "But ten thousand times brighter, my 
 love, is the intellect of Viswamitra!" 
 
 All forgotten! the deaths of his hundred 
 children, his own wrongs, and his sufferings, 
 and his heart lost in admiration of the genius 
 of his foe ! Such, said the Swami, should be 
 our love also, like that of Vasishtha for 
 
 174
 
 ALTAR-BLOSSOMS 
 
 Viswamitra, without the slightest tinge of 
 personal memory. 
 
 At this moment, a peasant brought sprays 
 of pear-blossom, and laid them down on the 
 table at which we sat. And one of us lifted 
 them, saying, "Swami! these were made for 
 worship, for they will bear no fruits!" But he 
 looked at her, smiling, and she could not 
 break the spell, to offer them. 
 
 And so he went. We all, servants and 
 boat-people, friends and disciples, parents and 
 children, accompanied him to the tonga on 
 the roadside, to say goodbye. One sturdy 
 little figure, the four-year-old daughter of 
 his chief boatman, whose devotion to him 
 we had long noted, trotted determinedly at 
 his side, with a tray of fruit for his journey 
 on her black head, and stood, smiling fare- 
 well, as he drove away. And we, not less 
 deeply touched than this little child, but 
 infinitely less unselfish, in our grown-up 
 complexity of thought and emotion, knew not 
 
 175
 
 KSHIR BHOWANI 
 
 when we should look upon his face again, 
 yet failed not to realise that we had that day 
 lived through hours, within whose radiance 
 all our future would be passed, 
 
 I7 6
 
 X 
 
 CALCUTTA AND THE HOLY 
 WOMEN 
 
 THE Swami had one remarkable charac- 
 teristic. He made all who were near 
 him appear great. In (his presence, one 
 saw and loved, at its highest, their un- 
 spoken purpose ; and even their faults and 
 failings, if one realised them, would seem to 
 be justified and accounted for. We surely 
 stand at many different grades of perception ! 
 Some of us see and recognise only the form 
 and the acts of a man. Others will refer his 
 features to a central type, and note on his 
 external aspect the tide-marks of the will, in 
 all its mixedness and complexity of ebb and 
 flow. But still others are aware of a vast 
 magazine of cause behind, against which a 
 life stands out as a single fragmentary 
 effect. We ourselves cannot gauge the 
 
 177
 
 THE HOL Y WOMEN 
 
 knowledge that prompts our own words 
 and deeds. 
 
 Something after this fashion was the 
 vision that grew upon me, of the world into 
 which I had entered, as the Swami's disciple, 
 on my arrival in Calcutta, early in November 
 1898. During the months between that date 
 and the following July, I saw him always in 
 the midst of his own people, without even the 
 friendly intervention of a European home. 
 I became myself one of the people, living 
 with them in surroundings which his genius 
 had created. And thus enveloped by his inter- 
 pretation, thus dominated by his passionate love 
 of his own race, it was like walking in some 
 twilight of the gods, where the forms of men 
 and women loomed larger than their wont. 
 
 It had been taken for granted from the 
 first, that at the earliest opportunity I would 
 open a girls' school in Calcutta. And 
 it was characteristic of the Swami's methods, 
 that I had not been hurried in the initiation
 
 A GIRLS' SCHOOL 
 
 ^of this work, but had been given leisure and 
 travel and mental preparation, To myself it 
 was clear that this school, when opened, must 
 at first be only tentative and experimental. I 
 had to learn what was wanted, to determine 
 where I myself stood, to explore the very world 
 of which my efforts were to become a part. 
 The one thing that I knew was, that an 
 educational effort must begin at the stand- 
 point of the learner, and help him to develop- 
 ment in his own way. But I had no definite 
 plans or expectations, save to make some 
 educational discovery which would be 
 qualitatively true and universally applicable, 
 to the work of the modern education of 
 Indian women.* 
 
 Others, however, had probably thought 
 more largely of the matter, and I had heard 
 
 *It must here be pointed out that the school in question proved 
 ven more tentative than I had imagined. In the autumn of 1903, 
 the whole work for Indian women was taken up and organised by 
 an American disciple, Sister Christine, and to her, and her faithful- 
 ness and initiative, alone, it owes all its success up to the present. 
 F-- a the experiment which I made in 1898 to 1899, was gathered 
 ** / y own education.. Nivtdita. 
 
 179
 
 THE HOLY WOMEN 
 
 much as to the desirablity of holding myself 
 above all sects. But all these questions were 
 solved once for all, on a certain evening in 
 camp, in the forest of Vernag, in Kashmir, 
 when the Swami turned to me, as we all sat in 
 a circle about the log-fire, and asked me what 
 were now my plans for the school. I replied 
 eagerly, begging to be freed from collaborators, 
 to be allowed to begin in a small way, 
 spelling out my method ; and urging, above 
 all, the necessity of a definite religious colour, 
 and the usefulness of sects. 
 
 The Swami listened and accepted, and as 
 far as his loyalty went to every wish of mine, 
 in this matter, thenceforth, he might have 
 been the disciple and 1 the teacher. Only in 
 one respect was he 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," had been his 
 sole reply to this part of my statement. He 
 
 1 80
 
 A GUEST SELF-INVITED 
 
 withdrew, at the first sign of hesitation on 
 my side, the name of an Indian lady whose 
 help had been proffered. But he would not 
 on the other hand, countenance my own 
 seeking of assistance amongst the few 
 acquaintances I had already made. For the 
 -ocean of Indian character I had as yet no 
 plummet, and it was safer to go long unaided 
 than to commit an error at the start. 
 
 It was to carry out this plan, then, that I 
 .arrived in Calcutta alone, in the beginning of 
 November. I was able to find my way at 
 once, from the station to the north end of 
 the town. But once there, with insular 
 rigidity, I insisted on being made the guest 
 of the women. The Swami was himself 
 staying, as it happened, at a sort of parish- 
 room of the Order, in Calcutta. Through 
 him, therefore, the negotiations were carried 
 on. The widow of Sri Ramakrishna Sarada 
 Devi, or "the Holy Mother," as she is called 
 amongst us was living close by, with her 
 
 181
 
 THE HOLY WOMEN 
 
 community of ladies ; and in the course of the- 
 day, I was accorded possession of an empty 
 room in her house. 
 
 This is one of the occasions on which 
 people look back, feeling that their courage 
 was providentially determined by their igno- 
 rance. It is difficult to see how else a neces- 
 sary solution could have been found. Yet 
 had I deeply understood at the time, the 
 degree of social embarrassment which my 
 rashness might have brought, not only upon 
 my innocent hostess, but also on her kindred 
 in their distant village, I could not have 
 acted as I did. At any cost, I must in that 
 case have withdrawn. As it was, however, I 
 imagined caste to be only a foolish personal 
 prejudice, which must yield to knowledge,- 
 against some supposed uncleanness of foreign 
 habits ; and thus cheerfully assuming all the 
 ignorance to be on her side, confidently forced 
 myself upon this Indian lady's hospitality. 
 In the event, fortunately, the Swami's- 
 
 182
 
 THE MOTHERS HOME 
 
 influence proved all-powerful, and I was 
 accept ed by society. Within a week or ten 
 days, a house in the close neighbourhood 
 was found for me. But even then, I spent 
 all my afternoons in the Mother's room. And 
 when the hot weather came, it was by her 
 express command that I returned to her 
 better-arranged house, for sleeping-quarters. 
 And then I occupied no room apart, but 
 shared the cool and simple dormitory of the 
 others, with its row of mats, pillows, and 
 nets, against the polished red earthenware of 
 the floor. 
 
 It was a strange household, of which I 
 now found myself a part. Downstairs, in one 
 of the guard -rooms beside the front-door, 
 lived a monk, whose severe austerities, from 
 his youth up, had brought him to the thres- 
 hold of death, from consumption, in the prime 
 of manhood. To his room I used to go, for 
 Bengali lessons. In the kitchen behind, 
 worked a disciple of his, and a Brahmin cook; 
 
 183
 
 THE HOL Y WOMEN 
 
 while to us women-folk belonged all above- 
 stairs, with roofs and terraces, and the sight 
 of the Ganges hard by. 
 
 Of the head of our little community, it 
 seems almost presumptuous to speak. Her 
 history is well-known. How she was wedded 
 at five, and forgotten by her husband till she 
 was eighteen ; how she then, with her mother's 
 permission, made her way on foot from her 
 village-home to the temple of Dakshineswar 
 on the Ganges-side, and appeared before 
 him; how he remembered the bond, but spoke 
 of the ideals of the life he had adopted ; and 
 how she responded by bidding him Godspeed 
 in that life, and asking only to be taught by 
 him as the Guru, all these things have been 
 told of her many times over. From that time 
 she lived faithfully by his side for many years, 
 in a building in the same garden, at once 
 nun and wife, and always chief of his disci- 
 ples. She was young when her tutelage be- 
 gan and in hours of quiet talk, she will tell 
 
 184
 
 SKI RAMAKRISHNAS LOVE. 
 
 sometimes in how many directions his train- 
 ing extended. He was a great lover of order, 
 and taught her even such trifles as where to 
 keep her lamp and its appurtenances, during 
 the day. He could not endure squalor, and 
 notwithstanding severe asceticism, he loved 
 grace and beauty and gentle dignity of bear- 
 ing. One story that is told of this period of 
 her life, is of her bringing to him a basket of 
 fruit and vegetables one day, with all the 
 eagerness and pride of a happy child. He 
 looked at it gravely, and said "But why so 
 extravagant ?" 
 
 "At least it was not for myself!" said 
 the young wife, all her sunshine gone, in 
 sudden disappointment, and she turned and 
 went away, crying quietly. But this Sri Rama- 
 krishna could not bear to see. "Go, one of 
 you," he said, turning to the boys beside him, 
 "And bring her back. My very devotion to 
 God will take wings, if I see her weep !" 
 
 So dear she was to him. Yet one of her 
 
 185
 
 THE HOLY WOMEN 
 
 most striking traits is the absolute detach- 
 ment with which she speaks of the husband 
 she worships. She stands like a rock, through 
 loud and shine, as those about her tell, for 
 the fulfilment of every word of his. But 
 "Guru Deb !" "Divine Master," is the name 
 she calls him by, and not one word of her 
 uttering ever conveys the slightest trace of 
 self-assertion with regard to him. One who 
 did not know who she was, would never sus- 
 pect, from speech of hers, that her right was 
 stronger, or her place closer, than that of any 
 other of those about her. It would seem as if 
 the wife had been long ago forgotten, save 
 for her faithfulness, in the disciple. Yet so 
 deeply is she reverenced by all about her, 
 that there is not one of them who would, for 
 instance, occupy a railway berth above her, 
 when travelling with her. Her very presence 
 is to them a consecration. 
 
 To me it has always appeared that she is- 
 Sri Ramakrishna's final word as to the ideal 
 
 186
 
 THE IDEAL WOMAN 
 
 of Indian womanhood. But is she the last of 
 an old order, or the beginning of a new ? In 
 her, one sees realised that wisdom and sweet- 
 ness to which the simplest of women may 
 attain. And yet, to myself, the stateliness of 
 her courtesy and her great open mind are 
 almost as wonderful as her sainthood. I have 
 never known her hesitate, in giving utterance 
 to large and generous judgment, however 
 new or complex might be the question put 
 before her. Her life is one long stillness of 
 prayer. Her whole experience is of theocratic 
 civilisation. Yet she rises to the height of 
 every situation. Is she tortured by the 
 perversity of any about her ? The only sign 
 is a strange quiet and intensity that comes 
 upon her. Does one carry to her some 
 perplexity or mortification born of social 
 developments beyond her ken ? With un- 
 erring intuition she goes straight to the 
 heart of the matter, and sets the questioner 
 in the true attitude to the difficulty. Or is
 
 THE HOLY WOMEN 
 
 there need for severity ? No foolish senti- 
 mentality causes her to waver. The novice 
 whom she may condemn, for so many years 
 to beg his bread, will leave the place within 
 the hour. He who has transgressed her 
 <:ode of delicacy and honour, will never enter 
 her presence again. "Can't you see," said 
 Sri Ramakrishna, to one who had erred in 
 some such way, "Can't you see that the 
 woman in her is wounded ? And that is 
 dangerous !" 
 
 And yet is she, as one of her spiritual 
 children said of her, speaking literally of her 
 gift of song, "full of music," all gentleness, all 
 playfulness. And the room wherein she 
 worships, withal, is filled with sweetness. 
 
 The Mother can read, and much of her 
 time is passed with her Ramayana. But 
 she does not write. Yet it is not to be sup- 
 posed that she is an uneducated woman. 
 Not only has she had long and arduous ex- 
 perience in administration, secular and reli- 
 
 188
 
 SARADA DEVI'S CULTURE 
 
 gious ; but she has also travelled over a 
 great part of India, visiting most of the chief 
 places of p ilgrimage. And it must be remem- 
 bered that as the wife of Sri Ramakrishna 
 she has had the highest opportunity of pe 
 sonal development that it is possible to- 
 enjoy At every moment, she bears uncons- 
 cious witness to this association with the 
 great. But in nothing perhaps does it speak 
 more loudly than in her instant power ta 
 penetrate a new religious feeling or idea. 
 
 I first realised this gift in the Holy 
 Mother, on the occasion of a visit that she 
 paid us in recent years, on the afternoon of a 
 certain Easter- Day. Before that, probably, 
 I had always been too much absorbed, when 
 with her, in striving to learn what she re- 
 presented, to think of observing her in the 
 contrary position. On this particular occasion, 
 however, after going over our whole house, 
 the Mother and her party expressed a desire 
 to rest in the chapel, and hear something of 
 
 189
 
 THE HOL Y WOMEN 
 
 the meaning of the Christian festival. This 
 was followed by Easter music, and singing, 
 with our small French organ. And in the 
 swiftness of her comprehension, and the 
 depth of her sympathy with these resurrec- 
 tion-hymns, unimpeded by any foreignness 
 or unfamiliarity in them, we saw revealed 
 for the first time, one of the most im- 
 pressive aspects of the great religious culture 
 of Sarada Devi. The same power is seen to 
 a certain extent, in all the women about her, 
 who were touched by the hand of Sri Rama- 
 krishna. But in her, it has all the strength 
 and certainty of some high and arduous form 
 of scholarship. 
 
 The same trait came out again, one 
 evening, when, in the midst of her little circle, 
 the Holy Mother asked my Gurubkag'uti 
 and myself, to describe to her a European 
 wedding. With much fun and laughter, 
 personating now the "Christian Brahmin," 
 and again the bride and bridegroom, we 
 
 190
 
 THE MARRIAGE VOW 
 
 complied. But we were neither of us pre- 
 pared for the effect of the marriage vow. 
 
 "For better for worse, for richer for poorer, 
 in sickness and in health, till death us do 
 part," were words that drew exclamations 
 of delight from all about us. But none 
 appreciated them as did the Mother. Again 
 and again she had them repeated to her. 
 "Oh the Dharmmi words! the righteous 
 words!" she said. 
 
 Amongst the ladies who lived more 
 or less continuously in the household of 
 Sarada Devi at this time were Gopal's 
 Mother, Jogin- Mother, Rose-Mother, Sister 
 Lucky, and a number of others. These were 
 all widows, the first and the last child- 
 widows and they had all been personal 
 disciples of Sri Ramakrishna when he lived 
 in the temple garden at Dakshineshwar. 
 Sister Lucky, or Lakshmididi as is the Indian 
 form of her name, was indeed a niece of 
 his, ?. A is still a comparatively young 
 
 191
 
 THE HOL Y WOMEN 
 
 woman. She is widely sought after as a 
 religious teacher and director, and is a most 
 gifted and delightful companion. Sometimes 
 she will repeat page after page of some 
 sacred dialogue, out of one of the Jatras, 
 or religious operas, or again she will make 
 the quiet room ring with gentle merriment, 
 as she poses the different members of the 
 party in groups for religious tableaux. Now 
 it is Kali, and again Saraswati, another time 
 it will be Jagadhattri, or yet again, perhaps, 
 Krishna under his kadamba tree, that she will 
 arrange, with picturesque effect and scant 
 dramatic material. 
 
 Amusements like these were much 
 approved of, it is said, by Sri Ramakrishna, 
 who would sometimes himself, according to- 
 the ladies, spend hours, in reciting religious 
 plays, taking the part of each player in turns, 
 and making all around him realise the ut- 
 most meaning of the prayers and worship 
 uttered in the poetry. 
 
 192
 
 GOPALER-MA 
 
 Gopal's Mother was an old old woman. 
 She had already been old, fifteen or twenty 
 years before, when she had first walked over, 
 one day at noon, from her cell at Kamarhatty, 
 by the Ganges-side, to see the Master in the 
 garden at Dakshineswar. He received her, 
 so they say, standing at his door, as if he 
 expected her. And she, whose chosen wor- 
 ship had been for many years Gopala, the 
 Babe Krishna, the Christ-Child of Hinduism, 
 saw Him revealed to her, as in a vision, as 
 she drew near. How true she always was to 
 this! Never once through all the years that 
 followed, did she offer salutation to Sri Rama- 
 krishna, who took her thenceforth as his 
 mother. And never have I known her to 
 speak of our Holy Mother, save as "my 
 daughter-in-law." 
 
 In the months which I spent with the 
 Mother and her ladies, Gopaler-Ma would 
 sometimes be in Calcutta, and sometimes, 
 for weeks together, away at Kamarhatty. 
 
 193 
 
 M
 
 THE HOLY WOMEN 
 
 There, a few of us went, one full-moon night, 
 to visit her. How beautiful was the Ganges, 
 as the little boat crept on and on! And 
 how beautiful seemed the long flight of 
 steps rising out of the water, and leading up, 
 through its lofty bathing-ghat, past the 
 terraced lawn, to the cloister-like verandah 
 on the right, where, in a little room, built pro- 
 bably in the first place for some servant of the 
 great house at its side, Gopaler-Ma had 
 lived and told her beads, for many a year. 
 The great house was empty now. And her 
 own little room was absolutely without 
 comforts. Her bed was of stone, and her 
 floor of stone, and the piece of matting she 
 offered her guests to sit on, had to be taken 
 down from a shell and unrolled. The handful 
 of parched rice and sugar-candy that formed 
 her only store, and were all that she could give 
 in hospitality, were taken from an earthen 
 pot that hung from the roof by a few cords. 
 But the place was spotlessly clean, washed 
 
 194
 
 BY THE GANGES-SIDE 
 
 constantly by Ganges-water of her own 
 sturdy carrying. And in a niche near her 
 hand lay an old copy of the Ramayana, and 
 her great horn spectacles, and the little white 
 bag containing her beads. On those beads, 
 Gopaler-Ma had become a saint! Hour 
 after hour, day after day, for how many years, 
 had she sat, day and night, absorbed in them ! 
 
 The radiant white moonlight made the 
 trees and flowers outside seem like black 
 shadows, moving and whispering in a dream- 
 world of white marble. But nothing could 
 seem so dream-like, as, in the midst of our 
 busy hurrying world, the thought of spots 
 like this little cell of Gopaler-Ma, enshrining 
 her silent intensity of peace. "Ah !" said 
 the Swami, when he heard of the visit, "this 
 is the old India that you have seen, the 
 India of prayers and tears, of vigils and fasts, 
 that is passsing away, never to return ! " 
 
 In Calcutta, Gopaler-Ma felt, perhaps a 
 little more than others, the natural shock to 
 
 195
 
 THE HOL Y WOMEN 
 
 habits of eighty years' standing at having a 
 European in the house. But once over-ruled, 
 she was generosity itself. Conservative she 
 always was : stubbornly prejudiced, never. 
 As far as the daily life went, there can have 
 been little difference, to her consciousness, 
 between her own hermitage on the Ganges- 
 bank, and the conventual round of the 
 Mother's household. The days were full of 
 peace and sweetness. Long before dawn, one 
 and another rose quietly and sat on the 
 sleeping-mat, from which sheets and pillows 
 were now removed, beads in hand, and face 
 turned to the wall. Then came the cleans- 
 ing of the rooms and personal bathing. On 
 great days, the Mother and one other would 
 be carried down to the river in a palkee, and 
 till this arrived, the time was spent in read- 
 ing the Ramayana. 
 
 Then came the Mother's worship in her 
 own room, with all the younger women busy 
 over lights and incense, Ganges-water and 
 
 196
 
 THE MOTHER'S WORSHIP 
 
 flowers and offerings. Even Gopaler-Ma 
 would aid, as this hour came round, in the 
 preparation of fruits and vegetables. The 
 noon-day meal and the restful afternoon 
 would pass, and again as evening drew on, 
 the servant going by the door with the light- 
 ed lamp would break in upon our chat. 
 Groups would break up. Each of us would 
 prostrate before image or picture, and touch 
 the feet of Gopaler-Ma and the Mother, or 
 accompany the latter to where the light was 
 placed, near the basil-plant on the terrace ; 
 and fortunate indeed was she who from this 
 was permitted to go, like a daughter, and sit 
 beside the Mother at her evening-meditation, 
 there to learn those salutations to the Guru 
 which formed, with her, the beginning and 
 end of all worship. 
 
 The Indian home thinks of itself as per- 
 petually chanting the beautiful psalm of 
 custom. To it, every little act and detail of 
 household method, and personal habit is 
 
 197
 
 THE HOLY WOMEN 
 
 something inexpressibly precious and sacred, 
 an eternal treasure of the nation, handed 
 down from the past, to be kept unflawed, and 
 passed on to the future. This mode of 
 thought is interwoven with the passionate 
 quest of ideal purity, and with the worship of 
 motherhood, to make the guiding and re- 
 straining force of the whole Indian character. 
 The East worships simplicity, and herein lies 
 one of the main reasons why vulgarity is im- 
 possible to any Eastern people. 
 
 But no one can point out such a secret as 
 this, at the moment when one needs it, for 
 the simple reason that no one can place himself 
 sufficiently outside his own consciousness to 
 find out that others were born, not only with 
 a different equipment of associations, but al- 
 so with a different instinct as to their value. 
 Fortunately, however, by watching the 
 Swami, and puzzling over the contrasts he 
 unconsciously presented, I was able to dis- 
 cover it, and many things were made easier 
 
 198
 
 THE SWAMI AND CUSTOM 
 
 thereby. No one was ever more clearly 
 aware that character was everything, or, as he 
 phrased it, that "custom was nothing," yet 
 none could be more carried away than he 
 by the perfection and significance of all with 
 which he was familiar. To the customs of 
 his own people he brought the eye of a poet, 
 and the imagination of a prophet. He had 
 learnt that ''custom was nothing" when he 
 had met with ideal womanhood and faith 
 amongst polyandrous peoples, or delicacy 
 and modesty adorned in the evening costumes 
 of the West. But these things had not shaken 
 his reverence for the conventionalities of his 
 own country. The plain white veil of the 
 widow was to him the symbol of holiness, as 
 well as sorrow. The gerrua rags of the 
 sannyasin, the mat on the floor for a bed, the 
 green leaf instead of a plate, eating with 
 the fingers, the use of the national costume, 
 all these things he appeared to regard as a 
 veritable consecration. Each of them whisp- 
 
 199
 
 THE HOL V WOMEN 
 
 pered to him some secret of spiritual power 
 or human tenderness. And he answered 
 with a passion of loyalty that would achieve 
 for them, if it could, the very conquest of 
 the world ; but failing, would think all 
 heaven lay in sharing their defeat. 
 
 Thus he taught me also to sing the 
 melodious song, in feeble and faltering 
 fashion, it is true, but yet in some sort of 
 unison with its own great choir, inasmuch as, 
 with them, I learnt to listen through the 
 music, even while following, for the revela- 
 tion it could bring of a nation's ideals and 
 a nation's heart. 
 
 Those months between November 1898 
 and June 1899, were full of happy glimpses. 
 My little school was begun on the day of Kali 
 Puja, and the Mother herself came and per- 
 formed the opening ceremony of worship. 
 At the end, she gave a whispered blessing, 
 spoken aloud by Rose- Mother. She 'prayed 
 that the blessing of the great Mother might 
 
 200
 
 THE DAILY ROUND 
 
 be upon the school, and the girls it should 
 train be ideal girls.' And somehow to know 
 that an undertaking is remembered and 
 fraught with prayer in the lofty mind and 
 heart of our Mother, is to me a benediction 
 that makes content. I cannot imagine a 
 grander omen than her blessing, spoken over 
 the educated Hindu womanhood of the future. 
 
 The Swami lived commonly at the mo- 
 nastery, five or six miles out of Calcutta, 
 and on the opposite bank of the river. But, 
 on his frequent visits to town, he would 
 almost always send for me to join him, either 
 at the noon or evening meal, and to those 
 who showed me kindness, he would always 
 make a special effort to offer hospitality at 
 Belur. 
 
 Even his smallest actions often had a 
 meaning that was not evident to a new eye. 
 I did not dream, when he came to me one 
 day and asked me to cook for him a certain 
 invalid dish, that there was any special 
 
 201
 
 THE HOL Y WOMEN 
 
 intention in the request. And when I heard 
 afterwards that on receiving it, he had him- 
 self eaten very little, preferring to share it 
 with those about him, I was only disappoint- 
 ed, being at that time unaware of the almost 
 sacramental nature of this act. It was many 
 months before I learnt to understand the 
 deep forethought and kindness with which 
 he and also the Holy Mother on his be- 
 half, was constantly working to make a place 
 for me, as a foreigner, in Hindu society. 
 The aim of his whole life was, as he had said 
 to me, in Kashmir, "to make Hinduism 
 aggressive, like Christianity and Islam, " and 
 this was one of the ways in which he sought 
 to realise that ideal. 
 
 The same purpose spoke again in his 
 definition of the aims of the Order of Rama- 
 krishna " to effect an exchange of the high- 
 est ideals of the East and the West, and to 
 realise these in practice " a definition 
 whose perfection, and special appropriateness 
 
 202
 
 HINDUISM PROGRESSIVE 
 
 to the present circumstances of India, grows 
 on one with time. To his mind, Hinduism 
 was not to remain a stationary system, but 
 to prove herself capable of embracing and 
 welcoming the whole modern development. 
 She was no congeries of divided sects, but a 
 single living Mother-Church, recognising all 
 that had been born of her, fearless of the 
 new, eager for the love of her children, 
 wherever they might be found, wise, merci- 
 ful, self-directing, pardoning and reconciling. 
 Above all she was the holder of a definite 
 vision, the preacher of a distinct message 
 amongst the nations. To prove her this, 
 however, he relied on no force but that of 
 character. The building of the temple of 
 his faith was all-important, it was true ; but 
 for it there was infinite time, and with it 
 worked the tendency and drift of things. 
 For himself, the responsibility was to choose 
 sound bricks. And he chose, not with an 
 eye to the intellect, or power of attraction, 
 
 203
 
 THE HOL Y WOMEN 
 
 or volume of force, of those who were 
 chosen, but always for a certain quality of 
 simple sincerity, and, as it seemed, for that 
 alone. Once accepted, the ideal put before 
 them all was the same ; not mukti but renun- 
 ciation, not self-realisation, but self-abandon- 
 ment. And this rather, again, on behalf of 
 man, than as an offering to God. It was 
 the human motive that he asserted to his 
 disciples. May one of them never forget 
 a certain day of consecration, in the chapel 
 at the monastery, when, as the opening step 
 in a life-time, so to speak, he first taught her 
 to perform the worship of Siva, and then 
 made the whole culminate in an offering of 
 flowers at the feet of the Buddha ! " Go thou, " 
 he said, as if addressing in one person each 
 separate soul that would ever come to him for 
 guidance, "and follow Him, who was born 
 and gave His life for others FIVE HUNDRED 
 TIMES, before He attained the vision of the 
 Budddha ! " 
 
 204
 
 XI 
 
 "THE SWAMI AND MOTHER- 
 WORSHIP. 
 
 The story of the glimpses which I caught 
 of this part of the Swami's life would be 
 singularly incomplete, if it contained no men- 
 tion of his worship of the Mother. Spiritually 
 speaking, I have always felt that there were 
 two elements in his consciousness. Undoubted- 
 ly he was born a Brahmajnani, as Ramakrish- 
 na Paramahamsa so frequently insisted. 
 When he was only eight years old, sitting at 
 his play, he had developed the power of 
 entering Samadhi. The religious ideas to- 
 wards which he naturally gravitated, were 
 highly abstract and philosophical, the very 
 reverse of those which are commonly refer- 
 red to as 'idolatrous.' In his youth, and pre- 
 sumably when he had already been some 
 time under the influence of Sri Ramakrishna, 
 
 205
 
 MOTHER- WORSHIP 
 
 he became a formal member of the Sadharan 
 Brahmo Samaj. In England and America 
 he was never known to preach anything 
 that depended on a special form. The reali- 
 sation of Brahman was his only imperative, 
 the Advaita philosophy his only system of 
 doctrine, the Vedas and Upanishads his sole 
 scriptural authority. 
 
 And yet, sid a by side with this, it is also true 
 that in India the word "Mother" was forever 
 on his lips. He spoke of Her, as we of one 
 deeply familiar in the household life. He 
 was constantly preoccupied with Her. Like 
 other children, he was not always good. 
 Sometimes he would be naughty and rebel- 
 lious. But always to Her. Never did he 
 attribute to any other, the good or evil that 
 befell. On a certain solemn occasion, he 
 entrusted to a disciple a prayer to Her that 
 in his own life had acted as a veritable 
 charm. "And mind!" he added suddenly, 
 turning with what was almost fierceness up- 
 
 206
 
 THE TERRIBLE 
 
 on the receiver, "make Her listen to you, 
 when you say it! None of 'that cringing to 
 Mother ! Remember !" Every now and then 
 he would break out with some new fragment 
 of description. The right hand raised in 
 blessing, the left holding the sword, ''Her 
 curse is blessing ! " would be the sudden ex- 
 clamation that ended a long reverie. Or 
 becoming half-lyric in the intensity of his 
 feeling, "Deep in the heart of hearts of Her 
 own, flashes the blood-red knife of Kali. 
 Worshippers of the Mother are they from 
 their birth, in Her incarnation of the sword!" 
 From him was gathered, in such moments as 
 these, almost every line and syllable of a 
 certain short psalm, called the 'Voice of 
 the Mother,' which I wrote and pub- 
 lished about this time. "I worship the 
 Terrible !" he was continually saying, 
 and once, "It is a mistake to hold that 
 with all men pleasure is the motive. 
 Quite as many are born to seek after 
 
 207
 
 MOTHER- WORSHIP. 
 
 pain. Let us worship the Terror for Its 
 own sake." 
 
 He had a whole-hearted contempt for 
 what he regarded as squeamishness or mawk- 
 ishness. He wasted few words on me, when 
 I came to him with my difficulties about ani- 
 mal sacrifice in the temple. He made no re- 
 ference, as he might have done, to the fact 
 that most of us, loudly as we may attack 
 this, have no hesitation in offering animal 
 sacrifice to ourselves. He offered no argu- 
 ment, as he easily might have done, regard- 
 ing the degradation of the butcher and the 
 slaughter-house, under the modern system. 
 'Why not a little blood, to complete the 
 picture ?" was his only direct reply to my 
 objections. And it was with considerable 
 difficulty that I elicited from him, and from 
 another disciple of Sri Ramakrishna, sitting 
 near, the actual facts of the more austere 
 side of Kali-worship, that side which has 
 transcended the sacrifice of others. He told 
 
 208
 
 NO DEVIL-WORSHIP 
 
 me however that he had never tolerated the 
 blood-offering commonly made to the "de- 
 mons who attend on Kali." This was simple 
 devil-worship, and he had no place for it. 
 His own effort being constantly to banish 
 fear and weakness from his own conscious- 
 ness and to learn to recognise THE MOTHER 
 as instinctively in evil, terror, sorrow, and 
 annihilation, as in that which makes for 
 sweetness and joy, it followed that the one 
 thing he could not away with was any sort of 
 watering-down of the great conception. 
 "Fools ! " he exclaimed once, as he dwelt in 
 quiet talk on "the worship of the Terrible", 
 on "becoming one with the Terrible" "Fools! 
 they put a garland of flowers round Thy 
 neck, and then start back in terror, and call 
 Thee 'the Merciful ' ! " And as he spoke, 
 the underlying egoism of worship that is 
 devoted to the kind God, to Providence, the 
 consoling Divinity, without a heart for God 
 in the earthquake, or God in the volcano, 
 
 209
 
 MOTHER WORSHIP 
 
 overwhelmed the listener. One saw that 
 such worship was at bottom, as the Hindu 
 calls it, merely 'shop-keeping,' and one real- 
 ised the infinitely greater boldness and truth 
 of the teaching that God manifests through 
 evil as well as through good. One saw that 
 the true attitude for the mind and will that 
 are not to be baffled by the personal self, 
 was in fact the determination, in the stern 
 words of the Swami Vivekananda, 'to seek 
 death not life, to hurl oneself upon the 
 sword's point, to become one with the Ter- 
 rible for evermore !' 
 
 It would have been altogether inconsis- 
 tent with the Swami's idea of freedom, to 
 have sought to impose his own conceptions 
 on a disciple. But everything in my past life 
 as an educationist had contributed to impress 
 on me now the necessity of taking on the 
 Indian consciousness, and the personal per- 
 plexity associated with the memory of the pil- 
 grimage to Amarnath was a witness not to 
 
 210
 
 A BORN EDUCATOR 
 
 be forgotten to the strong place which Indian 
 systems of worship held in that conscious- 
 ness. I set myself therefore to enter into 
 Kali worship, as one would set oneself to 
 learn a new language, or take birth deli- 
 berately, perhaps, in a new race. To this 
 fact I owe it that I was able to understand 
 as much as I did of our Master's life and 
 thought. Step by step, glimpse after 
 glimpse, I began to comprehend a little. And 
 in matters religious, he was, without know- 
 ing it, a born educator. He never checked 
 a struggling thought. Being with him one 
 day when an image of Kali was brought in, 
 and noticing some passing expression, I 
 suddenly said "Perhaps, Swamiji, Kali is 
 the Vision of Siva ! Is She ?" He looked 
 at me for a moment. "Well ! Well ! Express 
 it in your own way," he said gently, "Ex- 
 press it in your own way !" 
 
 Another day he was going with me to 
 visit the old Maharshi Devendra Nath 
 
 211
 
 MOTHER WORSHIP 
 
 Tagore, in the seclusion of his home in 
 Jorasanko, and before we started, he ques- 
 tioned me about a death-scene at which I 
 had been present the night before. I told 
 him eagerly of the sudden realisation that 
 had come to me, that religions were only 
 languages, and we must speak to a man in 
 his own language. His whole face lighted 
 up at the thought. "Yes !" he exclaimed, 
 'And Ramakrishna Paramahamsa was the 
 only man who taught that ! He was the only 
 man who ever had the courage to say that 
 we must speak to all men in their own 
 language !" 
 
 Yet there came a day when he found it 
 necessary to lay down with unmistakeable 
 clearness his own position in the matter of 
 Mother-worship. I was about to lecture at 
 the Kalighat, and he came to instruct me 
 that if any foreign friends should wish to be 
 present, they were to remove their shoes, and 
 sit on the floor, like the rest of the audience. 
 
 2 12
 
 KALI AND VEDANTA 
 
 In that Presence no exceptions were to be 
 made. I was myself to be responsible for 
 this.* 
 
 After saying all this, however, he linger- 
 ed before going, and then, making a shy re- 
 ference to Colonel Hay's poem of the 
 'Guardian Angels ', he said, " That is preci- 
 sely my position about Brahman and the 
 gods ! I believe in Brahman and the gods, 
 and not in anything else !" 
 
 He was evidently afraid that my intellect- 
 ual difficulty would lie where his own must 
 have done, in the incompatibility of the 
 exaltation of one definite scheme of worship 
 with the highest Vedantic theory of Brah- 
 man. He did not understand that to us 
 who stood about him, he was himself the re- 
 conciliation of these opposites, and the wit- 
 ness to the truth of each. Following up this 
 train of thought, therefore, he dropped into 
 
 * In no temple anywhere, ought there to be any exception. No 
 one has any respect for a man who cannot stand for the dignity and 
 sacredness of his own place of worship. N. 
 
 213
 
 MOTHER WORSHIP 
 
 a mood of half-soliloquy, and sat for a while 
 talking disjointedly, answering questions, 
 trying to make himself clear, yet always half- 
 absorbed in something within, as if held by 
 some spell he could not break. 
 
 "How I used to hate Kali I" he said, 
 ''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 ta 
 Her, and now I believe that She guides me 
 in every little thing 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 
 
 214
 
 THE DEDICATION 
 
 secret that will die with me. I had great 
 misfortunes at that time It was an oppor- 
 tunity 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 Rama- 
 krishna Paramahamsa an Incarnation of Kali ? 
 Yes, I think there's no doubt that She work- 
 ed 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 
 
 215
 
 MOTHER WORSHIP 
 
 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 !" 
 
 Similarly, he had returned from a pil- 
 grimage in Kashmir saying " These gods are 
 not merely symbols! They are the forms 
 that the bhaktas have seen ! " And it is told 
 of Sri Ramakrishna that he would sometimes 
 speak, coming out of samadhi, of the past 
 experience of that soul that dwelt within him, 
 "He who came as Rama, as Krishna, as 
 Jesus dwells here" and then would add 
 playfully, turning to his chief disciple, "But 
 not in your Vedanta sense, Noren ! ' 
 
 Thus we are admitted to a glimpse of the 
 
 216
 
 THE TRUST CARRIED 
 
 struggle that goes on in great souls, for the 
 correlation and mutual adjustment of the 
 different realisations of different times. On 
 the one side the Mother, on the other side 
 Brahman. We are reminded of the Swami's 
 own words, heard long ago, " The impersonal 
 God, seen through the mists of sense, is per- 
 sonal." In truth it might well be that the 
 two ideas could not be reconciled. Both 
 conceptions could not be equally true at the 
 same time. It is clear enough that in the 
 end, as a subjective realisation, either the 
 Mother must become Brahman, or Brahman 
 the Mother. One of the two must melt into 
 the other, the question of which, in any parti- 
 cular case, depending on the destiny and the 
 past of the worshipping soul. 
 
 For my own part, the conversation I have 
 related marked an epoch. Ever since it 
 took place, I have thought I saw in my 
 Master's attitude a certain element of one who 
 carried for another a trust confided to him. 
 
 217
 
 MOTHER WORSHIP 
 
 He would always, when asked to explain the 
 image of Kali, speak of it as the book of ex- 
 perience, in which the soul turns page after 
 page, only to find that there is nothing in it, 
 after all. And this, to my own mind, is the 
 final explanation. Kali the Mother is to be 
 the worship of the Indian future. In Her 
 name will her sons find it possible to sound 
 many experiences to their depths. And yet, 
 in the end, their hearts will return to the an- 
 cient wisdom, and each man will know, when 
 his hour comes, that all his life was but as a 
 dream. 
 
 Who does not remember the Veda-like 
 words of the Gita ? " Not, verily, by avoid- 
 ing action, can a man rise to this inaction ! " 
 May we not, similarly, know for a certainty 
 that not without going through this experien- 
 ce can we reach the realisation at the end ? 
 Through the Mother to Brahman, through 
 new life and knowledge, and many changes, 
 through the struggles, the victories, and the 
 
 218
 
 THE PLA Y OF THE MOTHER 
 
 defeats of the immediate future, to that safe 
 haven of the soul where all is One, and all is 
 peace ? As I look more and more closely 
 into the life of that great Teacher whom I 
 have followed, I see each day with growing- 
 clearness, how he himself was turning the 
 pages of the book of experience, and that it 
 was only when he had come to the last word 
 that he could lie back like a weary child, in 
 the arms of his Mother, to be wrapped away 
 at last into the Supreme Revelation, know 
 ing that 'all this was but a dream ! ' 
 
 219
 
 XII 
 
 HALF-WAY ACROSS THE 
 WORLD. 
 
 On the 20th of June 1899, I left Calcutta, 
 by the same steamer as the Swami, and his 
 gurubhai Turiyananda, for London, which 
 we reached on the morning of July 3ist. A 
 few weeks later he left England for America, 
 where I met him once more, late in Septem- 
 ber. After the five or six weeks which I 
 spent there, as a guest in the same house as 
 he, and a fortnight in Brittany in the follow- 
 ing year, 1900, I never again enjoyed any 
 long unbroken opportunity of being with 
 him. Towards the end of 1900 he returned 
 to India, but I remained in the West until 
 the beginning of 1902. And when I then 
 reached India, it was only as if to be present 
 at the closing scene, to receive the last bene- 
 diction. To this voyage of six weeks I look 
 
 220
 
 VINDICATION OF MAN 
 
 back as the greatest occasion of my life. I 
 missed no opportunity of the Swami's society 
 that presented itself, and accepted practically 
 no other, filling up the time with quiet writ- 
 ing and needlework ; thus I received one long 
 continuous impression of his mind and per- 
 sonality, for which I can never be sufficiently 
 thankful. 
 
 From the beginning of the voyage to the 
 end, the flow of thought and story went on. 
 One never knew what moment would see the 
 flash of intuition, and hear the ringing utter- 
 ance of some fresh truth. It was while we 
 sat chatting in the River on the first after- 
 noon, that he suddenly exclaimed, " Yes ! the 
 older I grow, the more everything seems to 
 me to lie in manliness. This is my new 
 gospel. Do even evil like a man ! Be wick- 
 ed, if you must, on a great scale ! " And these 
 words link themselves in my memory with 
 those of another day, when I had been remind- 
 ing him of the rareness of criminality in India. 
 
 221
 
 ACROSS THE WORLD 
 
 And he turned on me, full of sorrowful pro- 
 test. " Would God it were otherwise in my 
 land ! " he said, " for this is verily the virtu- 
 ousness of death ! ' Stories of the Siva- 
 Ratri, or Dark Night of Siva, of Prithi Rai, 
 of the judgment seat of Vikramaditya, of 
 Buddha and Yasodhara, and a thousand more, 
 were constantly coming up. And a notice- 
 able point was, that one never heard the same 
 thing twice. There was the perpetual study 
 of caste ; the constant examination and re- 
 statement of ideas ; the talk of work, past 
 present, and future ; and above all the vindi 
 cation of Humanity, never abandoned, never 
 weakened, always rising to new heights of 
 defence of the undefended, of chivalry for the 
 weak. Our Master has come and he has 
 gone, and in the priceless memory he has left 
 with us who knew him, there is no other 
 thing so great, as this his love of man. 
 
 I cannot forget his indignation when he 
 heard some European reference to cannibal- 
 
 22*
 
 INDIAN HISTORY 
 
 ism, as if it were a normal part of life in some 
 societies. " That is not true !" he said, when 
 he had heard to the' end. " 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 roots of social life ! " Kro- 
 potkin's great work on "Mutual Aid "had 
 not yet appeared, when these words were 
 said. It was his love of Humanity, and his 
 instinct on behalf of each in his own place, 
 that gave to the Swami so clear an insight. 
 
 Again he talked of the religious impulse, 
 "Sex-love and creation !" he cried, "These 
 are at the root of most religion. 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, be- 
 cause it is terrible ; not asking that it be toned 
 down. Let us take misery, for misery's own 
 sake ! " 
 
 223
 
 ACROSS THE WORLD 
 
 As we came to the place where the river- 
 water met the ocean, we could see why the 
 sea had been called ' Kali Pani ' or black 
 water, while the river was ' Sadha Pani ' or 
 white, and the Swami explained how it was 
 the great reverence of Hindus for the ocean, 
 forbidding them to defile it by crossing it, 
 that had made such journeys equal to out- 
 casting for so many centuries. Then, as the 
 ship crossed the line, touching the sea for the 
 first time, he chanted " Namo Shivaya! 
 Namo Shivaya ! Passing from the Land of 
 Renunciation to the Land of the Enjoyment 
 of the World ! " 
 
 He was talking again, of the fact that he 
 who would be great must suffer, and how 
 some were fated to see every joy of the 
 senses turn to ashes, and he 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. 
 
 224
 
 BUDDHISM IN HINDUISM. 
 
 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.' " 
 
 Now he would answer a question, with 
 infinite patience, and again he would play 
 with historic and literary speculations. 
 Again and again his mind would return to 
 the Buddhist period, as the crux of a real 
 understanding of Indian history. 
 
 " The three cycles of Buddhism,'' he said, 
 one day, "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 para- 
 mount, and this made the nation monastic." 
 He had been discussing the question of the 
 
 225
 
 ACROSS THE WORLD 
 
 adoption into Buddhism, as its saints, of the 
 Nags of Kashmir (the great serpents who 
 were supposed to dwell within the springs), 
 after the terrible winter that followed their 
 deposition as deities. 
 
 And he drifted on to talk about the Soma 
 plant, picturing how, for a thousand years 
 after the Himalayan period, it was annually 
 received in Indian villages as if it were a 
 king, the people going out to meet it on a 
 given day, and bringing it in rejoicing. And 
 now it cannot even be identified ! 
 
 Again it was Sher Shah of whom he 
 talked, Sher Shah, making a thirty years' 
 interim in the reign of Humayoon. I re- 
 member the accession of delight with which 
 he began the subject, saying ''He was once 
 a boy, running about the streets of Bengal !" 
 He ended by showing how the Grand Trunk 
 Road from Chittagong to Peshawar, the 
 Postal system, and the Government Bank, 
 were all his work. And then there were 
 
 226
 
 SALUTATION TO THE GURU. 
 
 a few minutes of silence, and he began 
 reciting lines from the Guru Gita. 
 4 'To that Guru who is Brahman, to that 
 Guru who is Vishnu, to that Guru who is 
 Siva, to that Guru who is Para Brahman, 
 I bow down to that Guru. From the 
 Guru is the beginning, yet is he without 
 beginning : to that Guru who is greatest 
 among the gods, to that Guru who is Para 
 Brahman, I bow down to that Guru." He 
 was pursuing some train of thought within, 
 to which these snatches of prayer bore some 
 relation. A moment or two went by, and 
 suddenly he broke his reverie, saying "Yes, 
 Buddha was right ! It must be cause and effect 
 in Karma. This individuality cannot but be 
 an illusion !" It was the next morning, and 
 I had supposed him to be dozing in his 
 chair, when he suddenly exclaimed, "Why 
 the memory of one life is like millions of 
 years of confinement, and they want 
 to wake up the memory of many lives ! 
 
 227
 
 ACROSS THE WORLD 
 
 Sufficient unto the day is the evil 
 thereof !" 
 
 'I have just been talking to Turiyananda 
 about conservative and liberal ideas," he 
 said, as he met me on deck before breakfast 
 one morning, and straightway plunged into 
 the subject. 
 
 " The conservative's whole ideal is sub- 
 mission. Your ideal is struggle. Conse- 
 quently it is we who enjoy life, and never 
 you ! You are always striving to change 
 yours to something better, and before a mil- 
 lionth part of the change is carried out, you 
 die. The Western ideal is to be doing : the 
 Eastern to be suffering. The perfect life would 
 be a wonderful harmony between doing and 
 suffering. But that can never ibe. 
 
 "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 libe- 
 rals see only the ugliness, and try to throw 
 
 228
 
 CONSERVATIVE AND LIBERAL 
 
 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 be- 
 cause self entered into the calculation. 
 Where self has not been involved, my judg- 
 ment has gone straight to the mark. 
 
 " Without this self, there would have 
 been no religious systems. If man had not 
 wanted anything for himself, do you think he 
 would have had all this praying and worship ? 
 
 229
 
 ACROSS THE WORLD 
 
 Why! he would never have thought of Goct 
 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," he said again, 
 " when you think that righting is a sign of 
 growth. It is not so at all. Absorption is 
 the sign. Hinduism is the very genius of 
 absorption. We have never cared for fight- 
 ing. Of course we could strike a blow now 
 and then, in defence 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 new-comers whirl 
 on ! They'll all be taken into Hinduism in 
 the end ! " 
 
 He never thought of his Mother-Church 
 or his Motherland except as dominant ; and 
 again and again, when thinking of definite 
 schemes, he would ejaculate, in his whimsical 
 
 230
 
 INDIAN ACHIEVEMENTS 
 
 way, "Yes, it is true! If European men or 
 women are to work in India, it must be under 
 the black man ! " 
 
 He brooded much over the national 
 achievement. " Well ! well ! " he would say, 
 " We have done one thing that no other peo- 
 ple ever did. We have converted a whole na- 
 tion to one or two ideas. Non-beef-eating for 
 instance. Not one Hindu eats beef. No, 
 no!" turning sharply round "it's not at all 
 like European non-cat-eating; for beef was 
 formerly the food of the country ! " 
 
 We were discussing a certain opponent of 
 his own, and I suggested that he was guilty 
 of putting his sect above his country. "That 
 is Asiatic," retorted the Swami warmly, "and 
 it is grand ! Only he had not the brain to 
 conceive, nor the patience to wait !"' And 
 then he went off into a musing on Kali. 
 " I am not one of those," he chanted, 
 " Who put the garland of skulls round 
 
 Thy neck, 
 
 231
 
 ACROSS THE WORLD 
 
 " And then look back in terror 
 " And call Thee ' The Merciful ' ! 
 "The heart must become a burial ground, 
 " Pride, selfishness, and desire all broken 
 
 into dust, 
 " Then and then alone will the Mother 
 
 dance there!" 
 
 " I love terror for its own sake," he went 
 on, "despair for its own sake, misery for its 
 own sake. Fight always. Fight and fight 
 on, though always in defeat. That's the 
 ideal. That's the ideal." 
 
 " The totality of all souls, not the human 
 alone," he said once, "is the Personal God. 
 The will of the Totality nothing can resist. 
 It is what we know as Law. And this 
 is what we mean by Siva and Kali, and 
 so on." 
 
 Some of the most beautiful scenes in the 
 world have been made for me more beautiful, 
 by listening, in their midst, to these long 
 soliloquies.
 
 RELIGIOUS A USTERITY 
 
 It was dark when we approached Sicily, 
 and against the sunset sky, Etna was in 
 slight eruption. As we entered the straits of 
 Messina, the moon rose, and I walked up and 
 down the deck beside the Swami, while he 
 dwelt on the fact that beauty is not external, 
 but already in the mind. On one side frown- 
 ed the dark crags of the Italian coast, on 
 the other, the island was touched with silver 
 light. " Messina must thank me \ " he said, 
 " It is I who give her all her beauty !" 
 
 Then he talked of the fever of longing to 
 reach God, that had wakened in him as a 
 boy, and of how he would begin repeating a 
 text before sunrise, and remain all day re- 
 peating it, without stirring. He was trying 
 here to explain the idea of tapasya, in answer 
 to my questions, and he spoke of the old way 
 of lighting four fires, and sitting in the 
 midst, hour after hour, with the sun over- 
 head, reining in the mind. "Worship the 
 terrible!" he ended, "Worship Death ! All 
 
 233
 
 ACROSS THE WORLD 
 
 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 alter- 
 native." 
 
 234
 
 XIII 
 GLIMPSES OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 The Swami talked with me one day, of 
 the saints he had seen. The subject began 
 perhaps with that Nag Mahashoy, who had 
 paid him a visit in Calcutta, only a few weeks 
 before, and whose death must have occurred 
 a day or two previous to our leaving. The 
 news reached him, while the ship was still in 
 the River. Nag Mahashoy, he said repeated- 
 ly, was "one of the greatest of the works of 
 Ramakrishna Paramahamsa." He described 
 his impassioned idea of the necessity of 
 bhakti, and how he would refuse to give food, 
 to the body of one so worthless and unfortu- 
 nate as he himself was, in never yet having 
 loved God. He told me, too, how on one 
 occasion Nag Mahashoy had cut down the 
 ridge-pole of his cottage, in order to make 
 the fire to cook food for a guest. 
 
 235
 
 GLIMPSES OF THE SAINTS 
 
 The talk passed perhaps, to the story of 
 that youth who was touched by Sri Rama- 
 krishna's hand, and who never afterwards 
 spoke, save to say "My Beloved ! My Be- 
 loved !" He lived ten years, without other 
 speech than this. 
 
 There were many stories current amongst 
 the monks, of persons who had come to Dukhi- 
 neswar during the life-time of their Master, 
 and being touched by his hand, went imme- 
 diately into Samadki. In many cases, nothing 
 more was known of the visitants than this. 
 This was notably true of a certain woman, 
 who had driven to the Temple, and of whom 
 Sri Ramakrishna had said at once that she 
 was "a fragment of the Madonnahood of the 
 worlds.' He had offered salutation to this 
 guest, in the name of the Mother, throwing 
 flowers on her feet, and burning incense 
 before her, and she, as was not perhaps 
 surprising, had passed immediately into the 
 deepest Samadki. Fr^m this, however, to 
 
 236
 
 A VISION OF THE MADONNA 
 
 everyone's surprise, it had proved most 
 difficult to recall her. It was two or three 
 hours before she awoke from her ecstasy, 
 and when this happened her whole ap- 
 pearance it is said, was as that of one who 
 had been intoxicated. Much relieved that all 
 was ending thus well, however, for it had 
 been feared that her Samadhi might last 
 much longer, and her family, wherever they 
 were, feel justly disturbed all lent their aid 
 to the departure of the stranger from the 
 temple, and none had the forethought to. 
 make a single enquiry as to her name or 
 abode. She never came again. Thus her 
 memory became like some beautiful legend, 
 treasured in the Order as witness to the 
 worship of Sri Ramakrishna for gracious and 
 noble wifehood and motherhood. Had he 
 not said of this woman, "a fragment of the 
 eternal Madonnahood " ? 
 
 In my own ignorance of religious matters 
 in general, my mind felt out much after these 
 
 237
 
 GLIMPSES OF THE SAINTS 
 
 stray children of the central impulse, shining 
 like distant stars in their own orbits, as it 
 were, and never returning upon us or ours. I 
 wanted to know whether, even in lives so fair 
 as theirs, it might perhaps be possible to 
 forget the great experience of a day long 
 years ago, so that the memory of the great 
 Teacher and his touch would become to them 
 also a far-away incident, a story heard in a 
 dream, even as their visits had become to 
 those who saw them pass. I wanted in fact 
 to be able to measure the relative values of 
 many things, and I left out of sight at that 
 time altogether, having not yet begun to 
 consider it the preparedness which the 
 national idea has produced in every Hindu 
 for such experiences. But the Swami could 
 not understand my mental twilight. "Was 
 it a joke," he said, "that Ramakrishna Para- 
 mahamsa should touch a life ? OF COURSE he 
 made new men and new women of those who 
 came to him, even in these fleeting contacts!" 
 
 238
 
 LIVES TRANSFORMED 
 
 And then he would tell story after story of 
 different disciples. How one came, and came 
 again, and struggled to understand. And sud- 
 denly to this one, he turned and said "Go away 
 now, and make some money ! Then 
 come again !" And that man to-day was 
 succeeding in the world, but the old love was 
 proving itself ever alight. There was no 
 mention of the defects of this, or any other of 
 whom he told. As one listened, it was the 
 courage and nobility of each man's struggle 
 that one felt. Why should every man 
 force himself to be a monk ? Nay, how could 
 every man, till his other work was done ? 
 But there would be no mistake in the end. 
 All these would be his at last. 
 
 Similarly, of the saints. His whole soul 
 went to the interpretation of each, as he rose 
 before him, and it would have been im- 
 possible at that moment for the listener to 
 think of any other as higher. Of Pavhari 
 Baba he had so striven to tell us everything, 
 
 239
 
 GLIMPSES OF THE SAINTS 
 
 that it would have seemed scarcely delicate 
 to press vague questions upon him further. 
 All who had been with him at the time of the 
 saint's death knew that he held him second 
 only to Sri Ramakrishna, knew that there 
 was none whose love to himself he had more 
 valued. 
 
 Now he set himself to tell stories for an 
 hour, of one or two others whom he had 
 met. TRAILINGA SWAMI he had seen |when 
 very, very old, more than a hundred, appa- 
 rently. He was always silent. He would 
 lie in a Siva-temple in Benares, with his feet 
 on the image, A madcap, seemingly. He al- 
 lowed people, however, to write him ques- 
 tions, and sometimes, if he fancied one, 
 would write an answer in Sanskrit. This 
 man was lately dead. 
 
 RAGHUNATH DASS had been dead two 
 months, when the Swami reached his ashra- 
 ma. He had been a soldier originally in the 
 British service, and as an outpost sentinel was 
 
 240
 
 RAGHUNATH DASS 
 
 faithful and good, and much beloved by his 
 officers. One night, however, he heard a 
 Ram-Ram party. He tried to do his duty, 
 but " Java Bolo Ram Chunder ki jai ! " 
 maddened him. He threw away his arms and 
 uniform, and joined the worship. 
 
 This went on for some time, till reports 
 came to the Colonel. He sent for Raghu- 
 nath Dass, and asked him whether these 
 were true, and if he knew the penalty. 
 Yes, he knew it. It was to be shot. 
 
 "Well," said the Colonel, "Go away this 
 time, and I shall repeat it to no one. This 
 once I forgive you. But if the same thing 
 happens again, you must suffer the penalty." 
 
 That night, however, the sentinel heard 
 again the Ram-Ram party. He did his best, 
 but it was irresistible. At last he threw all 
 to the winds, and joined the worshippers till ; 
 morning. 
 
 Meanwhile, however, the Colonel's trust 
 in Raghunath Dass had been so great that he 
 
 241
 
 GLIMPSES OF THE SAINTS 
 
 found it difficult to believe anything against 
 him, even on his own confession. So in the 
 course of the night, he visited the outpost, 
 to see for himself. Now Raghunath Dass was 
 was in his place, and exchanged the word with 
 him three times. Then, being reassured, the 
 Colonel turned in, and went to sleep. 
 
 In the morning appeared Raghunath Dass 
 to report himself and surrender his arms. 
 But the report was not accepted, for the 
 Colonel told him what he had himself seen 
 and heard. 
 
 Thunderstruck, the man insisted by some 
 means on retiring from the service. Rama 
 it was who had done this for His servant. 
 Henceforth, in very truth, he would serve no 
 other. 
 
 "He became a Vairagi," said the Swami, 
 "on the banks of the Saraswati. People 
 thought him ignorant, but I knew his power. 
 Daily he would feed thousands. Then would 
 come the grain-seller, after a while, with his 
 
 242
 
 AT HRISHIKESH 
 
 bill. 'H'm !' Raghunath Dass would say, * A 
 thousand rupees you say ? Let me see. It 
 is a month I think since I have received any- 
 thing. This will come, I fancy, to-morrow.' 
 And it always came." 
 
 Some one asked him |if the story of the 
 Ram- Ram party were true. 
 
 "What's the use of knowing such 
 things ? " he answered. 
 
 " I do not ask for curiosity," urged the 
 questioner, "but only to know if it is possible 
 for such things to happen !" 
 
 Nothing is impossible with the Lord !" 
 answered Raghunath Dass. . , > . ^ 
 
 "I saw many great men," went on the 
 Swami, "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 stream- 
 ing down his face and neck. I took him, and 
 
 243
 
 GLIMPSES OF THE SAINTS 
 
 bathed the wound, putting ashes f 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 Abhedan-anda. One day he turned and 
 said ' Sir, is all this really true ?' 
 
 " Oh yes!" said Abhedananda, "it 
 may be difficult to realise, but it is cer- 
 tainly true." 
 
 "And next day, that boy was a silent 
 sannyasin, nude, on his way to Kedar Nath ! 
 
 t These ashes are made by burning a piece of cotton cloth. K. 
 
 244
 
 SHIBI RAN A 
 
 "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 !" 
 
 And then, perhaps, came the story of 
 Shibi Rana. "Ah" yes!" exclaimed the teller, 
 as he ended, "these are the stories that are 
 deep in our nation's heart ! Never forget 
 that the sannyasin takes two vows, one to 
 realise 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 !" 
 
 245
 
 XIV 
 PAST AND FUTURE IN INDIA 
 
 Even a journey round the world be- 
 comes a pilgrimage, if one makes it with the 
 Guru. It was late one evening, in the Red 
 Sea, when I brought to the Swami some 
 perplexity, of a personal nature, about the 
 right method of helpfulness to others. It was 
 rarely, indeed, that he would answer a 
 question of this sort, without first turning for 
 authority to some dictum of the Shastras. 
 And how grateful does one become later for 
 this fact! It was his personal opinion that 
 one desired. But giving this, as he did, in 
 the form of a comment on some text, it went 
 much deeper into the mind, and became the 
 subject of much longer thought and consi- 
 deration, than if he had answered at once, in 
 the sense required by the impatient ques- 
 tioner. 
 
 246
 
 THE BROKEN VOW 
 
 In the same way, when I had asked him 
 what becomes of those who failed to keep 
 their vows, he had gone all the way round 
 by a beautiful Sanskrit quotation, to answer 
 me. Even now, I hear the ring of his 
 wonderful voice, repeating Arjuna's question: 
 
 h ifH 
 
 Gita vi. j/, 38. 
 
 They who begin with Shraddha, 
 and afterwards become unsteady, to what 
 end do those come, O Krishna, who fail 
 in yogat Do they, fallen from both 
 estates, perish, blasted, like a summer- 
 cloud before the wind ? 
 
 And the answer of Sri Krishna, fearless, 
 triumphant, 
 
 247
 
 PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 "Neither here nor hereafter, O Son of 
 Pritha, shall such meet with destruction. 
 NEVER shall one who has done good, come 
 to grief, O my son ! " 
 
 And then he drifted into a talk that I 
 can never forget. First he explained how 
 everything, short of the absolute control of 
 mind, word, and deed, was but "the sowing 
 of wild oats." Then he told how the reli- 
 gious who failed would sometimes be born 
 again to a throne, 'there to sow his wild oats/ 
 in gratifying that particular desire which had 
 led to his downfall. 'A memory of the religious 
 habit,' he said, 'often haunts the throne/ 
 For one of the signs of greatness was held to 
 be the persistence of a faint memory. Akbar 
 had had this memory. He thought of him- 
 self as a brahmacharin who had failed in his 
 Vows. But he would be born again, in more 
 favourable surroundings, and that time he 
 would succeed. And then there came one of 
 those personal glimpses which occurred so 
 
 248
 
 TAMASIC CHARITY 
 
 seldom with our Master. Carried away by the 
 talk of memory, he lifted the visor for a 
 moment, on his own soul. "And whatever 
 you may think," he said, turning to me 
 suddenly, and addressing me by name, "I 
 have such a memory ! When I was only two 
 years old, I used to play with my syce, at 
 being a vairagi, clothed in ashes and kaupina, 
 And if a Sadku came to beg, they would 
 lock me in, upstairs, to prevent my giving 
 too much away. I felt that I also was this, 
 and that for some mischief I had had to be 
 sent away from Siva. No doubt my family 
 increased this feeling, for when I was 
 naughty they would say "Dear, dear ! so 
 many austerities, yet Siva sent us this demon 
 after all, instead of a good soul ! Or when I 
 was very rebellious they would empty a can of 
 water over me, saying 'Siva ! Siva' ! And then 
 I was all right, always. Even now, when I 
 feel mischievous, that word keeps me straight. 
 'No !' I say to myself, 'not this time !' " 
 
 249
 
 PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 On the present occasion, then, he 
 went back, in similar fashion, to the Gita. 
 "The Gita says," he answered me, "that 
 there are three kinds of charity, the Tamasic, 
 the Rajasic, and the Sattvic. Tamasic charity 
 is performed on an impulse. It is always 
 making mistakes. The doer thinks of no- 
 thing but his own impulse to be kind. Raja- 
 sic 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. Your own," he said, 
 referring to the incident that had brought 
 about my question, "was, I fear, like the 
 tamasic charity. 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." 
 
 250
 
 TRUE GREATNESS 
 
 His voice sank into silence, and we sat 
 looking out over the starlit sea. Then he 
 took up the thread again. "As I grow older 
 I find that I look more and more for great- 
 ness in little things. I want to know what a 
 great man eats and wears, and how he 
 speaks to his servants. I want to find a Sir 
 Philip Sidney greatness ! Few men would 
 remember the thirst of others, even in the 
 
 moment of death. 
 
 "But anyone will be great in a great posi- 
 tion ! Even the coward will grow brave in 
 the glare of the foot-lights. 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 silent- 
 ly, steadily, from moment to moment, and 
 hour to hour." 
 
 How many points on the map have 
 received a new beauty in my eyes, from the 
 conversations they recall ! As we passed up 
 
 251
 
 PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 the coast of Italy, we talked of the Church. 
 As we went through the Straits of Bonifacio, 
 and sat looking at the south coast of Corsica, 
 he spoke in a hushed voice of "this land of 
 the birth of the War- Lord," and wandered 
 far afield, to talk of the strength of Robes- 
 pierre, or to touch on Victor Hugo's con- 
 tempt for Napoleon III, with his "Et tu 
 Napoleon !" 
 
 As I came on deck, on the morning of 
 our passing through the Straits of Gibraltar, 
 he met me with the words "Have you seen 
 them ? Have you seen them ? Landing there 
 and crying 'Din ! Din! The Faith ! The 
 Faith !' " And for half-an-hour I was swept 
 away into his dramatisation of the Moorish 
 invasions of Spain. 
 
 Or again, on a Sunday evening, he would 
 sit and talk of Buddha, putting new life into 
 the customary historic recital of bare facts, 
 and interpreting the Great Renunciation as 
 it had appeared to him who made it 
 
 252
 
 HIS MESSAGE 
 
 But his talks were not all entertaining r 
 nor even all educational. Every now and 
 then he would return, with consuming eager- 
 ness, to the great purpose of his life. And 
 when he did this, I listened with an anxious 
 mind, striving to treasure up each word that 
 he let fall. For I knew that here I was but 
 the transmitter, but the bridge, between him 
 and that countless host of his own people, 
 who would yet arise, and seek to make good 
 his dreams. 
 
 One of these occasions came on a certain 
 evening, as we neared Aden. I had asked 
 him, in the morning, to tell me, in broad out- 
 line, what he felt to be the points of differ- 
 ence between his own schemes for the good 
 of India, and those preached by others. It 
 was impossible to draw him out on this sub- 
 ject. On the contrary, he expressed appreci- 
 ation of certain personal characteristics and 
 lines of conduct, adopted by some of the 
 leaders of other schools, and I regarded the 
 
 253
 
 PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 question as dismissed. Suddenly, in the even- 
 ing, he returned to the subject of his own accord. 
 "I disagree with all those," he said, "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 state of things must be a 
 growth from within. 
 
 "So I preach only the Upanishads. If 
 you look, you will find that I have never quoted 
 anything but the Upanishads. And of the 
 Upanishads, it is only that one idea strength. 
 The quintessence of Vedas and Vedanta and 
 all, lies in that one word. Buddha's teaching 
 was of Non-resistance or Non-injury. But 
 I think this is a better way of teaching 
 the same thing. For behind that Non-injury 
 
 254
 
 BE STRONG 
 
 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 fear- 
 lessness. My own ideal is that giant of a 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 uncons- 
 cious method ! He did not understand him- 
 self. 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 
 
 255
 
 PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 old man as I finished, 'perhaps every house 
 may have a back door. Who knows' ? 
 
 "Hitherto the great fault of our Indian 
 religion has lain in its knowing only two 
 words renunciation and mukti. Only muktt 
 here ! Nothing for the householder ! 
 
 "But these ar^ 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." 
 
 I thought at the time, and I think increas- 
 ingly, as I consider it, that this one talk of 
 my Master had been well worth the whole 
 voyage, to have heard. 
 
 256
 
 XV 
 ON HINDUISM 
 
 The Swami was constantly preoccupied 
 with the thought of Hinduism as a whole, 
 and this fact found recurring expression in 
 references to Vaishnavism. As a sannyasin, 
 his own imagination was perhaps dominated 
 by the conceptions of Saivaism. But Vaish- 
 navism offered him a subject of perpetual 
 interest and analysis. The thing he knew 
 by experience was the truth of the doctrine 
 of Advaita. The symbols under which he 
 would seek to convey this were the monastic 
 ideal and the Worship of the Terrible. But 
 these were truths for heroes. By their 
 means, one might gather an army. The 
 bulk of mankind would always think of God 
 as a Divine Providence, a tender Preserver, 
 and the question of questions was how to 
 deepen the popular knowledge, of the connec- 
 
 257
 
 HINDUISM 
 
 tion between this type of belief and the 
 highest philosophy. With regard to the 
 West, indeed, the bridges had actually to be 
 built. Advaita had to be explained and 
 preached. But in India, all this had been 
 done long ago. The facts were universally 
 admitted. It was only necessary to renew 
 realisation, to remind the nation of the inter- 
 relation of all parts of its own faith, and to 
 go again and again over the ground, in order 
 to see that no weak point remained, in the 
 argument by which Vaishnavism was de- 
 monstrated to be as essential to the highest 
 philosophy, as that philosophy was acknowl- 
 edged to be, to it. 
 
 Thus he loved to dwell on the spectacle 
 of the historical emergence of Hinduism. 
 He sought constantly for the great force 
 behind the evolution of any given phenome- 
 non. Where was the thinker behind the 
 founder of a religion? And where, on the other 
 hand was the heart to complete the thought? 
 
 258
 
 THE SANKHYA PHILOSOPHY 
 
 Buddha had received his philosophy of the 
 five categories form, feeling, sensation, mo- 
 tion, knowledge from Kapila. But Buddha 
 had brought the love that made the philoso- 
 phy live. Of no one of these, Kapila had 
 said, can anything be declared. For each 
 is not. It but was, and is gone. " Each is 
 but the ripple on the waters. Know, Oh man ! 
 thou art the sea! " 
 
 Krishna, in his turn, as the preacher 
 and creative centre of popular Hinduism, 
 awoke in the Swami a feeling which 
 was scarcely second to his passionate 
 personal adoration of Buddha. Compared 
 to His many-sidedness, the sannyas of 
 Buddha was almost a weakness. How 
 wonderful was the Gita! Reading it, as a boy, 
 he would be stopped every now and then 
 by some great sentence, which would go 
 throbbing through his brain for days and 
 nights. "They who find pleasure and pain 
 the same, heat and cold the same, friend 
 
 259
 
 HINDUISM 
 
 and foe the same!" And that descrip- 
 tion of the battle a spirited battle too ! 
 with the opening words of Krishna, " 111 
 doth it befit thee, Arjuna, thus to yield to 
 unmanliness !" How strong! But besides 
 this, there was the beauty of it. The Gita, 
 after the Buddhist writings, was such a 
 relief! Buddha had constantly said "I am 
 for the People ! " And they had crushed, in 
 his name, the vanity of art and learning. 
 The great mistake committed by Buddhism 
 lay in the destruction of the old. 
 
 For the Buddhist books were torture to 
 read. Having been written for the ignorant, 
 one would find only one or two thoughts 
 in a huge volume.* It was to meet the 
 need thus roused, that the Puranas were 
 intended. There had been only one mind in 
 India that had foreseen this need, that of 
 
 * It is not be supposed that the Swami here referred to the 
 Dhammapada a work which he always placed on a level with the 
 Gita. The reference, I think was rather to such books as those 
 Jataka Birth Stories which are published in two volumes in 
 Trubner's Oriental Series. 
 
 260
 
 LIFE REVEALS GOD 
 
 Krishna, probably the greatest man who ever 
 lived. He recognises at once the need of the 
 People, and the desirability of preserving all 
 that had already been gained. Nor are the 
 Gopi story and the Gita (which speaks again 
 and again of women and sudras) the only 
 forms in which he reached the ignorant. 
 For the whole Mahabharata is his, carried 
 out by his worshippers, and it begins 
 with the declaration that it is for the 
 People. 
 
 "Thus is created a religion that ends in 
 the worship of Vishnu, as the preservation 
 and enjoyment of life, leading to the realisa- 
 of God. Our last movement, Chaitanyism, 
 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 
 
 * The Swami was characterising doctrine here : he was not 
 speaking of the personal asceticism of Sri Chaitainya, which has 
 probably never been surpassed. 
 
 26l
 
 HINDU SIM 
 
 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 instru- 
 ment, 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 l^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 that Vedantic 
 
 262
 
 INDIA NOT EFFETE 
 
 cry, 'Control the senses ! suppress the 
 senses !' 
 
 "At the present moment, we may see three 
 different positions of the national religion 
 the orthodox, the Arya Samaj, and the 
 Brahmo Samaj. The orthdox covers the 
 ground taken by the Vedic Hindus of the 
 Mahabharata epoch. The Arya Samaj corres- 
 ponds with Jainism, aud the Brahmo Samaj 
 with the Buddhists. 
 
 "I see that India is a young and living 
 organism. Europe also 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 dua- 
 listic, which is spiritual communism. Thus the 
 one consists of socialist institutions, hedged 
 
 263
 
 HINDUISM 
 
 in by individualistic 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 that character was all faults." 
 
 His mind was extraordinarily clear on 
 the subject of what he meant by individualism. 
 How often has he said to me "You do not 
 yet understand India! We Indians are MAN- 
 worshippers, after all ! Our God is man !" 
 He meant here the great individual man, the 
 man of self-realisation, Buddha, Krishna, 
 the Guru, the Maha-Purusha. But on another 
 occasion, using the same word in an entirely 
 
 264
 
 THE WORSHIP OF HUMANITY 
 
 different sense, he said "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-worship- 
 pers. " 
 
 He was equally clear, again, about the 
 value of the image. "You may always say, " 
 he said, "that the image is God. The error 
 you have to avoid, is to think God the image." 
 He was appealed to, on one occasion, to 
 condemn the fetichism of the Hottentot. 
 "I do not know," he answered, "what 
 fetichism is !" 
 
 A lurid picture was hastily put before 
 him, of the object alternately worshipped, 
 beaten, thanked, "/ do that !" he exclaim- 
 ed. "Don't you see," he went on, a moment 
 later, in hot resentment of injustice done to 
 
 * That is to say, the worship of the manhood which exists in any 
 man, in all men, apart from their individual achievement of thought 
 or character, humanity. 
 
 265
 
 HINDU SIM 
 
 the lowly and absent, "Don't you see that 
 there is no fetichism ? 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 fetichism ! Can you not see ?" 
 
 But while every sincere ejaculation was 
 thus sacred to him, he never forgot for a 
 moment the importance of the philosophy of 
 Hinduism. And he would throw perpetual 
 flashes of poetry into the illustration of such 
 arguments as are known to lawyers. How 
 lovingly he would dwell upon the mimansaka 
 philosophy ! With what pride he would 
 remind the listener that, according to Hindu 
 savants, "the whole universe is only the mean- 
 ing of words. After the word comes the 
 thing. Therefore, the idea is all !" And in- 
 
 266
 
 THE MIMANSAKAS 
 
 deed, as he expounded it, the daring of the 
 mimansaka argument, the fearlessness of its- 
 admissions, and the firmness of its inferences, 
 appeared as the very glory of Hinduism, 
 There is assuredly no evasion of the logical 
 issue in a people who can say, even while 
 they worship the image, that the image is 
 nothing but the idea made objective ; 
 that prayer is powerful in proportion to the 
 concentration it represents ; that the gods- 
 exist only in the mind, and yet the more as- 
 suredly exist. The whole train of thought 
 sounded like the most destructive attack of 
 the iconoclast, yet it was being used for the 
 exposition of a faith ! One day, he told the 
 story of Satyavama's sacrifice and how the 
 word "Krishna," written on a piece of paper, 
 and thrown into the balances, made Krishna 
 himself, on the other side, kick the beam. 
 "Orthodox Hinduism" he began, "makes 
 sruti, the sound, everything. The thing is but 
 a feeble manifestation of the pre-existing and 
 
 267
 
 HINDUISM 
 
 eternal Idea. So the name of God is every- 
 thing : God Himself is merely the objectifica- 
 tion 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 you your speech !" Surely 
 there has never been another religious 
 system so fearless of truth ! As he talked, one 
 saw that the whole turned on the unspoken 
 conviction, self-apparent to the Oriental mind, 
 that religion is not a creed, but an experience ; 
 a process, as the Swami himself has else- 
 where said, of being and becoming. If it be 
 true that this process leads inevitably from 
 the apprehension of the manifold to the 
 realisation of the One, then it must also 
 be true that everything is in the mind, and 
 that the material is nothing more than the 
 concretising of ideas. Thus the Greek philo- 
 sophy of Plato is included within the Hindu 
 philosophy of the mimansakas, and a doctrine 
 that sounds merely empiric on the lips of 
 
 268
 
 INDIAN LOGIC 
 
 Europe, finds reason and necessity, on those 
 of India. In the same way, as one declaring 
 a truth self-evident, he exclaimed, on one 
 occasion, "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." 
 
 But his references to philosophy did not by 
 any means always consist of these epicurean 
 tit-bits. He was merciless, as a rule, in the 
 demand for intellectual effort, and would 
 hold a group of unlearned listeners through 
 an analysis of early systems, for a couple of 
 hours at a stretch, without suspecting them, 
 of weariness or difficulty. It was evident, too, 
 at such times, that his mind was following 
 the train of argument in another language, 
 for his translations of technical terms would 
 vary from time to time. 
 
 In this way he would run over the six 
 
 269
 
 HINDUSIM 
 
 objects with which the mind has to deal, in 
 making up the universe according to the 
 Vaisheshik formulation. These were sub- 
 stance,* quality, action, togetherness, 
 classification or differentiation, and in- 
 separable inherence as between cause and 
 effect, parts and the whole. With this he 
 would compare the five categories of 
 Buddhism, form, feeling, consciousness, 
 reaction \i. e. the resultant of all previous 
 impressions], and vidya, or judgment. The 
 Buddhist made form the resultant of all 
 the others, and nothing by itself; the goal 
 therefore, for Buddhism, was beyond vidya 
 [which Buddhism called Pro/no], and out- 
 side the five categories. Side by side with this, 
 he would place the three illusive categories of 
 the Vedanta (and of Kant) time, space, 
 and causation \Kala-desh-nimittd\ appearing 
 as name-and-form, which is maya, that 
 
 * Subttance, according to the Vaisheshik, consists of the fire 
 elements, time space, mind and soul. 
 
 270
 
 INDIAN LOGIC 
 
 is to say, neither existence nor non- 
 existence. It was clear, then, that the seen 
 was not, according to this, a being. Rather 
 is it an eternal, changeful process. Being 
 is one, but process makes this being appear 
 as many. Evolution and involution are both 
 alike in Maya. They are certainly not 
 in Being [Sat], which remains eternally the 
 same. 
 
 Nor would western speculations pass 
 forgotten, in this great restoration of the 
 path the race had come by. For this was a 
 mind which saw only the seeking, pursuing, 
 enquiry of man, making no arbitrary distinc- 
 tions as between ancient and modern. The 
 analysis of the modern syllogism under the 
 old Indian title of "the five limbs of the argu- 
 ment" would be followed by the four proofs 
 of the Nyayas. These were, (i) direct per- 
 ception ; (2) inference ; (3) analogy ; and 
 (4) testimony. According to this logic, 
 the induction and deduction of the moderns 
 
 271
 
 HINDUISM 
 
 were not recognised : inference was regarded as 
 always from the more known to the less known, 
 or from the less to the more. The inference 
 from direct perception was divided into three 
 different kinds: first, that in which the effect is 
 inferred from the cause; second, that in which 
 cause is inferred from effect, and thirdly, 
 the case in which inference is determined 
 by concomitant circumstances. Methods 
 of inference, again, were fivefold : by agree- 
 ment, by difference, by double method 
 of agreement and difference, by partial 
 method of agreement, and by partial method 
 of difference. The two last were sometimes 
 classed together as the method of the 
 residuum. It was quite clear that only the 
 third of these could furnish a perfect 
 inference ; that is to say, "proof is only 
 complete when the negative has been 
 proved, as well as the affirmative. Thus 
 God can never be proved to be the cause 
 of the Universe. 
 
 272
 
 ALL IS INFERENCE 
 
 "There is, again, the fact of pervasiveness 
 A stone falls, and crushes a worm. Hence 
 we infer that all stones, falling, crush worms. 
 Why do we thus immediately re-apply a per- 
 ception ? Experience, says some 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 ap- 
 plied 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 discrimina- 
 tion depends all human knowledge. 
 
 "With regard to fallacies, it must be re- 
 membered 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 emo- 
 tion, will have the effect of disturbing the 
 observation. Therefore direct perception 
 itself is but a mode of inference. Therefore 
 
 273
 
 HINDUISM 
 
 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 Mlechha 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 !" 
 
 274
 
 XVI 
 GLIMPSES IN THE WEST. 
 
 On July the 3ist, we arrived in London, 
 and the voyage that to myself had been 
 so memorable, was over. The Swami 
 spent a few weeks in Wimbledon, but at 
 this time of the year, not many of his 
 friends were in town, and before long he 
 acceded to the invitations which were cons- 
 tantly reaching him, and went on to America, 
 there to wait, in a beautiful country-home on 
 the Hudson, for the leading that he confi- 
 dently expected, to show him where his next 
 effort was to lie. A month later, I became 
 a guest in the same house, and continued 
 to see him daily, until November the 5th, that 
 is to say, six or seven weeks later. After 
 that date, when our party was broken up, 
 the Swami paid a few visits in New York 
 and its neighbourhood. At the end of the 
 
 275
 
 IN THE WEST 
 
 month he passed through Chicago, where- 
 I then was, on his way to California. Again 
 I met him in New York in the following 
 June (1900). There for a few weeks, and 
 later in Paris for a similar length of time, 
 I saw him frequently ; and in September, 
 finally, I spent a fortnight as his fellow- 
 guest, with American friends, in Brittany. 
 So ends the priceless memory of the years of 
 my schooling under him. For when I next 
 saw my Master, in India in the first half of 
 1902, it was only to receive his final blessing 
 and take a last farewell. 
 
 Discipleship is always serenely passive, 
 but it changes, at a moment's notice, into' 
 strenuous effort and activity, when the per- 
 sonal presence of the Teacher is withdrawn. 
 And this last was what our Master above 
 all expected of his disciples. He said once 
 that whenever a young monk, received for a 
 few weeks or months into the monastery, 
 complained that as yet he had learnt nothing.
 
 THE FAREWELL CHARGE 
 
 he always sent him back for a while to the 
 world he had left, there to find out how very 
 much he had in fact absorbed. Every part- 
 ing from him was like the entrusting of a 
 standard for warfare. " Be the heroic Raj- 
 put wife !" he exclaimed in an undertone on 
 one occasion, to a girl who was about to 
 give way to emotion, at saying farewell to 
 her betrothed. And the words acted like a 
 charm. His last words, after my brief 
 glimpse of him in Chicago, were " Remem- 
 ber! the message of India is always ' Not 
 the soul for Nature, but Nature for the soul\ 
 When I said good-bye to him in Brittany 
 in September, 1900, I was on the eve of 
 returning alone to England, there to find 
 friends and means, if possible, for the Indian 
 work. I knew nothing as yet of the length of 
 my stay. I had no plans. And the thought 
 may have crossed his mind that old ties 
 were perilous to a foreign allegiance. He 
 had seen so many betrayals of honour that 
 
 277
 
 IN THE WEST 
 
 he seemed always to be ready for a new 
 desertion. In any case, the moment was 
 critical to the fate of the disciple, and this he 
 did not fail to realise. Suddenly, on my 
 last evening in Brittany, when supper was 
 some time over, and the darkness had 
 fallen, I heard him at the door of my little 
 arbour-study, calling me into the garden. 
 I came out, and found him waiting to give 
 me his blessing, before leaving, with a man- 
 friend, for the cottage where they were both 
 housed. 
 
 " There is a. peculiar sect of Mohamme- 
 dans, " he said, when he saw me, "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, to- 
 night 'Go forth into the world, and there, if 
 I made you, be destroyed! If Mother made 
 ybu, live!" 
 
 278
 
 THE FAREWELL CHARGE 
 
 Yet he came again next morning, soon 
 after dawn, to say farewell, and in my last 
 memory of him in Europe, I look back once 
 more from the peasant market-cart, and see 
 his form against the morning sky, as he 
 stands on the road outside our cottage at 
 Lannion, with hands uplifted, in that Eastern 
 salutation which is also benediction, 
 
 The outstanding impression made by the 
 Swami's bearing, during all these months of 
 European and American life, was one of al- 
 most complete indifference to his surround- 
 ings. Current estimates of value left him 
 entirely unaffected. He was never in any 
 way startled or incredulous under success, 
 being too deeply convinced of the greatness 
 of the Power that worked through him, to be 
 surprised by it. But neither was he un- 
 nerved by external failure, Both victory 
 and defeat would come and go. He was 
 their witness. " Why should I care, if the 
 world itself were to disappear ?" he said once. 
 
 279
 
 IN THE WEST 
 
 " According to my philosophy, that, you 
 know, would be a very good thing ! But in 
 fact," he added, in tones suddenly graver, 
 " All that is against me must be with me in 
 the end. Am I not HER soldier ? " 
 
 He moved fearless and unhesitant through 
 the luxury of the West. As determinedly as 
 I had seen him in India, dressed in the two 
 garments of simple folk, sitting on the floor 
 and eating with his fingers, so, equally with- 
 out doubt or shrinking, was his acceptance of 
 the complexity of the means of living in 
 America or France. Monk and king, he said, 
 were obverse and reverse of a single medal. 
 From the use of the best, to the renunciation 
 of all, was but one step. India had thrown 
 all her prestige in the past, round poverty. 
 Some prestige was in the future to be cast 
 round wealth. 
 
 Rapid changes of fortune, however, must 
 always be the fate of one who wanders from 
 door to door, accepting the hospitality of 
 
 280
 
 LOVE OF THE LOWLY 
 
 foreign peoples. These reversals he never 
 seemed to notice. No institution, no envi- 
 ronment, stood between him and any human 
 heart. His confidence in that Divine-within- 
 Man of which he talked, was as perfect, and 
 his appeal as direct, when he talked with the 
 imperialist aristocrat or the American mil- 
 lionaire, as with the exploited and oppressed. 
 But the out-flow of his love and courtesy 
 were always for the simple. 
 
 When, travelling in America, he had at 
 first in certain Southern towns been taken 
 for a negro, and refused admission to the 
 hotels, he had never said that he was not of 
 African blood, but had as quietly and grate- 
 fully availed himself of the society of the 
 coloured race, when that was offered, as of 
 that of the local magnates who hastened 
 round him later, in mortified apology for 
 what they deemed the insult put upon him. 
 "What ! rise at the expense of another !" he 
 was heard to say to himself, long after, when 
 
 281
 
 IN THE WEST 
 
 some one referred with astonishment to 
 this silence about his race, "Rise at the 
 expense of another ! I did n't come to 
 earth for that !" It is not for the monk to 
 dictate terms : the monk submits. Often, 
 in after-years, he spoke of the pathos of 
 the confidences regarding race-exclu- 
 sion, which he had received at this time. 
 Few things ever gave him such pleasure as 
 a negro railway-servant who came up to him 
 on one occasion, in a station, saying that he 
 had heard how in him one of his own people 
 had become a great man, and he would like 
 to shake hands. Finally, it was never pos- 
 sible, in his presence, for the vulgar social 
 exultation of the white man to pass unrebuk- 
 ed. How stern he would become at any 
 sign of this ! How scathing was his reproof! 
 And above all, how glowing was the picture 
 he would paint, of a possible future for these 
 children of the race, when they should have 
 outstripped all others, and become the leaders 
 
 282
 
 THE TARTAR BLOOD 
 
 of Humanity ! He was scornful in his repu- 
 diation of the pseudo-ethnology of privileged 
 races. " If I am grateful to my white-skin- 
 ned Aryan ancestor," he said, ' I am far 
 more so to my yellow-skinned Mongolian 
 ancestor, and most so of all, to the black- 
 skinned Negritoid ! " 
 
 He was immensely proud, in his own 
 physiognomy, of what he called his 'Mongo- 
 lian jaw,' regarding it as a sign of 'bull-dog, 
 tenacity of purpose'; and referring to this 
 particular race-element, which he believed to 
 be behind every Aryan people, he one day 
 exclaimed " Don't you see ? the Tartar is the 
 wine of the race ! He gives energy and 
 power to every blood !" 
 
 In seeking to penetrate his indifference to 
 circumstance, one has to remember that it 
 was based on a constant effort to find the 
 ideal thinking-place. Each family, each 
 hearth-stone, was appreciated by him, in the 
 degree in which it provided that mental and 
 
 283
 
 77V THE WEST 
 
 emotional poise which makes the highest 
 intellectual life possible. One of a party who 
 visited Mont Saint Michel with him on Mi- 
 chaelmas Day 1900, and happened to stand 
 next to him, looking at the dungeon-cages of 
 mediaeval prisoners, was startled to hear him 
 say, under his breath, "What a wonderful 
 place for meditation !" There are still some 
 amongst those who entertained him in Chi- 
 cago in 1893, wno te ll of the difficulty with 
 which, on his first arrival in the West, he 
 broke through the habit of falling constantly 
 into absorption. He would enter a tram, 
 and have to pay the fare for the whole length 
 of the line, more than once in a single jour- 
 ney, perhaps, being too deeply engrossed in 
 thought to know when he had reached his desti- 
 nation. As years went on, and these friends 
 met him from time to time, they saw the gradual 
 change to an attitude of apparent readiness 
 and actuality. But such alterations were 
 little more than surface-deep. Beneath, the
 
 INACTIVITY IN ACTIVITY 
 
 will glowed with all its old fervour, the mind 
 held itself ever on the brink of the universal. 
 It seemed almost as if it were by some anta- 
 gonistic power, that he was ' bowled along 
 from place to place, being broken the while/ 
 to use his own graphic phrase. " Oh I know 
 I have wandered over the whole earth," he 
 cried once, " but in India I have looked 
 for nothing, save the cave in which to- 
 meditate ! " 
 
 And yet he was a constant and a keen 
 observer. Museums, universities, institu- 
 tions, local history, found in him an eager 
 student. It was the personal aspect of con- 
 ditions that left him unaffected. Never did 
 the contrast between two hemispheres pass 
 before a mind better fitted to respond to its 
 stimulus. He approached everything through 
 the ideas which it sought to express. During 
 the voyage to England, he came on deck one 
 day after a sound sleep, and told me that he 
 had in his dreams been pursuing a discussion, 
 
 285
 
 IN THE WEST 
 
 as between Eastern and Western ideals of 
 marriage, and had come to the conclusion 
 that there was something in both that the 
 world could ill afford to lose. At the end of 
 his last visit to America, he told me that on 
 first seeing Western civilisation he had been 
 greatly attracted by it, but now he saw 
 mainly its greed and power, Like others, he 
 had accepted without thought the assumption 
 that machinery would be a boon to agricul- 
 ture, but he could now see that while the 
 American farmer, with his several square 
 miles to farm, might be the better for ma- 
 chines, they were likely to do little but harm 
 on the tiny farmlands of the Indian peasan- 
 try. The problem was quite different in the 
 two cases. Of that alone, he was firmly con- 
 vinced. In everything, including the problem 
 of distribution, he listened with suspicion to 
 all arguments that would work for the elimi- 
 nation of small interests, appearing in this as 
 in so many other things, as the perfect, 
 
 286
 
 PRIDE OF COUNTRY 
 
 though unconscious expression, of the spirit 
 of the old Indian civilisation. A strong habit 
 of combination he was able to admire, but 
 what beauty of combination was there, 
 amongst a pack of wolves ? 
 
 He had an intense objection to discussing 
 the grievances, or the problems of India, in 
 a foreign country ; and felt deeply humiliated 
 when this was done in his presence. Nor 
 did he ever fail, on the other hand, to back 
 a fellow-countryman against the world. It 
 was useless for Europeans to talk to him of 
 their theories, if an Indian investigator in the 
 same line had come to an opposite conclu- 
 sion. With the simplicity and frankness of a 
 child, he would answer that he supposed his 
 friend would invent more delicate instru- 
 ments, and make more accurate measure 
 ments, which would enable him to prove 
 his point. 
 
 Thus, student and citizen of the world as 
 others were proud to claim him, it was yet 
 
 287
 
 IN THE WEST 
 
 always on the glory of his Indian birth that 
 he took his stand. And in the midst of the 
 surroundings and opportunities of princes, it 
 was more and more the monk who stood 
 revealed. 
 
 288
 
 XVII 
 
 THE SWAMI'S MISSION CONSI- 
 DERED AS A WHOLE. 
 
 The mission of Buddha, in the centuries 
 before the Christian era, was twofold. He 
 was the source, on the one hand, of a current 
 of energy, that swept out from the home- 
 waters to warm and fertilise the shores of 
 distant lands. India, scattering his message 
 over the Eastern world, became the maker 
 of nations, of churches, of literatures, arts 
 and scientific systems, in countries far beyond 
 her own borders. But within India proper, 
 the life of the Great Teacher was the first 
 nationaliser. By democratising the Aryan 
 culture of the Upanishads, Buddha deter- 
 mined the common Indian civilisation, and 
 gave birth to the Indian nation of future 
 ages. 
 
 Similiarly, in the great life that I have 
 
 289
 
 THE SWAMPS MISSION 
 
 seen, I cannot but think that a double pur- 
 pose is served, one of world-moving, and 
 another, of nation-making. As regarded 
 foreign countries, Vivekananda was the first 
 authoritative exponent, to Western nations, 
 of the ideas of the Vedas and Upanishads. 
 He had no dogma of his own to set forth. "I 
 have never," he said, "quoted anything but 
 the Vedas and Upanishads, and from them 
 only that the word strength !" He preached 
 mukti instead of heaven ; enlightenment in- 
 stead of salvation ; the realisation of the 
 Immanent Unity, Brahman, instead of God; 
 the truth of all faiths, instead of the binding 
 force of any one. 
 
 Western scholars were sometimes amazed 
 and uncomfortable, at hearing the subject of 
 the learned researches of the study poured 
 out as living truths, with all the fervour of the 
 pulpit, but the scholarship of the preacher 
 proved itself easily superior to any tests they 
 could offer. His doctrine was no academic 
 
 290
 
 THE FOCUS OF BOOKS 
 
 system of metaphysics, of purely historic and 
 linguistic interest, but the heart's faith of a 
 living people, who have struggled continuous- 
 ly for its realisation, in life and in death, for 
 twenty-five centuries. Books had been to him 
 not the source and fountain of knowledge, 
 but a mere commentary on, and explanation 
 of, a Life whose brightness would, without 
 them have dazzled him, and left him incap- 
 able of analysing it. It had been this same 
 life of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa that had 
 forced upon him the conviction that the 
 theory of Advaita, as propounded by Sankar- 
 acharya the theory that all is One and there 
 is no second was ultimately the only truth. 
 It was this life, re-enforced of course by his 
 own experience, that had convinced him that 
 even such philosophies * as seemed to culmi- 
 nate at a point short of the Absolute One- 
 ness, would prove in the end to be dealing 
 
 * Dualism, the doctrine of the ultimate difference between soul 
 and God, saved and Saviour; and Qualified Dualism, the mergence 
 f the soul in the realisation of God, but not in His being. 
 
 291
 
 THE SWAMFS MISSION 
 
 with phases only, of this supreme realis- 
 ation. 
 
 As an expression of this goal, however, 
 every sincere belief was true. "Bow thy head 
 and adore," had said Sri Ramakrishna, "where 
 others worship, for in that form in which 
 man has called on Him, God will assuredly 
 appear." At each step between the earth and 
 the sun, said the Swami, we might conceiv- 
 ably take a photograph. No two of these 
 would be perfectly similar. Yet which could 
 be said to be untrue ? These sayings referred 
 to the compatibility of the antagonistic 
 religious ideas of different sects and creeds. 
 But when the Teacher of Dukshineshwar set 
 himself to determine the accessibility of the 
 highest illumination through the life of 
 woman, we are perhaps justified in feeling 
 that he opened the door to a deeper regard 
 for the sacredness of what is common- 
 ly considered to be merely social and secular. 
 In a world of symbols, he proved the service 
 
 292
 
 THE HOME A TEMPLE 
 
 of the home as true a means to God as atten- 
 dance on the altar; the sacraments of the 
 temple, though served by priestly hands, not 
 more a means of grace than the common 
 bread of the household, broken and distribu- 
 ted by wife or mother. "Everything, even 
 the name of God," said Sri Ramkrishna, "is 
 Maya. But some of this Maya helps us to- 
 wards freedom ; the rest only leads us 
 deeper into bondage." In showing, that 
 the daily life of a good woman was thus 
 blessed, that a home was a temple, that 
 courtesy, hospitality, and the fulfilment of 
 duty in the world might be made into one 
 long act of worship, Sri Ramakrishna, as I 
 think, provided basis and sanction for what 
 was to be a predominant thought with his 
 great disciple. 
 
 The Swami Vivekananda, in his wander- 
 ings over India during subseqent years, 
 studied its multitude of small social forma- 
 tions, each embodying its central religious 
 
 293
 
 THE SWAMPS MISSION 
 
 conviction, and found in all broken gleams of 
 that brightness which he had seen at its full- 
 est in his Master. But when, in 1893, he 
 began to see the world outside India, it was 
 by national and patriotic unities that he was 
 confronted. And in these, as naturally as in 
 the creeds and sects of his own land, he con- 
 tinued to feel the outworking of the Divine 
 within Man. For many years, this was entire- 
 ly unconscious, yet no one around him stood 
 unimpressed by his eager study of the strong 
 points of different peoples. 
 
 One day, in the course of my voyage to- 
 England, when he had been telling me, with 
 the greatest delight, of the skilled seaman- 
 ship and exquisite courtesy of the Turk, I 
 drew his attention to the astonishing charac- 
 ter of his enthusiasm. His mind seemed to 
 turn to the thought of the ship's servants, 
 whose childlike devotion to himself had 
 touched him deeply. "You see, I love our 
 Mohammedans !" he said simply, as if accus- 
 
 294
 
 THE GREATNESS OF NATIONS 
 
 ed of a fault. "Yes," I answered, "but what 
 I want to understand is this habit of seeing 
 every people from their strongest aspect. 
 Where did it come from ? Do you recognise 
 it in any historical character ? Or is it in 
 some way derived from Sri Ramakrishna ?" 
 
 Slowly the look of puzzled surprise left 
 his face. "It must have been the training 
 under Ramakrishna Paramahamsa," he 
 answered. "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 un- 
 derstand, 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 be- 
 fore in India became Christian and Moham- 
 medan and Vaishnava by turns !" 
 
 Thus a nationality, in the Swami's eyes, 
 had all the sacredness of a church, a church 
 whose inmost striving was to express its own 
 
 295
 
 THE SWAMFS MISSION 
 
 conception of ideal manhood. "The longer 
 I live," he was once heard to ejaculate, "the 
 more I think that the whole thing is summed 
 up in manliness !" 
 
 By a reflex of consciousness, the more he 
 became acquainted with the strength and 
 lovableness of other nations, the more proud 
 he grew of his Indian birth, becoming daily 
 more aware of those things in which his own 
 Motherland, in her turn, stood supreme. He 
 discussed nations, like epochs, from various 
 points of view successively, not blinding him- 
 self to any aspect of their vast personality. 
 The offspring of the Roman Empire he 
 considered always to be brutal, and the 
 Japanese notion of marriage he held in 
 horror. Unvaryingly, nevertheless, he would 
 sum up the case in terms of the constructive 
 ideals, never of the defects, of a community; 
 and in one of the last utterances I heard from 
 him on these subjects, he said, "For pat- 
 riotism, the Japanese ! For purity, the 
 
 296
 
 AGGRESSIVE HINDUISM 
 
 Hindu ! And for manliness, the European ! 
 There is no other in the world." he added 
 with emphasis, "who understands, as does 
 the Englishman, what should be the glory of 
 a man !" 
 
 His object as regarded India, said the 
 Swami, in a private conversation, had always 
 been "to make Hinduism aggressive." The 
 Eternal Faith must become active and 
 proselytising, capable of sending out special 
 missions, of making converts, of taking back 
 into her fold those of her own children who 
 had been perverted from her, and of the 
 conscious and deliberate assimilation of new 
 elements. Did he know that any community 
 becomes aggressive, that any faith will be 
 made active, the moment it becomes aware 
 of itself as an organised unity ? Did he know 
 that he himself was to make this self- recogni- 
 tion possible to the Church of his forefathers? 
 At any rate, his whole work, from the first, 
 had consisted, according to his own state- 
 
 297
 
 THE SWAMPS MISSION 
 
 ment, of "a search for the common bases of 
 Hinduism." He felt instinctively that to find 
 these and reassert them, was the one way of 
 opening to the Mother-Church the joyous 
 conviction of her own youth and strength. 
 Had not Buddha preached renunciation and 
 Nirvana, and because these were the essenti- 
 als of the national life, had not India, within 
 two centuries of his death, become a power- 
 ful empire ? So he, too, would fall back upon 
 the essentials, and declare them, leaving 
 results to take care of themselves. 
 
 He held that the one authority which 
 Hinduism clamed to rest upon, the only guide 
 she proposed to the individual soul, was 
 "spiritual truth." Those laws of experience 
 that underlie, and give birth to, all scriptures, 
 were what she really meant by the word 
 "Vedas." The books called by that name 
 were refused by some of her children the 
 Jains for example yet the Jains were none 
 the less Hindus for that. All that is true is 
 
 298
 
 THE GLORY OF HINDUISM 
 
 Veda, and the Jain is to the full as much 
 bound by his view of truth as any other. For 
 he would extend the sphere of the Hindu 
 Church to its utmost. With her two wings he 
 would cover all her fledglings. "I go forth," 
 he had said of himself before he left for 
 America the first time, "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 !" Even as 
 books, however, he would claim that the 
 glory of the Vedic scriptures was unique in 
 the history of religion. And this not merely 
 because of their great antiquity; but vastly 
 more for the fact that they, alone amongst 
 all the authoritative books of the world, warn- 
 ed man that he must go beyond all books. 
 
 Truth being thus the one goal of the 
 Hindu creeds, and this being conceived of, 
 not as revealed truth to be accepted, but as 
 accessible truth to be experienced, it follow- 
 ed that there could never be any antagonism^ 
 
 299
 
 THE SWAMFS MISSION 
 
 real or imagined, between scientific and reli- 
 gious conviction, in Hinduism. In this fact 
 the Swami saw the immense capacity of the 
 Indian peoples for that organised conception 
 of science peculiar to the modern era. No 
 advance of knowledge had ever been resist- 
 ed by the religious intellect of India. Nor 
 had the Hindu clergy, a greater glory still ! 
 ever been known to protest against the 
 right of the individual to perfect freedom of 
 thought and belief. This last fact indeed, giv- 
 ing birth to the doctrine of the Ishta Devata* 
 the idea that the path of the soul is to be 
 chosen by itself he held to be the one uni- 
 versal differentia of Hinduism; making it not 
 only tolerant, but absorbent, of every possible 
 form of faith and culture. Even the temper 
 -of sectarianism, characterised by the convic- 
 tion that God Himself is of the believer's 
 creed, and his limited group the one true 
 church, and allying itself, as it now and then 
 
 * The hosen Ideal. 
 
 300
 
 FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 
 
 will, with every statement that man has ever 
 formulated, was regarded by Hinduism, he 
 pointed out, as a symptom, not of falsehood or 
 narrowness, but only of youth. It constituted 
 as Sri Ramakrishna had said, the intellectual 
 fence, so necessary to the seedling, but 
 so inimical to the tree. The very fact that 
 we could impose limitations, was a proof that 
 we were still dealing with the finite. When 
 the cup of experience should be full, the soul 
 would dream only of the Infinite. "All men 
 hedge in the fields of earth, but who can 
 hedge in the sky ?" had said the Master. 
 
 The vast complexus of systems which 
 made up Hinduism, was in every case based 
 upon the experimental realisation of religion, 
 and characterised by an infinite inclusiveness. 
 The only tests of conformity ever imposed by 
 the priesthood had been social, and while 
 this had resulted in a great rigidity of cus 
 torn, it implied that to their thinking the 
 mind was eternally free. But it could not 
 
 301
 
 THE SWAMPS MISSION 
 
 be disputed that the thought-area within 
 Hinduism, as actually realised, had been 
 coloured by the accumulation of a few distinct- 
 ive ideas, and these were the main subjects 
 of the Swami's Address before the Parlia- 
 ment of Religions, at Chicago, in 1893. 
 
 First of these special conceptions, with 
 which India might be said to be identified, 
 was that of the cyclic character of the cosmos. 
 On the relation of Creator aud created, as 
 equal elements in a dualism which can never 
 be more than a relative truth, Hinduism had 
 a profound philosophy, which Vivekananda, 
 with his certainty of grasp, was able to set 
 forth in a few brief words. The next doctrine 
 which he put forward, as distinctive of Indian 
 thought in general, was that of reincarnation 
 and karma, ending in the manifestation of 
 the divine nature of man. And finally, the 
 universality of truth, whatever the form of 
 thought or worship, completed his enumera- 
 tion of these secondary differentia. In a few 
 
 302
 
 CONTRIBUTION TO PHILOSOPHY 
 
 clear sentences, he had conclusively esta- 
 blished the unity, and delineated the salient 
 features, of Hinduism. The remainder of his 
 work in the West was, in the main, a free gift 
 in modern and universal forms, of the great 
 inspirations contained in the Eternal Faith. 
 To him, as a religious teacher, the whole 
 world was India, and man, everywhere, a 
 member of his own fold. 
 
 It was on his return to India, in January 
 1897, that the Swami, in philosophic form, 
 made that contribution to the thought of, 
 his people, which, it has been said elsewhere, 
 is required by India of all her epoch-makers. 
 Hitherto, the three philosophic systems of 
 Un-ism, Dualism, and Modified Un-ism, or 
 Advaita, Dvaita, and Visishtadvaita had 
 been regarded as offering to the soul, three 
 different ideals of liberation. No attempt had 
 ever before been made to reconcile these 
 schools. On reaching Madras, however, in 
 1897, Vivekananda boldly claimed that even 
 
 303
 
 THE SWAMPS MISSION 
 
 the utmost realisations of Dualism and Modifi- 
 ed Unism, were but stages on the way to 
 Unism itself; and the final bliss, for all alike, 
 was the mergence in One without a second. 
 It is said that at one of his midday question- 
 classes, a member of his audience asked him 
 why, if this was the truth, it had never be- 
 fore been mentioned by any of the Masters. 
 It was customary to give answers to these 
 questions, first in English and then in Sans- 
 krit, for the benefit of such scholars present 
 as knew no modern language, and the great 
 gathering was startled, on this occasion, to 
 
 hear the reply " Because I was born for 
 
 this, and it was left for me to do !" 
 
 In India, the Swami was extremely jealous 
 of any attempt to exclude from Hinduism 
 any of her numerous branches and offshoots. 
 A man was none the less a Hindu, for in- 
 stance, in his eyes, for being a member of the 
 Brahmo or the Arya Samaj. The great 
 Sikh Khalsa was one of the finest organisa- 
 
 304
 
 THE S W AMI'S MISSION 
 
 tions ever created within the Mother-Church, 
 and by her genius. With what ardour he 
 painted for us, again and again, the scene 
 in which Guru Govinda Singh uttered 
 his call to sacrifice ! There were, he held, 
 three different stratifications to be recog- 
 nised in the Faith. One was that of the 
 old historic Orthodoxy. Another consisted 
 of the reforming sects of the Mohammedan 
 period. And third came the reforming sects 
 of the present period. But all these were 
 equally Hindu. He never forgot that his 
 own longing to consider the problems of his 
 country and his religion on the grand scale, 
 had found its first fulfilment in his youthful 
 membership of the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj. 
 And he was so far from repudiating this 
 membership, that he one day exclaimed " It 
 is for them to say whether I belong to them 
 or not ! Unless they have removed it, my 
 name stands on their books to this day ! " 
 Thus a man was equally Hindu, in his opinion,. 
 
 305
 
 THE BRAHMO SAMAJ 
 
 whether he prefixed to the adjective the mo- 
 dification of Arya, Brahmo, or Orthodox. 
 The claim of the Jain to a place within the 
 fold, was a simple matter of social and histori- 
 cal demonstration. The Jains of Western 
 India would be indignant to this day, if their 
 right to rank as Hindus were seriously ques- 
 tioned. Even now they exchange daugh- 
 ters in marriage, with orthodox houses, of caste 
 correspondent to their own. And even now, 
 their temples are served occasionally by 
 ordinary Brahmins. The Swami had disci- 
 ples amongst all faiths, even the Mohamme- 
 dan, and by the good offices of certain of his 
 Jain friends, he was allowed to read some of 
 their sacred books, not usually accessible, 
 except to members of their own congrega- 
 tions. From this study, he was deeply im- 
 pressed with the authenticity of their doctri- 
 nes and traditions, and with the important 
 part which they had played in the evolution 
 of Hinduism. Indian religion necessarily 
 
 306
 
 THE SWAMPS MISSION 
 
 includes amongst its strongest ideas, a regard 
 for the immanent humanity in dunib animals, 
 and deep devotion to the ascetic ideal of saint- 
 hood. These two features had been isolated 
 and emphasised by the Jains. In their clear 
 pronouncements on the Germ Theory, more- 
 over, confirmed as these have been by the 
 researches of modern science, there was 
 evidence sufficient of the intellectual and 
 spiritual stature of the founders of the school. 
 The Jain is obviously right, said the Swami, 
 in claiming that his doctrines were in the 
 first place declared by Rishis. 
 
 With regard to the Christianised castes 
 of the present day, the Swami hoped that 
 they would rise in social status by adopting 
 the faith of the dominant political faction, and 
 that in ages to come, when Christianity 
 should be forgotten, they would still be able 
 to maintain this advance. In this way, we 
 might hope for a future oblivion jof the nine- 
 teenth century, as a disintegrating force, and 
 
 307
 
 JAINISM 
 
 the permanent enriching of the Indian system 
 by its contributions. In evidence of the 
 possibility of such a development, was there 
 not the work of Chaitanya in Northern India, 
 and the fact that he had succeeded in forming, 
 for his followers, " a caste of very great res- 
 pectability?" 
 
 Christianity, in her present-day workings, 
 was difficult to pardon. Not so the other 
 non-Hindu faith, Islam. The picture that 
 this name called up to our Master's mind was 
 always of an eager confraternity, enfranchis- 
 ing the simple and democratising the great. 
 As a factor in the evolution of modern India, 
 he could never for a moment be forgetful of 
 the loyal acceptance, by Islamic intruders, of 
 the old Indian civilisation, and administra- 
 tive system. Nor could he disregard the 
 service they had done, not only in exalting 
 the social rights of the lowly-born, but also 
 in conserving and developing, in too gentle a 
 race, the ideals of organised struggle and 
 
 308
 
 THE SWAMFS MISSION 
 
 resistance. He constantly pointed out that 
 Mohammedanism had its fourfold ' castes ' 
 Syyed, Pathan, Mogul, and Sheikh and 
 that of these the Sheikhs had an inherited 
 right to the Indian soil and the Indian me- 
 mory, as ancient and indisputable as those of 
 any Hindu. He, told a disciple, a propos of 
 an indiscreetly-written word, that " Shah 
 Jehan would have turned in his grave to hear 
 himself called a ' foreigner. ' ' And finally, 
 his highest prayer for the good of the Mo- 
 therland was that she might make manifest 
 the twofold ideal of "an Islamic body and 
 a Vedantic heart." 
 
 Thus far aloof as he stood from the 
 political significance of such facts, India, to 
 Vivekananda's thinking, was a unity, and a 
 unity still more deeply to be apprehended 
 of the heart than of the mind. His work in 
 the world, as he saw it, was the sowing 
 broadcast of the message of his own Master. 
 But his personal struggles, his personal 
 
 309
 
 LOVE FOR ISLAM 
 
 desires, were bound up in an inextinguishable 
 passion for his country's good. He never 
 proclaimed nationality, but he was himself 
 the living embodiment of that idea which the 
 word conveys. He, our Master, incarnates 
 for us in his own person, that great mutual 
 love which is the Indian national ideal. 
 
 Nothing was less in his mind, be it 
 understood, than a mere revival or res- 
 toration of the Indian past. It was to- 
 those who sought to bring this about that he 
 had referred, when he said "Like the Egypto- 
 logist's interest in Egypt, their interest in 
 India is a purely selfish one. They would 
 fain see again that India of their books, 
 their studies, and their dreams." What 
 he himself wanted was to see the strength of 
 that old India finding new application and 
 undreamt-of expression, in the new age. 
 He longed to see "a dynamic religion." 
 Why should one select out all the elements 
 of meanness and decadence and reaction, and 
 
 310
 
 THE SWAMPS MISSION 
 
 call them 'Orthodox' ? Orthodoxy was a term 
 too grand, too strong, too vital, for any such 
 use. It would be rightly applied only to 
 that home where all the men were Pandava 
 heroes, and all the women had the greatness 
 of Sita or the fearlessness of Savitri. He 
 stood aloof from all special questions, whether 
 of conservatism or reform ; not because 
 he sympathised with one party more or less 
 than with the other, but because he saw 
 that for both alike the real question was the 
 recapture of the ideal, and its indentification 
 with India. On behalf of Woman and the 
 People, alike, he held that the duty required 
 of us was not to change institutions, but 
 to put these in a position to solve their 
 own problems. 
 
 At least equal to this dislike of ignorance 
 was his horror of the identification of India 
 with what is known as Occultism. He had 
 the natural interest and curiosity of educated 
 persons, and would at any time have been
 
 TRUE ORTHODOXY 
 
 glad to undergo inconvenience, in order 
 to put to the test alleged cases of walking 
 on water, handling fire, and so on. We all 
 know, however, that evidence regarding such 
 matters is apt to vanish into the merest 
 hearsay, when followed up. And in any 
 case, such occurrences would have had no 
 significance for him, beyond pointing the 
 simple moral that our present classification of 
 phenomena was incomplete, and must be 
 revised, to include some unfamiliar possi- 
 bilities. They would have had no super- 
 natural character whatsoever. Few things 
 in the life of Buddha moved him so deeply 
 as the tale of the unfrocking of the monk 
 who had worked a miracle. And he said of 
 the Figure that moves through the Christian 
 Gospels that its perfection would have seem- 
 ed to him greater, had there been a refusal 
 to gain credence by the "doing of mighty 
 works." In this matter, it is probably true 
 as I have heard it pointed out, in later 
 
 312
 
 THE SWAMPS MISSION 
 
 years, by the Swami Sadananda, that there 
 is a temperamental, as well as intellectual, 
 divergence between Eastern and Western 
 Asia, the one always despising, and the 
 other seeking for "a sign. " In this respect, 
 according to Sadananda, the Mongolian and 
 Semitic conceptions are sharply opposed ; 
 while the Aryan stands between, weighing 
 the two. However this may be, it will be 
 admitted by many of us that the modern 
 interest in so-called occult phenomena has 
 been largely instrumental in creating a 
 mischievous idea that the Oriental is a being 
 of mysterious nature, remote from the 
 ordinary motives of mankind, and charged 
 with secret batteries of supernatural powers. 
 All this was hateful to the Swami. He 
 desired to see it understood that India was 
 peopled with human beings, who have 
 indeed an intensely individual character, and 
 a distinctive culture, but who are in all 
 respects men amongst men, with all the 
 
 313
 
 INDIA AND MIRACLES 
 
 duties, claims, and emotions of common- 
 humanity. 
 
 He, indeed, had the generosity to extend 
 to the West, the same gospel that the 
 I ndian sages had preached in the past to the 
 Indian people the doctrine of the Divinity 
 in man, to be realised by faithful service, 
 through whatever forms. The life of 
 externals, with its concentration of interest 
 in sense-impressions, was, according to him, 
 a mere hypotism, a dream, of no exalted 
 character. And for Western, as for Eastern, 
 the soul's quest was the breaking of this 
 dream, the awakening to a more profound 
 and powerful reality. He was for ever find- 
 ing new ways to express his belief that all 
 men alike had the same vast potentiality. 
 "Yes ! my own life is guided by the enthu- 
 siasm of a certain great Personality," he said 
 once, "but what of that ? Inspiration was 
 never filtered out to the world through one 
 man !"
 
 THE SWAMPS MISSION 
 
 Again he said. "It is true that I believe 
 Ramakrisna 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 ! 
 
 And on another occasion, to one who- 
 questioned him about the old rule of the 
 teachers, that truth should be taught only to- 
 those of proved and tested fitness, he ex- 
 claimed impatiently, "Don't you see that the 
 age for esoteric interpretations 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 !" 
 
 He would speak, with whimsical amuse- 
 ment, of attempts to offer to India religious 
 ideas and organisations which were European 
 -led, as a culminating effort in the long 
 attempt to exploit one race for the good of 
 another. But he never took such European 
 leading seriously, in matters of religion. 
 
 315
 
 NO MYSTERY 
 
 Finally, there was no event in the history 
 of his own people to which he returned more 
 constantly than the great Charge of Asoka 
 to his missionaries, in the third century be- 
 fore Christ. "Remember " said the mighty 
 Emperor to those who were to carry the Law 
 to various countries, "Remember that every 
 where you will find some root of faith and 
 righteousness. See that you foster this, and 
 do not destroy ! " Asoka had thus dreamt 
 of the whole world, as federated by ideas, 
 ideas everywhere guided and permeated by 
 the striving towards absolute truth and per- 
 fection of conduct. But this dream of Asoka 
 had had to contend with ancient difficulties of 
 communication and transport, with half- 
 known continents and vast diversity of races. 
 The preliminary steps, therefore, in his world- 
 federation, would necessarily take so long 
 that the primal impulse of faith and energy 
 might in the meantime be forgotten. It must 
 have been from the consideration of this 
 
 316
 
 THE SWAMPS MISSION 
 
 question that the Swami one day looked up, 
 as we all entered the mountain-pass that lies 
 beyond the village of Kathgodam, and 
 exclaimed, breaking a long reverie, "Yes! 
 The idea of the Buddhists was one for 
 which only the modern world is ready ! 
 None before us has had the opportunity of 
 its realisation ! " 
 
 317
 
 XVIII 
 
 THE SWAMI VIVEKANANDA 
 AND HIS ATTITUDE TO 
 BUDDHA 
 
 Chief of intellectual passions with the 
 Swami, was his reverence for Buddha. 
 It was perhaps the historical authenticity of 
 this Indian life that was the basis of the 
 delight it roused in him. "We are sure of 
 Buddha and Mohammed, alone amongst 
 religious teachers," he was wont to say, "for 
 they alone had the good fortune to possess 
 enemies as well as friends!" Again and again 
 he would return upon the note of perfect 
 rationality in his hero. Buddha was to him 
 not only the greatest of Aryans, but also "the 
 one absolutely sane man" that the world had 
 ever seen. How he had refused worship! 
 Yet he drew no attention to the fact that 
 it had been offered. ' Buddha, ' he said, 'was 
 
 31*
 
 THE SANE MAN 
 
 not a man, but a realisation. Enter, all ye 
 into it ! Here receive the key !' 
 
 He had been so untouched by the vulgar 
 craving for wonders, that he coldly ex- 
 communicated the lad who had by a word 
 brought down a jewelled cup from the top of 
 a pole, in the presence of the crowd. Religion 
 he said, had nothing to do with jugglery ! 
 
 How vast had been the freedom and 
 humility of the Blessed One ! He attended 
 the banquet of Ambapali the courtesan. 
 Knowing that it would kill him, but desiring 
 that his last act should be one of communion 
 with the lowly, he received the food of the 
 pariah, and afterwards sent a courteous 
 message to his host, thanking him for the 
 Great Deliverance. How calm ! How mas- 
 culine ! Verily was he the bull in the herd 
 and a moon amongst men ! 
 
 And perfect as he was in reason, he was 
 at least as wondrous in compassion. To 
 save the goats at Rajgir, he would have given 
 
 319
 
 HIS ATTITUDE TO BUDDHA 
 
 his life. He had once offered himself up, 
 to stay the hunger of a tigress. Out of five 
 hundred lives renounced for others, had been 
 distilled the pity that had made him Buddha. 
 
 There comes to us a touch of his humour 
 across the ages when he tells the tale of 
 the youth, sobbing out his love for one he 
 has nev^r seen, whose very name he does 
 not know, and likens his plight to the 
 iterations of humanity about God. He alone 
 was able to free religion entirely from the 
 argument of the supernatural, and yet make 
 it as binding in its force, and as living in its 
 appeal, as it had ever been. This was done 
 by the power of his own great personality, 
 and the impress it made on the men of his 
 own generation. 
 
 For some of us, one evening, the Swami 
 sat reconstructing the story, as it must have 
 appeared to Jasodhara, the wife of Buddha, 
 and never have I heard the dry bones of 
 history clothed with such fulness or con- 
 
 320
 
 THE GREAT FAREWELL 
 
 vincingness of life. Hindu monk as he him- 
 self was, it seemed to Vivekananda natural 
 enough that a strong personality should have 
 what he conveniently described as"European 
 ideas about marriage," and should insist, as 
 did Buddha, on seeing and choosing his 
 bride for himself. Each detail of the week 
 of festivities and betrothal was dwelt on 
 tenderly. Then came the picture of the two, 
 long wedded, and the great night of farewell. 
 The gods sang, "Awake ! thou that art 
 awakened ! Arise ! and help the world ! " 
 and the struggling prince returned again and 
 again to the bedside of his sleeping wife. 
 "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! " 
 
 Then the victory, with its inevitable fare- 
 well, and the kiss, imprinted so gently on 
 the foot of the princess that she never woke. 
 "Have you never thought, " said the Swami, 
 
 321
 
 HIS ATTITUDE TO BUDDHA 
 
 "of the hearts of the heroes ? How they were 
 great, great, great, and soft as butter ? " 
 
 It was seven years later, when the prince, 
 now Buddha, returned to Kapilavastu, where 
 Jasodhara had lived, clad in the yellow 
 cloth, eating only roots and fruits, sleeping in 
 no bed, under no roof, from the day he 
 had left her, sharing the religious life also, in 
 her woman's way, And he entered, and she 
 took the hem of his garment, "as a wife 
 should do, " while he told, to her and to his 
 son, the Truth. 
 
 But when he had ended, and would have 
 departed to his garden, she turned, startled, 
 to her son, and said "Quick ! go and ask your 
 father for your patrimony ! " 
 
 And when the child asked "Mother, 
 which is my father ?" She disdained to give 
 any answer, save " The lion that passes down 
 the street, lo, he is thy father ! " 
 
 And the lad, heir of the Sakya line, went, 
 saying "Father, give me my inheritance ! " 
 
 322
 
 BUDDHA AND JASODHARA 
 
 Three times he had to ask, before Bud- 
 dha, turning to Ananda, said " Give it ! " and 
 the gerrua cloth was thrown over the child. 
 
 Then, seeing Jasodhara, and realising 
 that she, too, longed to be near her husband, 
 the chief disciple said "May women enter 
 the Order ? Shall we give to her also the 
 yellow cloth ? " 
 
 And Buddha said "Can there be sex in 
 knowledge ? Have I ever said that a woman 
 could not enter ? But this, O Ananda, was 
 for thee to ask ! " 
 
 Thus Jasodhara also became a disciple. 
 And then all the pent-up love and pity of 
 those seven years, welled forth in the Jataka 
 Birth-stories ! For they were all for her ! 
 Five hundred times each had forgotten self. 
 And now they would enter into perfection 
 together. 
 
 " Yes, yes, so it was ! For Jasodhara 
 
 and for Sita, a hundred years would not 
 have been enough to try their faith ! ." 
 
 323
 
 HIS ATTITUDE TO BUDDHA 
 
 "No! No!" mused the teller, after a 
 pause, as he ended the tale, " Let us all own 
 that we have passions still ! Let each one 
 say '/am not the ideal ! "Let none ever ven- 
 ture to compare another with Him ! " 
 
 During the years of our Master's boy- 
 hood at Dakshineshwar, the attention of the 
 world had been much concentrated on the 
 story of Buddhism. The restoration of the 
 great shrine of Bodh-Gaya was carried out 
 about this time* under the orders of the 
 English Government, and the share taken 
 in this work by Rajendra Lala Mitra, the 
 Bengali scholar, kept Indian interest intense 
 throughout the country. In 1879, moreover, 
 the imagination even of the unlearned classes 
 in English-speaking countries was deeply 
 stirred, by the appearance of Sir Edwin 
 Arnold's " Light of Asia," said to be in 
 many parts an almost literal translation 
 
 * The excavations round the great shrine were first commenced 
 by the Burmese Government in 1874. The British Government took 
 them in hand in 1879 and completed the work in 1884. 
 
 324
 
 STUDY OF BUDDHISM 
 
 from the 'Buddha Charita' of Ashwa Ghosh. 
 But the Swami was never satisfied with tak- 
 ing things at second-hand, and in this too could 
 not rest contented until in 1887 he, with his 
 brethren, contrived to read together, not only 
 the ' Lalita Vistara,' but also the great 
 book of the Mahajana school of Buddhism, 
 the 'Prajna Paramita,'f in theorginal.J Their 
 knowledge of Sanskrit was their key to 
 the understanding of the daughter-language. 
 The study of Dr. Rajendra Lala Mitra's 
 writings and of the ' Light of Asia,' could 
 never be a mere passing event in the 
 Swami's life, and the seed that thus fell on 
 the sensitive mind of Sri Ramakrishna's 
 chief disciple, during the years of his dis- 
 cipleship, came to blossom the moment he 
 
 t Lit. That which leads one beyond intellect to the realms of 
 super-consciousness. 
 
 J These two books were then being published by the Asiatic 
 Society, under the able editing of Dr. Rajendra Lala Mitra. The 
 original text appeared in Sanskrit characters and not in Pali, 
 to help the general reader, who is familiar with the former but not 
 with the latter. Saradananda. 
 
 325
 
 ATTITUDE TO BUDDHA 
 
 was initiated into sannyas, for his first act 
 then was to hurry to Bodh-Gaya, and sit 
 under the great tree, saying to himself ' Is it 
 possible that I breathe the air He breathed ? 
 That I touch the earth He trod ? ' 
 
 At the end of his life again, similarly, he 
 arrived at Bodh-Gaya, on the morning of his 
 thirty-ninth birthday ; and this journey, 
 ending with a visit to Benares, was the last 
 he ever made. 
 
 At some time in the years of his Indian 
 wanderings, the Swami was allowed to touch 
 the relics of Buddha, probably near the place 
 where they were first discovered. And he 
 was never afterwards able to refer to this, 
 without some return of that passion of re- 
 verence and certitude which must then have 
 overwhelmed him. Well might he exclaim, 
 to someone who questioned him about the 
 personal worship of the Avatars, "In truth, 
 Madam, had I lived in Judaea in the days of 
 Jesus of Nazareth, I would have washed His 
 
 326
 
 THE NAME OF A DISCIPLE 
 
 feet, not with my tears, but with my heart's 
 blood !" 
 
 "A Buddhist !" he said, to one who made 
 a mistake about the name of his faith, "I am 
 the servant of the servants of the servants 
 of Buddha ! " as if even the title of a believer 
 would seem, to his veneration, too exalted 
 to claim. 
 
 But it was not only the historic authenti- 
 city of the personality of Buddha that held 
 him spell-bound. Another factor, at least as 
 powerful, was the spectacle of the constant 
 tallying of his own Master's life, lived before 
 his eyes, with this world-attested story of 
 twenty-five centuries before. In Buddha, he 
 saw Ramakrishna Paramahamsa : in Rama- 
 krishna, he saw Buddha. 
 
 In a flash this train of thought was 
 revealed, one day when he was describing 
 the scene of the death of Buddha. He told 
 how the blanket had been spread for him 
 beneath the tree, and how the Blessed One 
 
 327
 
 HIS ATTITUDE TO BUDDHA 
 
 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 \ 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, he said, but 
 a realisation, and to that, anyone 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 
 
 J Lit. The Tathagatha, "A word," explained the Swami, 
 " which is very like your ' Messiah.'" 
 
 328
 
 THE TEACHING OF BUDDHA 
 
 on his elbow and taught," and said, in brief 
 parenthesis, "/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 
 Cossiporef only when he lay dying. Here 
 also the disciples would have refused 
 admission, but Sri Ramakrishna intervened, 
 insisting on receiving the new-comer, and 
 teaching him. 
 
 The Swami was always deeply pre-occu- 
 pied with the historic and philosophic signi- 
 ficance of Buddhistic doctrine. Sudden re- 
 ferences and abrupt allusions would show 
 that his thoughts were constantly with it. 
 " ' Form, feeling, sensation, motion, and 
 knowledge are the five categories,' " he 
 quoted one day, from Buddha's teachings,* 
 " ' in perpetual flux and fusion. And in these 
 
 IT Sri Ramakrishna entered into Mahasamadhi at the garden- 
 house of Krishna Gopal Ghosh in Cossipore, 1 886. 
 
 * Vide Vinaya Pitaka, Part I, Sacred Books of the East Series. 
 
 329
 
 HIS ATTITUDE TO BUDDHA 
 
 lies Maya. Of anyone 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, " he went on, 
 "but his great Disciple brought the heart to- 
 make it live ! " 
 
 And then, as the accents of that Disciple 
 himself broke upon the inner ear, he paused 
 a moment, and fell back on the deathless 
 charge of the Dhammapada to the soul : 
 "Go forward without a path ! 
 Fearing nothing, caring for nothing, 
 
 Wander alone, like the rhinoceros I 
 "Even as the lion, not trembling at 
 
 noises, 
 
 Even as the wind, not caught in a net, 
 Even as the lotus-leaf, unstained by 
 
 the water,. 
 Do thou wander alone, 
 
 like the rhinoceros ! "" 
 
 "Can you imagine what their strength 
 
 was ?" he said one day, as he dwelt on the 
 
 330
 
 NO COMPROMISE 
 
 picture of the First Council, and the dispute 
 as to the President. "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 ! " 
 " But Buddha, " he went on, " made the 
 fatal mistake of thinking that the whole world 
 could be lifted to the height of the Upani- 
 shads. And self-interest spoiled all. Krishna 
 was wiser, because He was more politic. But 
 Buddha would have no compromise. The 
 world before now has seen even the Avatar 
 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 'Buddha- 
 hood is an achievement, not a person ! * 
 Verily was He the only man in the world 
 who was ever quite sane, the only sane man 
 ever born ! "
 
 HIS ATTITUDE TO BUDDHA 
 
 Indian clearness of thought spoke in tne 
 Swami's contempt for our Christian 
 leaning towards the worship of suffering. 
 People had told him in the West that the 
 greatness of Buddha would have been more 
 appealing, had he been crucified ! This he 
 had no hesitation in stigmatising as "Roman 
 brutality." "The lowest and most animal 
 liking," he pointed out. " is for action. There- 
 fore 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 had 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 
 
 332
 
 THE SONG OF THE COWHERD 
 
 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 ! Gautama was the son of a petty 
 chieftain. As much had been left many times 
 before. 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 pour- 
 ing 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, to-night !' 
 
 * The Swami was here making a rough paraphrase, from 
 memory, of Rhys David's metrical rendering of the Dhaniya Smtta, 
 from the Sutta Nipata, in Fausboll's translation of the Dhammapada. 
 See Rhys Davids' American Lectures. 
 
 333
 
 HIS ATTITUDE TO BUDDHA 
 
 "And the Buddha answers from without, 
 "My mind is controlled. My senses are all 
 gathered in. My heart is firm. Therefore ye 
 may rain, if ye will, O clouds, to-night !' 
 
 "Again the cowherd 'The fields are 
 reaped, and the hay is all fast in the barn. 
 The stream is full, and, the roads are firm. 
 Therefore ye may rain, if ye will, O clouds, 
 to-night ' 
 
 * 'And so it goes on, till at last the cowherd 
 rises, in contrition and wonder, and becomes 
 a disciple. 
 
 "Or what could be more beautiful than 
 the Barber's story ? 
 f ' The Blessed One passed by my house, 
 
 my house the Barber's! 
 ' I ran, but He turned and awaited me. 
 
 Awaited me the Barber ! 
 
 t The original from of this anecdote, as it appeared in the 
 Buddhist texts in old times, under the name of Upali Prichcha (The 
 Questions of Upali, the Barber) has been lost ; but the fact that there 
 was such a writing in existence, is known form its mention in 
 ther Buddhist books e. g. The Vinaya Pitaka. 
 
 334
 
 THE BARBER'S STORY 
 
 4 I said, 'May I speak, O Lord, with thee ?' 
 And He said Yes ! ' 
 
 1 Yes ! ' to me the Barber ! 
 "And I said ' Is Nirvana for such as I ?' 
 And He said ' Yes !' 
 
 Even for me the Barber ! 
 4 And I said 'May I follow after Thee !' 
 And He said 'Oh yes ! ' 
 
 Even / the Barber ! 
 
 'And I said 'May I stay, O Lord, near Thee?' 
 And He said 'Thou mayest !' 
 
 Even to me the poor Barber ! ' ' 
 He was epitomising the history of 
 Buddhism one day, with its three cycles 
 five hundred years of law, five hundred of 
 images, and five hundred of tantras, when 
 sudddenly he broke off, to say, "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 ! The idea was always within Hinduism. 
 Only the influence of Buddha was paramount 
 
 335
 
 HIS ATTITUDE TO BUDDHA 
 
 at one time, and made the nation monastic. "" 
 And the truth of the view so expressed can 
 only, as I believe, become increasingly 
 apparent to scholars, with time and study. 
 Acccording to it, Buddhism formed complete 
 churches only in the circle of missionary 
 countries, of which Kashmir was one. 
 And an interesting morsel of history dwelt 
 on by the Swami, was that of the adop- 
 tion of the Indian apostolate in that country, 
 with its inevitable deposition of the local 
 Nags, or mysterious serpents living beneath 
 the springs, from their position of deities. 
 Strange to say, a terrible winter followed 
 their disestablishment, and the terrified peo- 
 ple hastened to make a compromise between 
 the new truth and the old superstition, by re- 
 instating the Nags as saints, or minor divini- 
 ties of the new faith, a piece of human 
 nature not without parallels elsewhere ! 
 
 One of the great contrasts between 
 Buddhism and the Mother-church lies in the 
 
 336
 
 RE-INCARNATION AN ILLUSION 
 
 fact that the Hindu believes in the accumula- 
 tion of Karma by a single ego, through re- 
 peated incarnations, while Buddhism teaches 
 that this seeming identity is but illusory and 
 impermanent. It is in truth another soul 
 which inherits what we have amassed for it, 
 and proceeds, out of our experience, to the 
 sowing of fresh seed. On the merits of these 
 rival theories, the Swami would often sit and 
 ponder. By those to whom, as to him, the 
 great life of superconsciousness has ever 
 opened, as also in a lesser degree to those 
 who have only dwelt in its shadow, the con- 
 dition of the embodied spirit is seen as an 
 ever-fretting limitation. The encaged soul 
 beats wings of rebellion ceaselessly, 
 against the prisoning bars of the body, seeing 
 outside and beyond them, that existence of 
 pure ideas, of concentrated emotion, of 
 changeless bliss and unshadowed light, which 
 is its ideal and its goal. To these, then, the 
 body is a veil and a barrier, instead of a 
 
 337
 
 HIS ATTITUDE TO BUDDHA 
 
 means to mutual communing. Pleasure and 
 pain are but the Primal Light seen through 
 the prism of personal consciousness. The one 
 longing is to rise above them both, and find 
 That, white, undivided, radiant. It was this 
 train of feeling that expressed itself now and 
 then in our Master's utterances of impatience 
 at current conceptions, as when he broke out 
 with the words "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! " 
 Yet this question, of the relation to one an- 
 other of the different personalities in a single 
 long chain of experience, never failed to 
 interest him. The doctrine of re-incarnation 
 was never treated by him as an article of 
 faith To himself personally, it was 'a scienti- 
 fic speculation' merely, but of a deeply 
 satisfying kind. He would always bring it 
 forward, in opposition to our Western educa- 
 tional doctrine that all knowledge begins 
 
 338
 
 BUDDHISM AND AD V AIT A 
 
 with the senses, pointing out, on his side, that 
 this beginning of knowledge is often lost in 
 the remote past of the given person. Yet 
 when all had been said, the question still 
 remained whether in the end Buddhism would 
 not be proved philosophically right. Was 
 not the whole notion of continuous identity 
 illusory, to give way, at the last, to the final 
 perception that the many were all unreal, 
 and the One alone Real ? " Yes ! he ex- 
 claimed one day, after long thought in silence, 
 4 'Buddhism must be right! Re-incarnation is 
 only a mirage ! But this vision is to be reach- 
 ed, by the path of Advaita alone ! " 
 
 Perhaps it gave him pleasure, thus to 
 play off Sankaracharya against Buddha, as it 
 were, by calling in Advaita to the aid of 
 Buddhism. Perhaps it was the unification of 
 history involved, that so delighted him ; since 
 the one idea was thus shown to be imperfect, 
 apart from the other. " The heart of Buddha 
 .and the intellect of Sankaracharya " was al- 
 
 339
 
 HIS ATTITUDE TO BUDDHA 
 
 ways his definition of the highest possibility 
 of humanity. In this vein was the attention 
 he gave to the argument of a certain Western 
 woman, against the Buddhistic view of karma. 
 The extraordinary sense of social responsibil- 
 ity involved in that rendering, * had escaped 
 this particular mind. " I find, " she said, "no^ 
 motive for doing good deeds, of which 
 someone else, and not I, will reap the fruit !" 
 
 The Swami, who was himself quite incap- 
 able of thinking in this way, was greatly 
 struck by the remark, and a day or two 
 later said to someone near him-"That was a 
 very impressive point that was made the 
 other day, that there can be no reason for 
 doing good to people, if not they, but others, 
 are to gather the fruit of our efforts !" 
 
 "But that was not the argument ! " un- 
 
 * There is surely a sense in' which the motive for doing right is 
 much strenghened if we are to feel that another, and not oneself, 
 will bear the punishment for our sin. We may compare with this 
 our own sense of responsiblity for the property, children, or honour 
 of another. 
 
 340
 
 THE MODERN HINDU MIND 
 
 graciously answered the person addressed. 
 "The point was that someone else than my 
 self would reap the merit of my deed !" 
 
 "I know, I know, " he replied quietly, 
 <( but our friend would have done greater 
 justice to her own idea, if she had put it in 
 this other way. Let us suppose it to stand, 
 that we are deceived in doing service to 
 those who can never receive that service. 
 Don't you see that there is but one reply 
 the theory of Advaita ? For we are all one !" 
 
 Had he realised that the distinction be- 
 tween the mediaeval and modern Hindu 
 minds lay precisely here, that in the modern 
 idea of India there would always be a place 
 accorded to Buddhism and Buddha ? Had he 
 told himself that the Mahabharata and Ra- 
 mayana, which had dominated Indian edu- 
 cation since the Guptas, were henceforth to be 
 supplemented, in the popular mind, by the 
 history of the Asokan and Pre-Asokan 
 periods ? Had he thought of the vast signi-
 
 HIS ATTITUDE TO BUDDHA 
 
 ficance to Asia of such a generalisation, of 
 the new life to be poured from Hinduism into- 
 the veins of Buddhist countries, and of the 
 vigour and strength to be gained by India 
 herself, from the self-recognition of the 
 Mother-church, feeding with knowledge the 
 daughter-nations ? However this be, we 
 must never forget that it was in Hinduism 
 that he saw the keystone of the arch of the 
 two faiths. It was this mother, and 
 not her daughter, that he found all-inclusive. 
 Great and beloved Mother-church as she is, 
 she has room to all time for the glorious- 
 form of the first and most lion-hearted of all 
 her Avatars. She has place for his orders ; 
 understanding and reverence for his teach- 
 ings ; mother-love for his flock ; and sympathy 
 and welcome for the young he brought to 
 her. But never will she say that truth is con- 
 fined to his presentment ; that salvation is 
 only to be found through the monastic rule 
 that the path to perfection is one and one alone. 
 
 342
 
 HINDUISM ALL-INCLUSIVE 
 
 That was perhaps the greatest of the Swami 
 Vivekananda's pronouncements on Buddh- 
 ism, in which he said : "The great point of < 
 contrast between Buddhism and Hinduism 
 lies in the fact that Buddhism said 'Realise all ^= 
 this as illusion, ' while Hinduism said ' Real- <_ 
 ise that within the illusion is the Real.' Of 
 Aowthis 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 month of a butcher, preaching, 
 by the orders of a married woman, to a 
 sannyasin. Thus Buddhism became the re- 
 ligion of a monastic order, but Hinduism, 
 in spite of its exaltation of monasticism, 
 remains ever the religion of faithfulness to 
 daily duty, whatever it be, as the path by 
 which man may attain to God. " 
 
 343
 
 XIX 
 
 THE SWAMI'S ESTIMATE OF 
 HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Some of the deepest convictions of our 
 lives are gathered from data which, in their 
 very nature, can influence no one but our- 
 selves. The instantaneous estimate of a 
 motive or a personality, for instance, cannot 
 be communicated, in its vividness, to any 
 other, yet remains irresistible to the mind 
 that makes it. It may be either true or 
 false, that is to say, it may be based on a 
 subtle species of observation, possible only 
 to a few ; or it may be only a vagrant 
 impulse of emotion. Be this as it may, the 
 strong subjective impression will colour 
 much of the subsequent thought of him 
 who has experienced it, and will appear to 
 others as wisdom or caprice, according to 
 its good or ill-luck, in coinciding with fact. 
 
 344
 
 SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCES 
 
 In the same way, if, for the sake of the 
 arguement, we grant the truth of the theory 
 of re-incarnation, it immediately becomes 
 conceivable that some minds may enjoy 
 occasional access within themselves to stores 
 of sub-conscious memory, in which others 
 have no share. If so, it is just possible that 
 the results of such an excursus might furnish 
 clues of some value, even though the differ- 
 ence between it and pure imagination could 
 only be appreciated by the exploring mind 
 itself. 
 
 Some such train of thought is necessary, 
 if one is to visualise no less than three 
 striking subjective experiences, which exert- 
 ed an undoubted influence over my Master's 
 mind and thought. Chief of these probably, 
 was that vision of an old man on the banks 
 of the Indus, chanting Vedic riks, from 
 which he had learnt his own peculiar 
 method of intoning Sanskrit a method 
 much closer to that of Gregorian plainsong 
 
 345
 
 HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY 
 
 than is the ordinary singing of the Vedas. In 
 this, he always believed himself to have 
 recovered the musical cadences of the Aryan 
 ancestors. He found something remarkably 
 sympathetic to this mode in the poetry of 
 Sankaracharya, and this fact he expressed, 
 by saying that that master must have had 
 a vision like his own, in which he had 
 caught "the rhythm of the Vedas." * 
 
 Another similar experience had come to 
 him, when he was quite young. It was in the 
 days of his discipleship at Dukhineswar. 
 He was seated at home, in the little room 
 that formed his study, meditating, when 
 
 * The Swami Saradananda says that this vision occurred about 
 two years after Sri Ramakrishna had passed away, probably in January 
 1888. The passage which he heard was that Salutation to Gayatri 
 which begins "O come, Thou Eflulgent ! " 
 
 It is a great happiness to know that the Swami Abhedanands 
 has learnt and can reproduce this Sanskrit intoning, of the Swami 
 Vivekananda. 
 
 346
 
 A VISION OF BUDDHA 
 
 suddenly there appeared before him a man 
 tall and largely built, in whose face was a 
 calm so deep and so established, that it 
 seemed to the lad, looking up at him, as if 
 both pain and pleasure had been forgotten 
 during infinite time. The devotee rose from his 
 seat, and prostrated himself before his visitant^ 
 then he stood still, lost in an awestruck gaze. 
 Suddenly it seemed as if the form before 
 him were about to speak. But at this, a fit 
 of terror overcame the boy, and without 
 waiting to hear, he slipped quietly out of the 
 room, and closed the door behind him f 
 This was the vision to which he had referred, 
 when he spoke of the entrance of Buddha 
 into his room, in his youth. "And I fell at 
 his feet, for I knew it was the Lord Him- 
 self." Nor would it be easy to measure 
 how much of the throbbing energy of his 
 feeling about Buddha, the conviction of 
 his overwhelming 'sanity,' the realisation 
 of his infinite sacrifice and compassion, 
 
 347
 
 HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY 
 
 was born of that hour in his boyhood, when 
 he had felt that He stood revealed before 
 him. 
 
 The third and last of these determining 
 visions, in so far, at least, as is known to 
 those about him occurred to the Swami on 
 his way home to India, in January of the 
 year 1897. One gathers that during his 
 travels in Catholic Europe, he had been 
 startled, like others before him, to find the 
 identity of Christianity with Hinduism in 
 a thousand points of familiar detail. The 
 Blessed Sacrament appeared to him to be 
 only an elaboration of the Vedic prasadum. 
 The priestly tonsure reminded him of the 
 shaven head of the Indian monk ; and when 
 he came across a picture of Justinian receiv- 
 ing the Law from two shaven monks, he 
 felt that he had found the origin of the 
 tonsure. He could not but remember that 
 even before Buddhism, India had had monks 
 and nuns, and that Europe had taken her 
 
 348
 
 STUDYIOF WESTERN FAITHS 
 
 orders from the Thebaid. Hindu ritual had its- 
 lights, its incense, and its music. Even the 
 sign of the cross, as he saw it practised^ 
 reminded him of the touching of different 
 parts of the body, in certain kinds of 
 meditation. And the culmination of this series- 
 of observations was reached, when he 
 entered some cathedral, and found it 
 furnished with an insufficient number of 
 chairs, and no pews ! Then, at last, he was 
 really at home. Henceforth he could not 
 believe t hat Christianity was foreign. 
 
 Another train of thought that may have 
 prepared him, unconsciously, for the dream 
 I am about to recount, lay in the fact that 
 he had, in America, had a Jewish disciple, 
 by whom he had been introduced inta 
 orthodox Jewish society, and led to the 
 more or less careful study of the Talmud. 
 Thus he had a clearer sense of the back- 
 ground of thought, against which S. Paul 
 stood forth, than is at all common. 
 
 349
 
 HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Still an added factor in his study of 
 Christianity, that is worth remembering, was 
 his familiarity, in America, with the move- 
 ment known as Christian Science. In examin- 
 ing the birth of religions, he said once, 
 afterwards, that there were three elements of 
 which he thought we must always take 
 account, doctrine, ritual, and a third, of 
 the nature of magic, or miracle, which most 
 commonly appeared as a movement of 
 healing. The grounds for his inclusion of 
 the last member of this triad, I find partly 
 in his observation of Christian Science and 
 the allied movements, coupled as this would 
 be with his own conviction that we are 
 now on the eve of a great new synthesis in 
 religion and partly in his vision itself, 
 which was stamped so vividly on his brain- 
 fibre as to stand in his memory amongst 
 actual living experiences. 
 
 It was night, and the ship on which he 
 had embarked at Naples, was still on her 
 
 350
 
 HIS DREAM 
 
 way to Port Said, when he had this dream. 
 An old and bearded man appeared before 
 him, saying " Observe well this place that 
 I show to you. You are now in the island 
 of Crete. This is the land in which Chris- 
 tianity began." In support of this origin of 
 Christianity, the speaker gave two words 
 one of which was Therapeutce and showed 
 both to be derived direct from Sanskrit 
 roots. The Swami frequently spoke of this 
 dream in after years, and always gave the 
 two etymologies ; but the other seems* 
 nevertheless, to be lost, beyond recovery. 
 Of therapeutce , the meaning advanced was, 
 sons of the theras, from thera, an elder 
 amongst the Buddhist monks, and putra, 
 the Sanskrit word for son. " The proofs 
 are all here," added the old man, pointing 
 to the ground, "Dig, and you will find ! " 
 The Swami woke, feeling that he had 
 
 * It is my own belief that the second word was Esstnt. Bat 
 alas, I cannot remember the Sanskritic derivation ! N. 
 
 351
 
 HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY 
 
 had no common dream, and tumbled out on 
 deck, to take the air. As he did so, he met a 
 ship's officer, turning in from his watch. 
 ' What is the time ? ' he asked him. 
 
 " Midnight," was the answer. 
 
 " And where are we ?" 
 
 " Just fifty miles off Crete ! " 
 
 This unexpected coincidence startled the 
 Swami, lending inevitable emphasis to the 
 dream itself. The experience now seemed to 
 precipitate elements, that without it, would 
 have lain in his mind meaningless and un- 
 related. He confessed afterwards that up to 
 this time it had never occurred to him to doubt 
 the historic personality of Christ, and that 
 after this, he could never rely upon it. He 
 understood all at once that it was S. Paul alone 
 of whom we could be sure. He saw the 
 meaning of the fact that the Acts of the 
 Apostles was an older record than the 
 Gospels. And he divined that the teaching 
 of Jesus might have originated with the 
 
 352
 
 IDEALS AS IDEALS 
 
 Rabbi Hillel, while the ancient sect of the 
 Nazarenes might have contributed the name 
 and the person, with its beautiful sayings, 
 reverberating out of some unknown antiquity. 
 But while his vision thus exercised an 
 undeniable influence over his own mind, he 
 would have thought it insanity to offer it as 
 evidence to any other. The function of such 
 an experience, if admitted at all, was to his 
 thinking, subjective alone. He might be 
 led by it to doubt the historic character of 
 Jesus of Nazareth; but he never referred to 
 Crete as the probable birth-place of Christia- 
 nity. That would be an hypothesis for secular 
 scholarship alone, to prove or disprove. 
 The admitted historic spectacle of the meet- 
 ing of Indian and Egyptian elements at 
 Alexandria was the only geographical factor 
 of which he ever spoke. Nor did this in- 
 tellectual dubiety in any way dim the bright- 
 ness of his love for the Son of Mary. To 
 Hindu thinking, it is the perfection of the 
 
 353 
 w
 
 HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY 
 
 ideal, as ideal, that matters, and not the 
 truth of its setting in space and time. To 
 the Swami it was only natural, therefore, 
 to refuse, out of reverence, to give his 
 blessing to a picture of the Sistine 
 Madonna, touching the feet of the Divine 
 child, instead ; or to say, in answer to an 
 enquirer, "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 !" In this, moreover, he 
 had the explicit sanction of Sri Ramakrishna, 
 whom he had consulted anxiously, in his boy- 
 hood, on a similar question, to be answered, 
 "Do you not think that they who could 
 create such things must themselves have 
 been the ideal that they held up for 
 worship ? " 
 
 354
 
 XX 
 
 WOMAN AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 The Temple of Dakshineshwar was built 
 by the wealthy Rani Rashmani, a woman of 
 the Koiburto caste, and in the year 1853, Sri 
 Ramakrishna took up his residence there, as 
 as one of the Brahmins attached to its service. 
 
 These were facts which had impressed the 
 mind of Vivekananda even more deeply, per- 
 haps, than he himself ever knew. A woman 
 of the people had been, in a sense, the 
 mother of that whole movement of which all 
 the disciples of his Master formed parts. 
 Humanly speaking, without the Temple of 
 Dakshineshwar there had been no Rama- 
 krishna, without Ramakrishna no Viveka- 
 nanda, and without Vivekananda, no Western 
 Mission. The whole story rested on the 
 building, erected on the Ganges side, a few 
 miles above Calcutta, just before the middle 
 
 355
 
 WOMAN AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 of the nineteenth century. And that was 
 the outcome of the devotion of a rich woman 
 of the lower castes, a thing that under a 
 purely Hindu government, bound to the 
 maintenance of Brahmin supremacy, would 
 never have been possible, as the Swami him- 
 seL r was not slow to point out. From this 
 he inferred the importance of the non-cogni- 
 sance of caste, by centralised governments 
 in India. 
 
 Rani Rashmani, in her time, was a woman 
 of heroic mould. The story is still told, of 
 how she defended the fisher-folk of Calcutta 
 against wrongful taxation, by inducing her 
 husband to pay the enormous sum demanded, 
 and then insist on closing the river against 
 the heavy traffic of the foreigners. She 
 fought a like good fight over the right of her 
 household to carry the images of the gods 
 along the roads she owned, on the lordly 
 Maidan, or Park. If the English objected 
 to the religion of the Indian people, she said 
 
 356
 
 A STRONG WOMAN 
 
 in effect, it was a small matter to build walls 
 at the disputed points, to right and left of 
 the procession-path. And this was done, 
 with the result of breaking the continuity 
 of the grand pleasure-drive, the Rotten Row 
 of Calcutta. Early in her widowhood, she 
 had to bring all her wits to bear on her 
 bankers, in order to get into her own hands 
 the heavy balance which she required for 
 working-capital. This she accomplished, 
 however, with the greatest tact and adroit- 
 ness, and was mistress of her own affairs 
 thenceforth. Later, a great law-suit, in which 
 the ready-wit of her replies through counsel 
 carried all before her, became a household 
 word in Hindu Calcutta. 
 
 The husband of Rani Rashmani's daugh- 
 ter, 'Mathur Babu' as he was called, bears a 
 name that figures largely in the early history 
 of Sri Ramakrishna. It was he who pro- 
 tected the great devotee, when all around 
 held him to be religion-mad. It was he who 
 
 357
 
 WOMAN AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 continued him in the enjoyment of residence 
 and allowances, without permitting duties 
 to be demanded of him. In these things, 
 Mathur Babu acted as the representative 
 of his wife's mother. Rani Rashmani 
 had recognised the religious genius of 
 Sri Ramakrishna, from the beginning, and 
 proved unfaltering in her adhesion to 
 that first insight. 
 
 And yet, when Ramakrishna, as the young 
 Brahmin of Kamapukur, had first come to 
 Dakshineshwar, so orthodox had he been, 
 that he could not tolerate the idea of a 
 temple, built and endowed by a low-caste 
 woman. As the younger brother of the priest- 
 in-charge, he had to assist, hour after hour, in 
 the religious ceremonies of the opening day. 
 But he would eat none of the prasadam. 
 And late at night, it is said, when all was 
 over, and the guests had dispersed, he broke 
 his fast for the first time, with a handful of 
 fried lentils bought in the bazaar. 
 
 353
 
 SPRUNG OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 Surely this fact deepens the significance 
 of the position which he subsequently occu- 
 pied in the Temple-garden. It was by no 
 oversight that he became the honoured guest 
 and dependent of the Koiburto Rani. We 
 are justified in believing that when at last he 
 found his mission, he recognised it as sub- 
 versive, rather than corroborative, of the 
 rigid conservatism to which his childhood in 
 the villages had accustomed him, And we 
 may hold that his whole life declares the con- 
 viction of the equal religious importance of 
 all men, whatever their individual rank in 
 the social army. 
 
 Our Master, at any rate, regarded the 
 Order to which he belonged as one whose 
 lot was cast for all time with the cause of 
 Woman and the People. This was the cry 
 that rose to his lips instinctively, when he 
 dictated to the phonograph in America, the 
 message that he would send to the Rajah of 
 Khetri. It was the one thought, too, with 
 
 359
 
 WOMAN AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 which he would turn to the disciple at his side, 
 whenever he felt himself nearer than usual 
 to death, in a foreign country, alone, "Never 
 forget ! " he would then say, " the word is, 
 Woman and the People ! ' ' 
 
 It is of course in moments of the forma- 
 tion of groups that the intensity of social 
 power is at its greatest, and the Swami brood- 
 ed much over the fact that the 'formed? 
 could no longer give life or inspiration. 
 'Formed' and dead, with him, were syno- 
 nyms. A social formation that had become 
 fixed, was like a tree that had ceased to 
 grow. Only a false sentimentality (and 
 sentimentality was, in his eyes, selfishness, 
 'the overflow of the senses') could cause us 
 to return upon it, with expectation. 
 
 Caste was an institution that he was 
 always studying. He rarely criticised, he 
 constantly investigated it. As an inevitable 
 phenomenon of all human life, he could not 
 look upon it as if it had been peculiar to 
 
 360
 
 ON CASTE 
 
 Hinduisim. It was on seeing an Englishman 
 hesitate to admit, amongst gentlemen, 
 that he had once killed cattle in Mysore, 
 that the Swami exclaimed, "The opinion of 
 his caste is the last and finest restraint that 
 holds a man!" And with a few quick strokes 
 he created the picture of the difference 
 between those standards which differentiate 
 the law-abiding from the criminal, or the 
 pious from the unbelieving, on the one 
 hand, and on the other, those finer, more 
 constructive moral ideals, that inspire us to 
 strive for the respect of the smaller number 
 of human beings whom we regard as our 
 peers. 
 
 But remarks like this were no indication 
 of partisanship. It was for the monk to 
 witness life, not to take sides in it. He 
 ignored all the proposals that reached him, 
 which would have pledged him to one party 
 or another, as its leader. Only let Woman 
 and the People achieve education ! All
 
 WOMAN AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 further questions of their fate, they would 
 themselves be competent to settle. This 
 was his view of freedom, and for this he 
 lived. As to what form that education 
 should take, he knew enough to understand 
 that but little was as yet determined. With 
 all his reverence for individuality, he had a 
 horror of what he called the crime of the 
 unfaithful widow. " Better anything than 
 that ! " he said, and felt. The white un- 
 bordered sari of the lonely life was to him 
 the symbol of all that was sacred and true. 
 Naturally then, he could not think of any 
 system of schooling which was out of touch 
 with these things, as 'education.' The 
 frivolous, the luxurious, and the de- nationa- 
 lised, however splendid in appearance, was 
 to his thinking not educated, but rather 
 degraded. A modernised Indian woman, 
 on the other hand, in whom he saw the old- 
 time intensity of trustful and devoted compan- 
 ionship to the husband, with the old-time 
 
 362
 
 THE TRUE WOMAN 
 
 loyalty to the wedded kindred, was still, to 
 him, "the ideal Hindu wife. " True woman- 
 hood, like true monkhood, was no matter of 
 mere externals. And unless it held and 
 developed the spirit of true womanhood, 
 there could be no education of woman worthy 
 of the name. 
 
 He was always watching for chance 
 indications of the future type. A certain 
 growth of individualism was inevitable, and 
 must necessarily bring later marriage, and 
 perhaps a measure of personal choice, in its 
 train. Probably this, more than anything 
 else, wonld tend to do away with the pro- 
 blems created by child-widowhood. At the 
 same time, it was not to be forgotten that 
 early marriage had, in its time, been a deli- 
 berate attempt, on the part of the com- 
 munity, to avoid certain other evils which 
 they had regarded as incidental to its 
 postponement. 
 
 He could not foresee a Hindu woman of 
 
 363
 
 WOMAN AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 the future, entirely without the old power of 
 meditation. Modern science women must 
 learn : but not at the cost of the ancient 
 spirituality. He saw clearly enough that 
 the ideal education would be one that should 
 exercise the smallest possible influence for 
 direct change on the social body as a whole. 
 It would be that which should best enable 
 every woman, in time to come, to resume 
 into herself the greatness of all the women 
 of the Indian past. 
 
 Each separate inspiration of days gone by 
 had done its work. The Rajput story teem- 
 ed with the strength and courage of the na- 
 tional womanhood. But the glowing metal 
 must flow into new moulds. Ahalya Bae 
 Rani had been perhaps the greatest woman 
 who ever lived. An Indian sadku, who had 
 come across her public works in all parts of 
 the country, would naturally think so. Yet 
 the greatness of the future, while including 
 hers, would be no exact repetition of it. The 
 
 364
 
 PHYSICAL EXERCISE 
 
 mother's heart, in the women of the dawning" 
 age, must be conjoined with the hero's will. 
 The fire on the Vedic altar, out of which 
 arose Savitri, with her sacred calm and free- 
 dom, was ever the ideal background. But 
 with this woman must unite a softness and 
 sweetness, as of the south winds them- 
 selves. 
 
 Woman must rise in capacity, not fall. 
 In all his plans for a widows' home, or a girls' 
 school and college, there were great green 
 spaces. Physical exercise, and gardening, 
 and the care of animals, must form part of 
 the life lived there. Religion, and an intensity 
 of aspiration more frequent in the cloister 
 than outside it, were to be heart and back- 
 ground of this new departure. And such 
 schools, when the winter was over, must 
 transform themselves into pilgrimages, and 
 study half the year in the Himalayas. Thus 
 a race of women would be created, who should 
 be nothing less than " Bashi-Bazouks of 
 
 365
 
 WOMAN AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 religion,"* and they should workout the prob- 
 lem, for women. No home, save in their 
 work ; no ties, save of religion ; no love, but 
 that for guru, and people, and motherland. 
 Something after this sort was his dream. 
 He saw plainly enough that what was want- 
 ed was a race of women-educators, and this 
 was how he contemplated making them. 
 Strength, strength, strength was the one 
 quality he called for, in woman as in man. 
 But how stern was his discrimination of 
 what constituted strength ! Neither self- 
 advertisement nor over-emotion roused his 
 admiration. His mind was too full of the 
 grand old types of silence and sweet- 
 ness and steadiness to be attracted by 
 any form of mere display. At the same 
 
 * The Bashi-Bazouks were the bodyguard of the Caliph. For 
 many centuries, the members of the Turkish Guard consisted of 
 soldiers who had been kidnapped in early childhood from all races 
 and countries, and brought up in Islam. Their religion was thus 
 their passion, and the service of their land and sovereign, their 
 only bond of union. They were renowned throughout Europe for 
 their fierceness and courage. Their power was broken in Egypt by 
 Napoleon. 
 
 366
 
 THE EDUCATED WOMAN 
 
 time, woman had as large an inheritance 
 as man, in all the thought and knowledge 
 that formed the peculiar gift of the 
 age to India. There could be no sex in 
 truth. He would never tolerate any scheme 
 of life and polity that tended to bind tighter 
 on mind and soul the fetters of the body. 
 The greater the individual, the more would 
 she transcend the limitations of femininity 
 in mind and character ; and the more was 
 such transcendence to be expected and 
 admired. 
 
 He looked, naturally enough, to widows as 
 a class, to provide the first generation of 
 abbess-like educators. But in this respect, as 
 in all others, he made no definite plans. In 
 his own words, he only said " 'Awake! 
 Awake ! ' Plans grow and work themselves." 
 Yet he would have welcomed material, wher- 
 ever it might have come from. He knew of 
 no reason why it should be impossible to 
 any woman by strong and simple character 
 
 367
 
 WOMAN AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 and intellect, and uprightness of living to 
 make herself a vehicle of the highest ideals. 
 Even burdens of the conscience must be 
 held redeemable by sincerity. " All great 
 ends must be freely pursued, " says a recent 
 writer on feminist movements, and the Swami 
 had no fear of freedom, and no distrust of 
 Indian womanhood. But the growth of 
 freedom of which he dreamt, would be no 
 fruit of agitation, clamorous and iconoclastic. 
 It would be indirect, silent, and organic. 
 Beginning with a loyal acceptance of the 
 standards of society, women would more 
 and more, as they advanced in achieve- 
 ment, learn to understand both the commands 
 and the opportunities, which characteris- 
 ed the national life. By fulfilling those 
 demands, and availing themselves to the full 
 of their opportunities, they would grow more 
 Indian than ever before, even while they 
 entered on a grandeur of development, of 
 which the past had never dreamt. 
 
 368
 
 NATIONAL CONTINUITY 
 
 In nothing, perhaps, did the personal free- 
 dom of Vivekananda show itself more plainly 
 than in his grasp of the continuity of the na- 
 tional life. The new form was always, to him, 
 sanctified by the old consecration. To draw 
 pictures of the goddess Saraswati was, ac- 
 cording to him, " to worship her. " To study 
 the science of medicine was " to be down 
 on one's knees, praying against the demons 
 of disease and filth. " The old bhakti of the 
 cow show ed how receptive was the spirit of 
 Hindu society of new and scientific methods 
 of dairy-farming, and the pasturing and care 
 of animals. The training of the intellect to its 
 highest perfection, he believed essential to 
 the power of religious concentration. Study 
 was tapasya, and Hindu meditativeness an 
 aid to scien t ific insight. All work was a form 
 of renunciation. Love, even of home and 
 family, was always capable of being wrought 
 into a grander and more universal passion. 
 
 He delighted to point out that to the Hindu 
 
 369
 
 WOMAN AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 all written words were sacred, English and 
 Persian to the full as much as Sanskrit. But 
 he hated the tinkling sound of foreign man- 
 ners and foreign accomplishments. He could 
 not bear to listen to a criticism that con- 
 cerned itself merely with the readjustment of 
 externals. When comparisons had to be 
 made, he dealt always with the ideal as 
 differently expressed by different societies 
 and measured either failure or achieve- 
 ment, whether in modern or mediaeval, by 
 this central aim. 
 
 Above all, his conception of love was one 
 that admitted of no differentiation between 
 the speaker and him of whom he spoke. To 
 refer to others as "they" was already, to his 
 ears, almost hatred. He always united himself 
 with the criticised or the condemned. Those 
 about him realised that if the universe had 
 indeed been resolvable into an ultimate for- 
 mula of dualism, his own part would have 
 been chosen, not with Michael the Archangel, 
 
 3/0
 
 THE BASIS OF SERVICE 
 
 but with him, eternally defeated, over whom 
 he triumphed. And this was with him no 
 expression of an inner conviction that he 
 could teach or aid. It was simply the pas- 
 sionate determination to share the hardest 
 lot to which any might be driven without 
 escape, to defy the powers of the universe, 
 if need be, by himself suffering the utmost 
 to which any single consciousness anywhere 
 might find itself irretrievably doomed. 
 
 Well might he point out, as he does in 
 certain of his published letters, that even 
 compassion was not motive enough, on which 
 to build the service of others. He would 
 have no such patronage. Compassion, he 
 said, was that which served others with the 
 idea that they were jivas, souls : love, on the 
 contrary, regarded them as the Atman, the 
 very Self. Love, therefore, was worship, and 
 this worship the vision of God. " For the Ad- 
 vaitin, therefore, the ONLY motive is love. "There 
 was no privilege to be compared with the trust
 
 WOMAN AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 of a great service. "It is the Saviour," he 
 says, in one of his letters, "who should go 
 on his way rejoicing ; not the saved !" As 
 priests purifying themselves for the service 
 of the altar, with eager awe, and the will to 
 endure all, and yet be steadfast, must they 
 come forward, who were chosen for the sacred 
 task of woman's education. He remembered, 
 and often repeated, the words of Mataji 
 Maharani, the Mahratta woman who founded 
 in Calcutta, the Mahakali Pathshala. 
 " Swamiji ! " she said, pointing to the little 
 girls whom she taught, " I have no help. 
 But these blessed ones I worship, and they 
 will take me to salvation ! " 
 
 A like intensity of chivalry spoke, in 
 his attitude towards those whom he called 
 " the People. " Education and knowledge 
 were the right of these, as much as of their 
 brothers, higher in the social scale. Having 
 this, they would work out their own destiny, 
 freely, from within. In this view of the task 
 
 372
 
 EDUCATION FOR ALL 
 
 before him, the Swami was only continuing 
 the tradition of all the great Indian teachers, 
 from Buddha downwards. In the age when 
 the philosophy of the Upanishads had been 
 the exclusive privilege of the Aryans, the 
 Tathagatha arose, and taught to all alike the 
 Perfect Way, of Nirvana by Renunciation. 
 In a place and a period where the initiation 
 of the great Masters was the cherished cul- 
 ture of the few, Ramanuja, from the tower 
 of Conjeeveram, proclaimed the mystic text 
 to all the pariahs. It is now the dawn of the 
 modern age, with its realisation of man- 
 hood by secular knowledge in India. 
 Naturally then, to Vivekananda the absorb- 
 ing question was, how to give secular 
 knowledge to the People. 
 
 He saw, of course, that the energy and 
 co-operation of the whole nation was neces- 
 sary, if material prosperity was ever to be 
 brought back to India. And he knew well 
 enough that the restoration of material pros- 
 
 373
 
 WOMAN AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 parity was an imperative need. A God, he 
 said, with his accustomed vigour, who could 
 not in this life give a crust of bread, was not 
 to be trusted in the next for the kingdom of 
 heaven ! He also felt, probably, that only 
 by the spread of knowledge could the country 
 as a whole be kept steadfast in its reverence 
 for the greatness of its own inherited culture, 
 intellectual and religious. In any case, new 
 life could only be poured into the veins of 
 the higher classes, by a great movement of 
 forth-reaching to the democracy. He be- 
 lieved that the one thing to be renounced 
 was any idea of birth as the charter of lead- 
 ership. The sublimated common-sense that 
 men call genius, was to the full as likely 
 to occur in the small shopkeeper, or in the 
 peasant taken from the plough, as in the 
 Brahmin or the Kayasth. If the Kshatriya 
 had had any monopoly of courage, where 
 would Tantia Bhil have been ? He believed 
 that the whole of India was about to be 
 
 374
 
 THE NEED OF THE VILLAGES 
 
 thrown into the melting-pot, and that no man 
 could say what new forms of power and great- 
 ness would be the result. 
 
 He saw plainly that the education of the 
 Indian working-folk was properly the task of 
 the Indian lettered classes, and of no others. 
 The infinite danger that attended the intro- 
 duction of knowledge by foreign minds from 
 foreign sources, was never for one moment 
 hidden from him. This is the meaning of 
 his constant plea, in his published correspon- 
 dence, for the teaching of the villages, by 
 wandering students, who would carry the 
 magic lantern, the camera, and some means 
 for simple chemical experiments. Again he 
 begs for the inclusion of some secular ins- 
 truction in the intercourse of the begging 
 friars, with the humbler classes. All this, of 
 course, would be little more than a support 
 and attractive invitation, to the New Learn- 
 ing. For that learning itself every man 
 would have to struggle, alone or in combina- 
 
 375
 
 WOMAN AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 tion. But there can be no doubt that to bring 
 home to a large population the idea that 
 there is a world of thought and knowledge 
 unattained by them, is the first step in 
 the popularising of new culture. In such 
 schemes, therefore, the Swami was empha- 
 tically right. 
 
 As befitted a religious teacher, however, 
 the work that he himself initiated and conse- 
 crated was almost always some special service 
 of the hungry or the sick. It was he who 
 found the money that started the special 
 sanitation missions, first undertaken by the 
 Order, as a measure for plague-prevention, in 
 1899, and never since abandoned. Through- 
 out his years in the West, he was seeking 
 for workers " to devote themselves to the 
 Indian pariahs, " and nothing caused him 
 such exultation in 1897 as to see his Brahmin 
 disciples nursing low-caste patients through 
 cholera. " We see again, " he said, referring 
 to this, "what happened before, in the days 
 
 376
 
 MEANS OF SER VICE 
 
 of Buddha. " And those who knew him best, 
 feel a peculiar reverence and affection for the 
 little hospital in Benares, that was the last- 
 born child of his love and pity. 
 
 But his heart was not less bound up in 
 other undertakings, which, though less direct- 
 ly his, were more purely educational. The 
 well-being of the various magazines in which 
 the Order was interested, and the industrial 
 education carried on by the Orphanage at 
 Murshidabad, were matters of the deepest 
 import in his eyes. Under present circums- 
 tances in India, the magazine is often a kind 
 of peripatetic school, college, and university, 
 all in one. It has a marvellous degree of 
 influence. It carries ideas on the one hand, 
 and offers a means of self-expression on the 
 other, and it was an instinctive perception of 
 this educational value that made the Swami 
 so eager about the fate of various papers 
 conducted by his brethren and disciples. The 
 same number of a periodical will sometimes 
 
 377
 
 WOMAN AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 combine the loftiest transcendental abstrac- 
 tions on one page with comparatively falter- 
 ing secular speculations on the next, and in 
 this affords an exact index to the popular 
 mind of the Transition. The Swami himself 
 said, referring to this paradox, " The Hindu's 
 idea of the means of knowledge is medita- 
 tion, and this serves him well, when the 
 subject is mathematics. Unfortunately, how- 
 ever, his instinct would lead him to the same 
 method in the case of geography, and not 
 much geography comes that way ! " 
 
 Vivekananda's passion of pity, however, 
 did not concern itself with the Indian people 
 only. True to his Oriental birth, he would 
 always defend the small farmer or the small 
 distributor, against those theorists who seem 
 to consider that aggregations of business are 
 justified in proportion to their size. He held 
 that the age of humanity now dawning 
 would occupy itself mainly with the 
 problems of the working-folk, or, as he 
 
 378
 
 PROBLEMS OF THE SUDRA 
 
 expressed it, with the problems of the Sudra. 
 When he first landed in the West, he 
 was greatly attacted, as his letters show, by 
 the apparent democracy of conditions there. 
 Later, in 1900, he had a clearer view of the 
 underlying selfishness of capital and the 
 struggle for privilege, and confided to some- 
 one that Western life now looked to him 
 " like hell." At this riper stage of experience, 
 he was inclined to believe that China had 
 gone nearer to the ideal conception of human 
 ethics than newer countries had ever done, 
 or could do. Yet he never doubted that for 
 man, the world over, the coming age would 
 be " for the People. " " We are to solve the 
 problems of the Sudra, " he said, one day, 
 " but oh, through what tumults ! through 
 what tumults ! " He spoke like one gazing 
 direct into the future, and his voice had the 
 ring of prophecy ; but, though the listener 
 waited, hoping eagerly for more, he only 
 became silent, lapsing into deeper thought. 
 
 379
 
 WOMAN AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 I have always believed that it was for the 
 guiding and steadying of men through some 
 such age of confusion and terror, that in our 
 Master's life and that of Ramkrishna 
 Paramahamsa, the worship of the Mother has 
 sounded such a mighty Udbodhan. She it 
 is who unites in Herself the extremes of 
 experience. She shines through evil as 
 through good. She alone is the Goal, what- 
 ever be the road. Whenever the Swami 
 would chant Her salutation, one would 
 hear, like the subdued music of some 
 orchestra behind a single melody, this great 
 chorus of the historic drama. " Thou art the 
 welfare and happiness in the homes of the 
 virtuous, " he would recite, " And Thou art 
 the misery and wretchedness, in those of the 
 quarrelsome and wicked ! " And then, as the 
 mingling of oppressor and oppressed in a 
 common hope and terror, as the trampling of 
 armies, and turmoil of nations, grew 
 louder and clearer to the mental ear, one 
 
 380
 
 SALUTATION TO THE MOTHER 
 
 would hear the thunder of the great Ascrip- 
 tion rise above it all : 
 
 " Thou Mother of blessings, 
 Thou the Giver of desires, 
 Thou the Doer of all good, 
 To Thee our salutation. 
 Thee we salute, Thee we salute, 
 
 Thee we salute. 
 
 Thou terrible dark Night ! 
 Thou the Night of Delusion ! 
 Thou the Night of DEATH- 
 To THEE our salutation ! 
 Thee we salute. Thee we salute. 
 
 Thee we salute. "
 
 XXI 
 
 HIS METHOD OF TRAINING 
 A WESTERN WORKER. 
 
 THE Swami had once asked Pavhari 
 Baba of "Ghazipur, What was the secret of 
 success in work ? and had been answered, 
 " To make the end the means, and the 
 means the end. " 
 
 This is a saying that one penetrates now 
 and again for a moment at long intervals. 
 But if it signifies that the whole energy of 
 the worker should be concentrated on the 
 means, as if these were the end, while that 
 end itself is for the time being forgotten or 
 ignored, then it may be only another way 
 of preaching the great lesson of the Gita, 
 l< To action man has a right : he has no right 
 to the fruits of action. " 
 
 Our Master possessed, in a wonderful 
 degree, the secret of inspiring his disciples to 
 
 38*
 
 INDIAN FORMS 
 
 attempt this ideal. He had his own reasons 
 which every Hindu will perhaps understand- 
 for feeling that a European who was to 
 work on his behalf for India must do so in 
 the Indian way. And in this demand, while 
 he never confused essentials and non- 
 essentials, he regarded no detail as too trivial 
 to be important. To eat only of approved 
 foods, and to do this with the ringers, to sit 
 and sleep on the floor, to perform Hindu 
 ceremonies, and bind oneself strictly by the 
 feelings and observances of Hindu etiquette, 
 were all, to his thinking, means of arriving 
 at that Indian consciousness which would 
 afterwards enable one to orientate oneself 
 truly to the Indian aspects of larger ques- 
 tions. Even so trifling a matter as the use 
 of lime-juice and powdered lentils, instead of 
 soap, appeared to him worthy of thought 
 and effort. Even the caste-feelings that 
 seemed crude must be appreciated and as- 
 similated. It was tacitly understood that 
 
 383
 
 HIS METHOD OF TRAINING 
 
 the time might someday come, when one 
 would be free of all these, even as he was 
 free ; but the emancipation won by going 
 through an experience is very different from 
 the blindness that ignores or despises ! 
 
 The Swami was remarkable, however, in 
 his power of imparting the ideal with a 
 custom. To this day, one shudders at the 
 impurity and roughness of blowing out a 
 light ; while to put on a sari, and veil the 
 head, is always to strive for the mood of 
 passive sweetness and acceptance, rather 
 than that of self-confident aggression. For 
 in how far this symbolism of externals is a 
 fact of common Indian perception, we are not, 
 perhaps, quite prepared to understand. 
 "Never neglect to lower it ! " said the monk 
 Sadananda to me once, of this particular gar- 
 ment. "Remember that in that white veil 
 lies the half of saintliness !" 
 
 In all this, one was led along the path 
 that one knew already to be right. If the 
 
 384
 
 CANONS OF EDUCATION 
 
 student was to solve any problem of Indian 
 education, it was essential that there should 
 first be experience of the humbler routine of 
 teaching ; and for this the supreme and 
 essential quaification was to have looked at 
 the world, even if only for a moment, through 
 the eyes of the taught. Every canon of edu- 
 cational science proclaims this fact. 'From 
 known to unknown,' from simple to com- 
 plex,' 'from concrete to abstract,' and the very 
 term 'education' itself, are all words only, 
 on the lips of those who can form no idea of 
 the world as the pupil sees it, or the aims to 
 which he would fain be aided to climb. To 
 teach against the aspirations of the taught, is 
 assuredly to court ill results instead of good. 
 What was startling in the Swami's disci- 
 pline was his instinctive assumption that the 
 Indian consciousness was built up on the 
 thousand and one tiny details of Indian daily 
 life. Looking closer, one saw that this had 
 been the method pursued by Sri Rama- 
 
 385
 
 HIS METHOD OF TRAINING 
 
 / 
 krishna. Whenever he desired to apprehend a. 
 
 new idea, he had adopted the food, clothes, 
 language, and general habits of those who 
 held it. He had not merely attempted to 
 approximate to them in the use of a few reli- 
 gious formulae. ^ 
 
 But Vivekananda was too great an edu- 
 cator to disregard the freedom of the disciple, 
 even in such matters as these. The aim was 
 revealed only little by little, and always on 
 the basis of some attempt already made. It 
 was true that he was perpetually testing 
 purity of motive, always on his guard against 
 the possible intrusion of self-interest, in him- 
 self or in others. "I trust no one," he said, 
 "because I do not trust myself. How do I 
 know what I may become, to-morrow ? " 
 But it was also true that it was not in his 
 nature, as he said once, to interfere with 
 liberty, even to prevent mistakes. V It was 
 for him to point out the source of an error, 
 only when it had been committed, V 
 
 386
 
 THE FREEDOM GIVEN 
 
 During the first six months of 1899, I 
 dined occasionally with people of various 
 classes, both Indian and European, in Cal- 
 cutta. This fact always caused the Swami 
 uneasiness. He feared a revulsion, probably, 
 against the extreme simplicity of orthodox 
 Hindu life. Undoubtedly also he thought a 
 strong reaction possible, in favour of the 
 associations of one's birth. He had seen a 
 great religious movement shattered in the 
 West, by the petty social ambition of a woman 
 of over-much refinement. Yet he never in- 
 terfered with me in this matter, though a 
 single word of authority would have been 
 enough at any time to have ended it. Nor 
 did he ever show his disapproval. He took 
 an interest, on the contrary, in every experi- 
 ence that one brought to his notice. He 
 would in a general way express his fear, or 
 utter a grave warning, not at the time under- 
 stood, about 'loaves and fishes,' But seeing, 
 perhaps, that there was a genuine need to 
 
 387
 
 HIS METHOD OF TRAINING 
 
 form a concept of the whole synthesis of 
 classes and interests in Modern India, he 
 gave way completely to his disciple, and 
 allowed the course of enquiry to pursue its 
 own path. 
 
 It was only on the ship, during the 
 voyage to England, that he fully expressed 
 the ideal that was in him. "You must give 
 up all visiting, and live in strict seclusion," 
 he said one day, as he discussed the future 
 of the women's work. "You have to set 
 yourself to Hinduise your thoughts, your 
 needs, your conceptions, and your habits. 
 Your life, internal and external, has to be- 
 come all that an orthodox Hindu Brahmin 
 Brahmacharini's ought to be. The method 
 will come to you, if only yon desire it suffi- 
 ciently. But you have to forget your owu 
 past, and to cause it to be forgotten. %ou 
 have to lose even its memory!" 
 
 Never was monk more passionately mo- 
 nastic than Vivekananda, for all his apparent 
 
 388
 
 HINDU ETIQUETTE 
 
 ease and fearlessness. Yet here, in the case 
 of a worker, he knew how to substitute for 
 the walls of a convent, the Indian people and 
 their life. This has sometimes appeared to 
 me the greatest manifestation he gave, of his 
 genius. "We shall speak to all men," he 
 said once, "in terms of their own orthodoxy!" 
 and went on to picture a branch of the 
 Indian Orders in the English Church, wear- 
 ing the yellow garb, going barefooted, pract- 
 ising the extreme of asceticism, and standing 
 always for the supreme truth of the inter- 
 relatedness of all religions. 
 
 In the special case of the Indian conscious- 
 ness, however, his ideal was by no means 
 limited to a strenuous aspiration. Step by 
 step, point by point, he gave, as details of 
 Hindu etiquette, those instructions which it 
 is customary in Europe to offer the religious 
 novice. It was in this way that he laboured 
 to overcome that restlessness and emphasis 
 of Western manners, which appears to the 
 
 389
 
 HIS METHOD OF TRAINING 
 
 Eastern mind so crude. The constant ex- 
 pression of feeling, whether of pain, admira- 
 tion, or surprise, was to him shocking. It 
 was not necessary to stigmatise it as 
 irreligious, for it was ill-bred. The oriental 
 expects of a man that he should feel, and 
 keep his feeling to himself. Any constant 
 pointing-out of the curious or the beautiful 
 appears to him an unwarrantable intrusion 
 on the privacy and self-directedness of 
 thought. Yet that the desired repose of 
 manner is not conceived of as merely idle, is 
 seen in the case of that sage who was asked 
 by a certain king to tell him about God. 
 "What is He like ? What is He like ? " And 
 the saint replied, I" All this time I was tell- 
 ing you, O king ! For silence is His 
 name!" ) 
 
 This was a point on which the Swami 
 was exacting. He would impose on the 
 European disciple long periods of severe 
 restraint. " Stuggle to realise yourself, " he 
 
 390
 
 BE TRUE JO THE PEOPLE 
 
 said on a certain occasion, '"without a trace 
 of emotion ! " 
 
 Watching the fall of dead leaves once, in 
 the stillness of an autumn evening, he did 
 not deny that there was poetry in the sight, 
 but he declared that mental excitement, 
 roused by what was merely an event of the 
 external sense-world, was childish and out of 
 place. All Western people, he said, had to 
 learn the great lesson, of holding experience 
 and emotion apart. "Watch the fall of the 
 leaves, but gather the sentiment of the sight 
 from within, at some later time ! " 
 
 This is neither more nor less than the 
 conventual doctrine of recollectedness and 
 peace, as known in Europe. Is it also a 
 subtle method of evoking creative faculty ? 
 Does it point to a poetry which holds the 
 world as a vast symbol, yet thrones the 
 intellect high above the senses ? 
 
 Carrying the question out of the sphere 
 of mere good-breeding, and mental discip-
 
 HIS METHOD OF TRAINING 
 
 line, and framing the same truth again in 
 terms of the spiritual life alone, the Swami 
 would speak with horror of that bondage 
 which shows itself in the quest of subtle meta- 
 physical pleasures. In all idealism, he 
 would say, lies the danger of idealising 
 merely what we have reached. Such "cover- 
 ing of a corpse with flowers " would sooner 
 or later mean, when realised in practice, the 
 abandonment of the People, and the destruc- 
 tion of the work. Only they could be faith- 
 ful who were beyond temptation, followers 
 of the pure idea, regai dless of self. 
 
 "Mind ! " he said, as he talked of future 
 methods, ' No loaves and fishes ! No glam 
 our 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 ! " 
 
 Thus the common routine of the Hindu 
 
 392
 
 MONASTIC ORDERS 
 
 home became eloquent, on the Swami's lips, 
 of a world of deeper truths, characteristical- 
 ly apprehended by the Hindu mind. He 
 himself had been interested, from his baby- 
 hood, in monastic organisation. He had once 
 had a copy of the Imitation, in which there 
 was a preface describing the monastery and 
 the rule followed by Jean de Gerson, the 
 supposed author, and this preface, to his 
 imagination, had been the jewel of the 
 book. Not contented with reading it over 
 and over till he knew it off by heart, it filled 
 the dreams of his boyhood ; till with a kind 
 of surprise he awoke, in middle age, to find 
 himself organising another monastic order, 
 on the banks of the Ganges, and realised that 
 the fascination of his childhood had been a 
 foreshadowing of the future. 
 
 Yet it was not the conventualism of 
 authority, or of the school, but that of the 
 Hindu widow, following her rule freely, in 
 the midst of the family, that he held up to a 
 
 393
 
 HIS METHOD OF TRAINING 
 
 European disciple for a model. "An ortho- 
 dox Hindu Brahmin Brahmacharini" was 
 his ideal for the woman of character, and no 
 words can convey the delight with which 
 his voice lingered over the phrase. 
 
 "Lay down the rules for your group, and 
 formulate your ideas," he said once, dealing 
 with this very point, "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 
 one 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. For my 
 own part, I always have an horizon." 
 
 He broke off here to follow another line 
 
 394
 
 THE VALUE OF TYPES 
 
 of thought, which always interested him, and 
 always appeared to him fruitful of applica- 
 tions. "Two different races," he said, "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." 
 
 A few days afterwards, the same reflec- 
 tion came uppermost again, and he said with 
 great earnestness, *'A strong and distinct 
 type is always the physical basis of the 
 horizon. It is all very well to talk of 
 imiversalism, but the world will not be ready 
 for that for millions of years !" 
 
 "Remember !" he said again, "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. 
 
 395
 
 HIS METHOD OF TRAINING 
 
 India is idolatrous. You must help her as 
 she is. Those who have left her can do 
 nothing for her !" 
 
 The Swami felt that there was no task 
 before India which could compare in import- 
 ance with that of woman's education. His 
 own life had had two definite personal pur- 
 poses, of which one had been the establish- 
 ment of a home for the Order of Rama- 
 krishna, while the other was the initiation of 
 some endeavour towards the education of 
 woman. With five hundred men, he would 
 say, the conquest of India might take fifty 
 years : with as many women, not more than 
 a few weeks. 
 
 In gathering widows and orphans to be 
 trained, he was of opinion that the limita- 
 tions of birth must be steadfastly ignored. 
 But it was essential to success that those 
 who were chosen should be young and 
 unformed. " Birth is nothing !" he would 
 say, "Environment is everything!" But 
 
 396
 
 CASTLES IN THE AIR 
 
 above all else, he felt that impatience was 
 inexcusable. If in twelve years any result 
 were visible, this fact would constitute a 
 great success. The task was one that might 
 well take seventy years to accomplish. 
 
 For hours he would sit and talk of 
 details, building castles in the air of an ideal 
 school, dwelling lovingly on this point and 
 that. None of it would ever, perhaps, be 
 carried out literally, yet all of it, surely, was 
 precious, since it showed the freedom he 
 would have given, and the results that, from 
 his standpoint, would have appeared desirable. 
 
 It was natural if only in view of my own 
 pre-occupation at the time with the religious 
 ideas of Hinduism that all these plans 
 should wear a religious colour, They were 
 more conventual than scholastic. The temper 
 of the teaching was more the burden of his 
 thought than the learning to be imparted. 
 Except for a sudden exclamation once, 
 "We must turn out the greatest intellects in 
 
 397
 
 HIS METHOD OF TRAINING 
 
 India !" I scarcely remember that he ever 
 said anything directly affecting the secular 
 side of the woman's education scheme. 
 He took for granted that anything deserving 
 of such a name must needs be measured in 
 terms of depth and severity. He was no 
 believer in that false idealism which leads 
 to modification of knowledge or dilution 
 of truth, in the name of sex. 
 
 How to make the home-background 
 against which the work of education must 
 be carried on, at once thoroughly progres- 
 sive and thoroughly Hindu, was the problem 
 that engrossed him. There was the task of 
 so translating the formulae of the old regime, 
 moreover, that they might continue to com- 
 mand the reverence of the modernised. 
 
 The moral and ethical failures which 
 result from too easy an adoption of foreign 
 ideas, without regard to their effects on 
 social continuity and cohesion, were ever 
 before his eyes. He knew instinctively that 
 
 398
 
 OLD AND NEW 
 
 the bonds by which the old society had been 
 knit together, must receive a new sanction 
 and a deeper sanctification, in the light of 
 modern learning, or that learning would 
 prove only preliminary to the ruin of India. 
 But he never made the mistake of thinking 
 this reconciliation of old and new an easy 
 matter. How to nationalise the modern and 
 modernise the old, so as to make the two 
 one, was a puzzle that occupied much of his 
 time and thought. He rightly saw that only 
 when it had been pieced together, could 
 national education be in a fair way to begin. 
 
 The way in which the existing obliga- 
 tions of Hindu life might be re-interpreted to 
 include the whole of the modern conception 
 of duty to country and history, suddenly 
 struck him one day, and he exclaimed "How 
 much you might do, with those five Yajnas !* 
 
 * These are : (i) to the Rishis, by learning ; (2) to the Ances- 
 tors, by family honour (3) to the Gods, by religion ; (4) to the 
 Animals; and (5) to Mankind. 
 
 These five sacr ifices are to be performed daily by every Hindu. 
 
 399
 
 HIS METHOD OF TRAINING 
 
 What great things might be made of 
 them!" 
 
 The light had broken in a flash, but 
 it did not leave him. He took up the 
 thread of the idea, and went into every detail. 
 
 "Out of that old ancestor-/^, you might 
 create Hero-worship. 
 
 "In the 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 the lights in great Tamil but- 
 ter-lamps must be always burning. If, in 
 addition, the maintenance of perpetual ador- 
 ation could be organised, nothing could be 
 more in accord with Hindu feeling. 
 
 "But the ceremonies employed must 
 
 400
 
 THE FIVE YAJNAS 
 
 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 go- 
 ing 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 Moham- 
 medan 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 
 
 401
 
 HIS METHOD OF TRAINING 
 
 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 women deve- 
 lop it. Make poetry, make art, of it. Yes, 
 a daily worship of 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 wor- 
 ship 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." 
 
 But while he was thus prepared to worrc 
 out the minutice of the task of connecting old 
 
 402
 
 THE KEY TO IDEALS 
 
 and new, it remained always true that the 
 very presence of the Swami acted in itself as 
 a key to the ideal, putting into direct relation 
 with it every sincere effort that one encoun- 
 tered. It was this that made evident to the 
 crudest eye the true significance of ancient 
 rites. It was this that gave their sudden 
 vividness and value to the fresh applications 
 made spontaneously by modernised Hindus. 
 Thus the reverence of a great Indian man of 
 science for the heroes and martyrs of E uro- 
 pean science, seemed but the modern form of 
 the ancient salutation of the masters. The 
 pursuit of knowledge for its own sa ke with- 
 out regard to its concrete application, seemed 
 an inevitable greatness in the race that had 
 dreamt of Jnanam. Serene indifference to 
 fame and wealth proved only that a worker 
 was spiritually the monk, though he might 
 be playing the part of citizen and house-holder. 
 Of this element in his own life, by which 
 all else that was noble and heroic was made 
 
 403
 
 HIS METHOD OF TRAINING 
 
 into a recognition, a definite illustration, of 
 an ideal already revealed, the Swami was of 
 course unconscious. Yet this was, as one 
 imagines, the very quintessence of his inter- 
 pretative power. With regard to the details 
 of his educational suggestions, their pedagogic 
 soundness had always been startling to me. 
 Nor did I feel that this had been accounted 
 for, even when he told me of a certain period 
 of hardship and struggle, when he had under- 
 taken to translate Herbert Spencer's 'Edu- 
 cation' into Bengali, and had gone on, be- 
 coming interested in the subject, to read all 
 he could find about Pestalozzi also, 'though 
 that was not in the bond.' 
 
 In fact so deeply is the Hindu versed in 
 psychological observation, and so perfect an 
 example of the development of faculty has he 
 always before him, in the religious practices 
 of his people, that he enters the field of 
 educational theory with immense advantages. 
 Nor is there any reason why the very centre 
 
 404
 
 HINDU POTENTIALITY 
 
 of scientific thought on the subject should not 
 someday be found with him. Meanwhile, the 
 lirst step towards so desired a consummation 
 will lie in apprehending the vast possibilities 
 of existing formulae. Indian educators have 
 to extend and fulfil the vision of Viveka- 
 nanda. When this is done, when to his 
 reverence and love for the past, we can add 
 his courage and hope for the future, and his 
 allegiance to the sacredness of all knowledge, 
 the time will not be far distant that is to see 
 the Indian woman take her rightful place 
 amongst the womanhood of the world. 
 
 405
 
 XXII 
 MONASTICISM AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 To the conscience of the Swami, his 
 monastic vows were incomparably precious. 
 To him personally as to any sincere monk 
 marriage, or any step associated with it, 
 would have been the first of crimes. To rise 
 beyond the very memory of its impulse, was 
 his ideal, and to guard himself and his 
 disciples against the remotest danger of it, 
 his passion. The very fact of un-married-ness 
 counted with him as a spiritual asset. It 
 follows from all this, that he was accompani- 
 ed not only by the constant eagerness for 
 monastic perfection, but also by the equally 
 haunting fear, of loss of integrity. And this 
 fear, however salutary or even necessary ta 
 his own fulfilment of the ideal, did un- 
 doubtedly, for many years, come between 
 him and the formulation of an ultimate 
 
 406
 
 HONOURABLE WOMEN 
 
 philosophy, on this most important sub- 
 ject. 
 
 It must be understood, however, that his 
 dread was not of woman, but of temptation. 
 As disciples, as co-workers, and even as 
 comrades and playfellows, he was much 
 associated with women, the world over. It 
 happened almost always that he followed the 
 custom of the Indian villages with these 
 friends of his wanderings, and gave them 
 some title of family relationship. In one place 
 he found a group of sisters, elsewhere a 
 mother, a daughter, and so on. Of the 
 nobility of these, and their freedom from 
 false or trivial ideas, he would sometimes 
 boast; for he had in its highest degree that 
 distinction of fine men, to seek for greatness 
 and strength, instead of their opposites, in 
 women. To see girls, as he had seen them 
 in America, boating, swimming, and playing 
 games, "without once," in his own phrase, 
 "remembering that they were not boys," de- 
 
 407
 
 MONASTICISM AND MARRIAGE 
 
 lighted him. He worshipped that ideal of 
 purity which they thus embodied for him. 
 
 In the monastic training, he laid constant 
 emphasis on the necessity of being neither 
 man nor woman, because one had risen 
 above both. Anything, even politeness, that 
 emphasised the idea of sex, was horrible to 
 him. The thing that the West calls 'chivalry' 
 appeared to him as an insult to woman. 
 The opinion of some writers that woman's 
 knowledge ought not to be too exact, nor 
 man's to be too sympathetic, would have 
 sounded, in his neighbourhood, like a pitiful 
 meanness. The effort of all alike must be 
 the overcoming of such limitations, imposed 
 on a defiant human spirit by our physical 
 constitution. 
 
 The ideal of the life of the student, with 
 its mingling of solitude, austerity, and 
 intense concentration of thought, is known 
 in India as brahmacharya. "Brahmacharya 
 should be like a burning fire within the 
 
 408
 
 WORSHIP OF SARAS WAT! 
 
 veins !" said the Swami. Concentration upon 
 subjects of study, incidental to student-hood, 
 was to him only one form of that negation 
 of personal in ! impersonal, which to his 
 thinking formed so inevitable a part of all 
 great lives, that for its sake he was even 
 tempted to admire Robespierre, in his 
 fanaticism of the Terror. The worship of 
 Saraswati, by which he meant perfect 
 emotional solitude and self-restraint he 
 believed with his whole heart to be an essential 
 preparation for any task demanding the 
 highest powers, whether of heart, mind, or 
 body. Such worship had been recognised in 
 India for ages, as part of the training of the 
 athlete, and the significance of this fact was 
 that a man must dedicate all the force at his 
 disposal, if he were now and again to reach 
 that height of superconscious insight, which 
 appears to others as illumination, inspiration, 
 or transcendent skill. Such illumination was 
 as necessary to the highest work in art or 
 
 409
 
 MONASTICISM AND MARRIAGE 
 
 science, as in religion. No man who was 
 spending himself in other ways selfish or 
 ignoble, could ever have painted a great 
 Madonna, or enunciated the Laws of Gravita- 
 tian. The civic ideal called as loudly for 
 monastic devotion as the spiritual. The 
 vows of celibacy meant renunciation of 
 the private for the public good. Thus he 
 saw that true manhood could not be, without 
 control of manhood ; that the achievement 
 of real greatness, by whatever path, meant 
 always the superiority of the soul to the 
 personal impulse ; and finally, that the great 
 monk was also potentially the great worker or 
 great citizen. That he was equally clear as to 
 the converse of this, as, for instance, that 
 great wifehood or great citizenship can only 
 be, where nunhood or monasticism mighi 
 have been I cannot say. I think that 
 perhaps his own life, of monk and guide 
 of monastic aspirants, hid from him this 
 great truth, except in flashes, until the end 
 
 410
 
 NO PAIN IN LOVE 
 
 came, and his summary of conclusions was 
 complete. "It is true," he said once, "that 
 there are women whose very presence makes 
 a man feel driven to God. But there are 
 equally others, who drag him down to hell." 
 
 At his side, it was impossible to think 
 with respect of a love that sought to use, to 
 appropriate, to bend to its own pleasure or 
 good, the thing loved. Instead of this, love, 
 to be love at all, must be a welling benedic- 
 tion, a free gift, "without a reason," and 
 careless of return. This was what he meant, 
 by his constant talk of "loving without 
 attachment." Once, indeed, on his return 
 from a journey, he told some of us that he 
 had now realised that the power to attach 
 oneself was quite as important as that of 
 detachment. Each must be instantaneous, 
 complete, whole-hearted. And each was 
 only the complement of the other. "Love 
 is always a manifestation of bliss," he said in 
 England, "the least shadow of pain falling
 
 MONASTICISM AND MARRIAGE 
 
 upon it, is always a sign of physicality and 
 selfishness." 
 
 Furthest of all from his admiration were 
 the puling literature and vitiated art that 
 see human beings primarily as bodies to be 
 possessed, and only in the second place as 
 mind and spirit, eternal in self-mastery and 
 inner freedom. Much, though not all, of our 
 Western idealism, seemed to him to be 
 deeply tainted with this^ spirit, which he al- 
 ways spoke of as "hiding a corpse beneath 
 flowers." 
 
 The ideal of wifehood he thought of, in 
 Eastern fashion, as an unwavering flame of 
 devotion to one alone. Western customs he 
 may have regarded as polyandrous, for I find 
 it difficult otherwise to account for his state- 
 ment that he had seen women as great and 
 pure amongst polyandrous peoples, as in the 
 home of his birth. He had travelled in 
 Malabar, but not in Thibet ; and in Malabar, 
 as one learns by enquiry, the so-called 
 
 412
 
 EUROPEAN IDEALS 
 
 polyandry is really only matriarchal 
 marriage. The husband visits the wife in 
 her own home, and marriage is not 
 necessarily for life, as in the rest of India ; 
 but two men are not received on an equal 
 footing, at the same time. In any case, he 
 had learnt, he said, that "custom was nothing," 
 that use and wont could never altogether 
 thwart or limit human development. He 
 knew that in any country and any race 
 the ideal might shine forth through individuals 
 in all its fulness. 
 
 He never attacked a social ideal. He 
 told me, a day] or two before I landed in 
 England, on my return there in 1899, that I 
 must take back while in the West, as though 
 I t had never dropped them, the social ideals 
 of Europe. To him, in Europe or America, 
 the married woman was not less in honour 
 than the unmarried. Some missionaries on 
 board the ship, during this voyage, were 
 displaying silver wedding-bracelets bought
 
 MONASTICISM AND MARRIAGE 
 
 from Tamil women in the stress of famine ; 
 and the talk ran on the superstitious dislike 
 of wives, East and West, to the removal 
 of the wedding-ring from finger or wrist. 
 "You call it a superstition ?" exclaimed the 
 Swami, in low pained tones of astonishment, 
 "You cannot see the great ideal of chastity, 
 behind ?"* 
 
 The institution of marriage, however, was 
 always seen by him in its relation to the 
 ideal of spiritual freedom. And freedom, in 
 the Eastern sense, must be understood, not 
 as the right to do, but the right to refrain 
 from doing that highest inaction which 
 transcends all action. "Against marriage, in 
 order to rise beyond marriage," he admitted 
 one day, in argument, "I have nothing to 
 say." The perfect marriage was, to his 
 
 * The chastity of the wife, as Hindus think of it, is a word that 
 connotes not only faithfulness to one alone, but also unwearying 
 faithfulness. In this ideal, there is no room for the slightest fluctua- 
 tion of distaste. 
 
 414
 
 IDEALS OF MARRIAGE 
 
 thinking, of the type that he had seen in his 
 Master, in his brother Yogananda, and in 
 his disciple Swarupananda. And these were 
 what would in other countries have been 
 regarded as merely nominal. "You see there 
 is a difference of outlook on] this point !" he 
 said once, discussing the question. "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 all 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 !" 
 
 Sri Ramakrishna, it was said, had 
 always referred to marriage as a special, 
 and to the monastic life as a universal, 
 service. In this' he was, one supposes, 
 
 415
 
 MONASTICISM AND MARRIAGE 
 
 alluding only to marriages of the very 
 highest type. And this was clearly the 
 determining concept of celibacy or brahma- 
 ckarya, in the Swami's own mind. He 
 called souls to take this vow as if he were 
 calling them to the most honourable of 
 warfare. He regarded a monastic order as 
 "an army" behind a leader, and the teacher 
 whose followers were all citizens and house- 
 holders, as without an army. There could 
 be no comparison, in his mind, between the 
 strength of a cause that had, and one that 
 had not, this support. 
 
 Yet in marriage itself, he was not wholly 
 unable to see a career for the soul. I can 
 never forget his story of an old couple who 
 were separated, after fifty years of companion- 
 ship, at the doors of the workhouse. "What !" 
 exclaimed the old man, at the close of the 
 first day, "Can't I see Mary and kiss her 
 before she goes to sleep? Why, I haven't 
 missed doing that at night, for fifty years !" 
 
 416
 
 A PATH TO MUKTI 
 
 "Think of it !" said the Swami, glowing with 
 the thought of an achievement so high, 
 "Think of it Such self-control and steadi- 
 ness as that, ARE mukti \ Marriage itself had 
 been the path for those two souls ! 
 
 He held with unfaltering strength, that 
 the freedom to refrain from marriage, if she 
 wished, ought to be considered as a natural 
 right of woman. A child, whose exclusive 
 leaning to the devotional life was already 
 strongly marked before she was twelve, had 
 once appealed to him for protection against 
 proposals of alliance that were being made 
 by her family. And he, by using his influence 
 with her father, and suggesting increased 
 dowers for the younger daughters, had been 
 successful in aiding her. Years had gone by, 
 but she was still faithful to the life she had 
 adopted, with its long hours of silence and 
 retirement ; and all her younger sisters were 
 now wedded. To force such a spirit into 
 marriage would in his eyes have been a 
 
 417
 
 MONASTICISM AND MARRIAGE 
 
 desecration. He was proud, too, to count up 
 the various classes, of child-widows, wives 
 of kulin Brahmins, rare cases of the undower- 
 ed and so on who represent the unmarried 
 woman in Hindu society. 
 
 He held that the faithfulness of widows 
 was the very pillar on which social institu- 
 tions rested. Only he would have liked to 
 declare as high an ideal for men as for 
 women in this respect. The old Aryan 
 conception of marriage, symbolised in the 
 fire lighted at marriage, and worshipped 
 morning and evening by husband and 
 wife together, pointed to no inequality of 
 standards or responsibilities as between the 
 two. Rama, in the epic of Valmiki, had 
 been as true to Sita, as Sita to him. 
 
 The Swami was not unaware of the exis- 
 tence of social problems, in connection with 
 marriage, in all parts of the world. "These 
 unruly women," he exclaims, in the course of 
 a lecture in the West, "from whose minds 
 
 418
 
 PROBLEMS IN MARRIAGE 
 
 the words 'bear and forbear' are gone for 
 ever l" He could admit, also, when continu- 
 ance in a marriage would involve treachery 
 to the future of humanity, that separation 
 was the highest and bravest course for 
 husband or wife to take. In India he would 
 constantly point out that Oriental and Occi- 
 dental ideals needed to be refreshed by one 
 another. He never attacked social institutions 
 as such, holding always that they had grown 
 up out of a desire to avoid some evil which 
 their critic was possibly too headstrong to 
 preceive. But he was not blind to the over- 
 swing of the pendulum, in one direction or 
 the other. 
 
 "There is such pain in this country !" he 
 said one day in India, speaking of marriage 
 by arrangement instead of by choice. "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 !" 
 
 419
 
 MONASTICISM AND MARRIAGE 
 
 "We have exalted motherhood, and you- 
 wifehood," he said again, to a European, 
 "and I think both might gain by some inter- 
 change." 
 
 Again, there was the dream that he re- 
 counted on board ship, " in which I heard 
 two voices discussing the marriage-ideals of 
 the East and the West, and the conclusion 
 of the whole was, that there was something 
 in each, with which as yet, the world could 
 ill afford to part." It was this conviction that 
 led him to spend so much time examining in- 
 to differences of social ideals, as between 
 East and West. 
 
 "In India," he said, "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. 
 
 420
 
 THE MONK ALONE FREE 
 
 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." 
 
 But the overwhelming thought that his 
 very presence carried home to the mind was 
 of the infinite superiority of that life which 
 seeks only the freedom of the soul and the 
 service of all, to that which looks for comfort 
 and the sweetness of home. He knew well 
 enough the need that great workers may feel 
 of being encircled by subordinated human 
 lives. "You need not mind," he said once, 
 turning to a disciple with great tenderness 
 and compassion, "You need not mind, if 
 these shadows of home and marriage cross 
 your mind sometimes. Even to me, they 
 come now and again !" And again, hearing 
 of an expression of intense loneliness on the 
 part of a friend, he exclaimed. "Every worker 
 feels like that at times !" 
 
 But infinite danger lay, to his thinking, in 
 
 421
 
 MONASTICISM AND MARRIAGE 
 
 a false exaltation of any social ideal at the 
 risk of jeopardising the eternal supremacy of 
 the super-social. "Never forget to say to all 
 whom you teach," he charged one of his dis- 
 ciples solemnly, "that like a little fire-fly be- 
 side the brightness of the sun, like a grain of 
 sand beside the vastness of Mount Meru, SO 
 is the life of the citizen compared with that 
 of the Sannyasin !" 
 
 He knew the danger that lay here, of 
 spiritual pride, and his own means of over- 
 coming this lay in bowing himself down to 
 any one, whether monk or householder, who 
 was disciple and devotee of his own Master, 
 Sri Ramakrishna. But to abate the dictum 
 itself, would have been, in his eyes, to have 
 minimised the ideal, and this he could not do. 
 Instead, he felt that one of the most impor- 
 tant responsibilities lying, in the present age, 
 upon the religious orders, was the preaching 
 of monastic ideals even in marriage, in order 
 that the more difficult might always exercise 
 
 422
 
 IDEAL MARRIAGE 
 
 its compelling and restraining force upon the 
 easier, path; and that the false glamour of 
 romance, obscuring the solitary grandeur 
 and freedom of the soul, as the ultimate aim, 
 in the name of an interesting and absorbing 
 companionship, might be utterly destroyed. 
 All the disciples of Ramakrishna believe 
 that marriage is finally perfected by the man's 
 acceptance of his wife as the mother ; and 
 this means, by their mutual adoption of the 
 monastic life It is a moment of the mer- 
 gence of the human in the divine, by which 
 all life stands thenceforward changed. The 
 psychological justification of this ideal is said 
 to be the fact that, up to this critical point, 
 the relation of marriage consists in a cons- 
 tant succession of a two-fold impulse, the 
 waxing followed by the waning, of affection. 
 With the abandonment of the external, how- 
 ever, impulse is transcended, and there is no- 
 fluctuation. Henceforth the beloved is wor- 
 shipped in perfect steadfastness of mind. ^ 
 
 423
 
 MONASTICISM AND MARRIAGE 
 
 Yet in dealing with his views on this 
 question, one cannot but remember his utter- 
 ance on the contrast between Hinduism and 
 Buddhism, that Sunday morning in Kashmir, 
 when we walked under the avenue of poplars, 
 and listened to him as he talked of Woman 
 and of Caste. "The glory of Hinduism," he 
 said that day, "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 
 Mahabharata 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 do- 
 ing my duty in my own station, have I 
 attained this knowledge,' There is no career 
 then," he ended, "which might not be the 
 
 424
 
 IDEALISING SELF 
 
 path to God. The question of attainment 
 depends only, in the last resort, on the thirst 
 of the soul." 
 
 Thus the fact that all life is great, only in 
 proportion to its expression of ideal purity, 
 was not, in theory, outside the Swami's 
 acceptance, however much, as a monk, he 
 shrank from interpretations which might lead 
 to the false claim that marriage was chosen 
 as a means to spirituality. That self-love 
 constantly leads us to such subtle exaltation 
 of our own acts and motives, he was well 
 aware. He had constantly, he told us, met 
 with * persons, in Western countries, who 
 urged that their own lives, though indolently 
 passed in the midst of luxury, were without 
 selfishness ; that only the claims of duty kept 
 them in the world ; that in their affections, 
 they were able to realise renunciation with- 
 out a struggle. On all such illusions, he 
 poured out his scorn. "My only answer 
 was," he said, "that such great men are not 
 
 425
 
 MONASTICISM AND MARRIAGE 
 
 born in India ! The model in this kind was 
 the great king Janaka, and in the whole of 
 history he occurs but once !" In connection 
 with this particular form of error, he would 
 point out that there are two forms of idealism ;. 
 one is the worship and exaltation of the ideal 
 itself, the other is the glorification of that 
 which we have already attained. In this 
 second case, the ideal is really subordinated 
 to self. 
 
 In this severity, however, there was no 
 cynicism. Those who have read our 
 Master's work on Devotion, or Bhakti 
 Yoga, will remember there the express state- 
 ment that the lover always sees the ideal 
 in the beloved. "Cling to this vision !"" 
 I have heard of his saying to a girl 
 whose love for another stood newly-con- 
 fessed "As long as you can both see the 
 ideal in one another, your worship and happi- 
 ness will grow more instead of less." 
 
 A mongst the friends of our Master there 
 
 426
 
 HIS FINAL UTTERANCE 
 
 was, however, one middle-aged woman who 
 was never satisfied that, in his intensity of 
 monasticism, he was able to do full justice 
 to the sacredness and helpfulness of 
 marriage. She had herself been long a 
 widow, after an unusually blessed experience 
 of married life. Very naturally, therefore, it 
 was to this friend that he turned, when, a 
 few weeks before the end, he arrived at what 
 he knew to be his crowning conviction on 
 this whole subject ; and his letter was brought 
 to her in her distant home by the same 
 hand that was carrying also the telegraphic 
 announcement of his death. In this letter, 
 so solemnly destined, he says : "In my 
 opinion, a race must first cultivate a great 
 respect for motherhood, through the sancti- 
 fication and inviolability of marriage, before 
 it can attain to the ideal of perfect 
 chastity. The Roman Catholics and the 
 Hindus, holding marriage sacred and in- 
 violate, have produced great chaste men 
 
 427
 
 MONASTICISM AND MARRIAGE 
 
 -and women of immense power. To the 
 Arab, marriage is a contract, or a forceful 
 possession, to be dissolved at will, and we 
 do not find there the development of the ideal 
 of the virgin, or the brahmacharin. Modern 
 Buddhism, having fallen among races who 
 have not even yet come up to the evolution of 
 marriage has made a travesty of monasti- 
 cism. So, until there is developed in Japan 
 a great and sacred ideal about marriage 
 ( apart from mutual attraction and love ), I 
 do not see how there can be great monks 
 and nuns. As you have come to see that 
 the glory of life is chastity, so my eyes also 
 have been opened to the necessity of this 
 great sanctification for the vast majority, 
 in order that a few life-long chaste powers 
 may be produced." 
 
 There are some of us who feel that this 
 letter has an even wider-reaching significance 
 than he himself would have thought of 
 .ascribing to it. It was the last sentence in 
 
 428
 
 FIDELITY ESSENTIAL 
 
 the great philosophy which saw "in the Many 
 and the One the same Reality." If the 
 inviolability of marriage be indeed the school 
 in which a society is made ready for the 
 highest possibilities of the life of solititude 
 and self-control, then the honourable fulfil- 
 ment of the world's work is as sacred a means 
 to supreme self-realisation, as worship and 
 prayer. We have here, then, a law which 
 enables us to understand the discouragement 
 of religious ecstasy, by Ramakrishna 
 Paramahamsa, and his great preference for 
 character, in his disciples. We understand, 
 too, the inner meaning of Vivekananda's 
 own constant preaching of strength. The 
 reason is very simple. If "the Many and the 
 One be the same Reality, seen by the same 
 mind at different times, and in different 
 attitudes," then, in three words, Character is 
 Spirituality. "Greatness" really is, as a deep 
 thinker has affirmed, "to take the common 
 things of life, and walk truly amongst them ; 
 
 429
 
 MONASTICISM AND MARRIAGE 
 
 and holiness a great love and much serving." 
 These simple truths may prove after all, to 
 be the very core of the new gospel. And 
 in endorsement of this possibility, we have 
 the Master's own words" The highest truth 
 is always the simplest." 
 
 430
 
 XXIII. 
 
 OUR MASTER'S RELATION TO 
 
 PSYCHIC PHENOMENA 
 
 SO-CALLED. 
 
 INDIA is undoubtedly the land of the un- 
 derstanding of psychology. To Hindus, 
 more than to any other race, it may be said 
 that men appear as minds. Concentration 
 of mind is to them the ideal of life. Such 
 differences as between talent and genius, 
 between ordinary goodness and the highest 
 sainthood, between moral weakness and 
 power, are by them understood as simple 
 differences in degree of concentration. This 
 pre-occupation of the race is partly cause, 
 and partly effect, doubtless, of the fact that 
 the study of psychology has been organised 
 in India as a science, from the earliest times. 
 Long before the value of writing, for the 
 notation of knowledge, was even suspected,
 
 PSYCHIC PHENOMENA 
 
 the quiet registration of phenomena in the 
 communal consciousness, had begun, by the 
 interchange of ideas and observations. Mil- 
 lenniums before instruments and labora- 
 tories could be thought of, as having any 
 bearing on scientific enquiry in general, the 
 age of experiment was fully developed 
 amongst the Indian people, with regard 
 to this most characteristic of their sciences. 
 
 It is not surprising that in the singularly 
 wide range of knowledge thus accumulated 
 in India, many phenomena of the mind, 
 which appear to the less informed West as 
 abnormal or miraculous, should be duly 
 noted and classified. Thus hypnotism, and 
 many obscure forms of hyperastkesis and 
 hyperkinesis, the most familiar of these 
 being healing, thought-reading, clairvoyance, 
 and clairaudience offer no overwhelming 
 difficulty to the student of the ancient 
 Indian psychology, or Raja Yoga, as it is 
 called. 
 
 432
 
 NO SUPERNATURAL 
 
 We all know that the great value of 
 scientific thought lies in enabling us to re- 
 cognise and record phenomena. It matters 
 little that a disease is rare, if only it be once 
 noted as within the field of medical practice, 
 It has a place thenceforth, in the human 
 mind. It is no miracle, only because, sooner 
 or later, it will be classified. It has a name. 
 The conjunction of diagnosis and treatment 
 is now a question of time only. 
 
 Something of the same sort applies to- 
 the trustworthy fraction o what are com- 
 monly referred to as " psychic phenomena." 
 Occurrences falling under this head, when 
 authentic, are obviously no more superna- 
 tural than the liquefaction of air, or the 
 extraction of radium. Indeed the propriety 
 of the word ' supernatural ' is always open to- 
 dispute, inasmuch as if once a thing can be 
 proved to occur, it is clearly within nature, 
 and to call it supernatural becomes by that 
 very fact, absurd. In India the phenomena 
 
 433
 
 PSYCHIC PHENOMENA 
 
 in question are regarded as cases of extension 
 of faculty, and their explanation is sought, 
 not in the event, but in the state of the mind 
 witnessing it, since it is to be supposed that 
 this will always, under given conditions, 
 register a perception different from the 
 accustomed. 
 
 In Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, living in 
 the garden of Dakshineshwar, his disciples 
 had been familiar, for years, with many of 
 those mental characteristics which are noted 
 in the books as distinctive of the highest 
 degree of concentration. He was so respon- 
 sive that he would meet them at the door on 
 their arrival, and begin at once to answer, 
 without being told of them, the questions that 
 the boys carried written in their pockets. 
 His perceptions were so fine that he could 
 tell by touch the character of anyone who 
 might already have come in contact with his 
 food, his clothes, or his mat. It "burnt" him, 
 he said, of an impress from which he shrank ; 
 
 434
 
 STRANGE FACTS 
 
 or, on another occasion, " Look ! I can eat 
 this. The sender must have been some good 
 soul !" His nervous system, again, had been 
 so charged with certain ideas that even in 
 sleep he shrank from the touch of metal, and 
 his hand would, apparently of its own accord, 
 restore a book or a fruit, whose return to its 
 owner the conscious mind had failed to 
 prompt. 
 
 No Indian psychologist would say of 
 one of the world-seers that he had talked 
 with angels, but only that he had known 
 how to reach a mood in which he believed 
 himself to talk with angels. Of this condi- 
 tion, the disciples of Sri Ramakrishna saw 
 plentiful examples. Stories are still current 
 amongst them, regarding the strangeness of 
 the sensations with which they would listen 
 to one side of a dialogue, or one part in a 
 conversation, which might seem to be 
 carried on for hours at a time ; while their 
 Master, resting quietly, evidently believed 
 
 435
 
 PSYCHIC PHENOMENA 
 
 himself to be holding communion with beings 
 invisible to them. 
 
 Behind all these manifold experiences of 
 Ramakrishna, binding them into one great 
 life, was always the determination to serve 
 mankind. Vivekananda spoke of him in 
 after years as 'writhing on the ground' during 
 the hours of darkness, in the agony of his 
 prayer that he might return to earth again, 
 even as a dog, if only he might aid a single 
 soul. In moments less intimate and hidden 
 than these, he would speak of the temptation 
 of the higher realisations, to draw the soul 
 away from conditions of service. And his 
 disciples connected with this such odd utter- 
 ances as they would sometimes hear, at the 
 end of a deep entrancement, when their 
 Master seemed to be like a child coaxing his 
 Mother to let him run away from Her to 
 play. 'Just one more' act of service, or 'one 
 more' little enjoyment would be urged, on 
 such an occasion, as a motive for returning 
 
 436
 
 SAMADHI NOT CATALEPSY 
 
 to common consciousness. That return, how- 
 ever, always brought with it the infinite love 
 and insight of one who had been lost in God. 
 When the Swami Vivekananda, on the occa- 
 sion of his Harvard Address, defines this as 
 the differentia between the unconsciousness 
 of Samadki, and the unconsciousness of 
 catalepsy, we may take it that the assurance 
 which breathes in every syllable, arose from 
 his having constantly witnessed the transi- 
 tion, in his Master. 
 
 There were still other remarkable traits 
 in Sri Ramakrishna. He had his own ner- 
 vous force so entirely under control that he 
 could remove all consciousness from his 
 throat, for instance, during his last illness, 
 .and allow it to be operated on, as if under a 
 local anaesthetic. His faculties of obser- 
 vation, again, were quite unique. The small- 
 est detail of the physical constitution had a 
 meaning for him, as casting light on the 
 .personality within. He would throw the 
 
 437
 
 PSYCHIC PHENOMENA 
 
 disciple who had just come to him into an* 
 hypnotic sleep, and learn from his subconsci- 
 ous mind, in a few minutes, all that was 
 lodged there, concerning the far past. Each 
 little act and word, insignificant to others, 
 was to him like a straw, borne on the great 
 current of character, and showing the direc- 
 the of its flow. There were times, he said, when 
 men and women seemed to him like glass, 
 and he could look them through and 
 through. 
 
 Above all, he could by his touch give 
 flashes of supreme insight, which exercised 
 a formative and compelling power over 
 whole lives. In the matter of Samadhi this 
 is well-known, especially in reference ta 
 women-visitors at Dakshineshwar. But 
 beyond this, a story was told me by a 
 simple soul, of a certain day during the last 
 few weeks of Sri Ramakrishna's life, when 
 he came out into the garden at Cossipore, 
 and placed his hand on the heads of a row of 
 
 438
 
 THE MASTER'S TOUCH 
 
 persons, one after another, saying in one 
 case, "AjtliakT "To-day let be !" in an- 
 other, ^Chaitanya honk !" "Be awakened !" 
 and so on. And after this, a different gift 
 came to each one thus blessed. In one there- 
 awoke an infinite sorrow. To janother, every 
 thing about him became symbolic, and 
 suggested ideas. With a third, the benedic- 
 tion was realised as over-welling bliss. And 
 one saw a great light, which never there- 
 after left him, but accompanied him always 
 everywhere, so that never could he pass a 
 temple, or a wayside shrine, without seeming 
 to see there, seated in the midst of this 
 effulgence, smiling or sorrowful as he at 
 the moment might deserve a Form that he 
 knew and talked of as "the Spirit that dwells 
 in the images. " 
 
 By such stimulating of each man to his 
 own highest and best, or by such communi- 
 cation of experience as one and another could 
 bear at the time, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa 
 
 439
 
 PSYCHIC PHENOMENA 
 
 built up the rigorous integrity and strong 
 discrimination that one sees in all who were 
 made by his hand. "We believe nothing 
 without testing it," says one Ramakrishna- 
 nanda by name " we have been trained to 
 this." And when I enquired from another 
 of the disciples what particular form this 
 tiaining took, he answered, after deep 
 thought, that it lay in some experience given 
 of the Reality, from which each gained a 
 knowledge that could never be deceived. 
 " By our own effort," says Vivekananda, in 
 one of his earlier lectures, "or by the mercy 
 0f some great perfected soul, we reach the 
 highest." 
 
 Now the life of the guru is the disciple's 
 treasure in hand ; and it was undoubtedly 
 by an instantaneous analysis of all that he 
 had seen and shared, of the extensions pos- 
 sible to human faculty, that the Swami was 
 able, on his arrival in the Western sphere of 
 psychical enquiry, to classify all knowledge 
 
 440
 
 LIMITS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 as sub-conscious, conscious, and super-consci- 
 ous. The two first terms were in common 
 enough use, in Europe and America. The 
 third, he himself added to the psychological 
 vocabulary, by a masterly stroke of insight, 
 authenticated by his own personal know- 
 ledge. " Consciousness," he said on one 
 occasion, "is a mere film between two 
 oceans, the sub-conscious and the supercon- 
 scious." Again he exclaimed " 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, as compared 
 with the unfathomable depths of the sub-, 
 and the heights of the super-conscious ! In 
 this I could never be misled, for had I not 
 seen Ramakrishna Paramahamsa gather in 
 ten minutes, from a man's sub-conscious 
 mind, the whole of his past, and determine 
 from that his future and his powers ? " 
 
 The certainty of the dictum laid down in 
 
 441
 
 PSYCHIC PHENOMENA 
 
 Raja Yoga that intuition, when genuine,, 
 can never contradict reason, is also indisput- 
 ably due to the same comprehensive range 
 of experience. The ascetic of Dakshin- 
 eshwar might be capable of unusual modes 
 of insight, but he was no victim of the vani- 
 ty born thereof, to be seeking for uncommon 
 ways of arriving at facts that were accessible 
 enough by ordinary methods. When a 
 strange religious came to visit the garden, 
 professing to be able to live without food, 
 Ramakrishna Paramahamsa attempted no- 
 clairvoyant mode of testing him, but simply 
 set shrewd observers to watch and bring him 
 word as to what and where he was in the 
 habit of eating. 
 
 Nothing was to be accepted, unproven, 
 and the Swami Vivekananda, to his dying 
 day, had a horror of those dreams, previsions, 
 and prophecies by which ordinary folk are 
 so apt to try to dominate one another. 
 These things, as was inevitable, were offered 
 
 442
 
 VALUE OF THE PSYCHIC 
 
 to him in abundance, but he invariably met 
 them with defiance, leaving them to work 
 themselves out, if they were true, in spite of 
 him. Whether a given foretelling would 
 eventually be verified or not, it was im- 
 possible for him, he said, to know : the one 
 thing of which he was sure was, that if he 
 once obeyed it, he would never again be 
 allowed to go free. 
 
 In the case of Sri Ramakrishna, it invari- 
 ably happened that visions and intuitions 
 were directed to things of the spirit ; gipsy- 
 like prognostications were far from him ;. 
 and in the opinion of his disciples, such 
 prognostications are always indicative of 
 a greater or less mis-using of energy. " All 
 these are side-issues," said the Swami, "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 
 beyond gross matter. Yet those who- 
 
 443
 
 PSYCHIC PHENOMENA 
 
 spend time on such things run into grave 
 dangers." "These are frontier questions ! " 
 he exclaimed impatiently, on another occa- 
 sion, "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 ! " 
 
 In all that might come before us, the 
 attempt at discrimination was to be main- 
 lained. 'I shall accept it when I have 
 experienced it,' was to be the reply to state- 
 ments of the extraordinary. But our own 
 experience was to be sifted thoroughly. We 
 were not to run away with the first explana- 
 tion of a phenomenon that might occur to us. 
 In spite of his reluctance to accept easy 
 conclusions, however, the Swami became 
 convinced, in the course of years, of the 
 occasional return of persons from the dead, "I 
 have several times in my life seen ghosts," 
 he said once, with great deliberateness,
 
 FRAUDULENT METHODS 
 
 "and once, in the week after the death of Srf 
 Ramakrishna, I saw a luminous ghost." But 
 this did not imply the smallest respect on 
 his part, for the bulk of the experiments 
 known as spiritualistic seances. Of a famous 
 convert whom he met on one such occasion, 
 he said that it was sad to find a man of 
 extraordinary intelligence in matters of the 
 world, leaving all his intelligence behind 
 him at the doors of a so-called medium. In 
 America he had been present at a number 
 of seances as a witness, and he regarded the 
 great majority of the phenomena displayed 
 as grossly fraudulent. "Always the great- 
 est fraud by the simplest means," he said,, 
 summing up his observations. Another large 
 fraction of the total, he thought, were better 
 explained by subjective methods,* than as 
 objectively true. If, after all these deduc- 
 
 * Thus a well-known thought-reader in Southern India claimed 
 that an invisible female figure stood beside him, and told him 
 what to say. "I did not like this explanation," said the Swami, 
 " and set myself to find another." He came to the conclusion 
 that the source of information was subjective. 
 
 445
 
 PSYCHIC PHENOMENA 
 
 tions had been made, any residuum remain- 
 ed, it was possible that this might be genu- 
 inely what it, professed. 
 
 But even if so, knowledge of the pheno- 
 menal could never be the goal of effort. The 
 return of wandering wills from one plane of 
 physical tension to another could throw but 
 little light on any true concept of immor- 
 tality. Only by renunciation could this be 
 reached. Any dwelling upon the occult led 
 inevitably, in the Swami's opinion, to in- 
 crease of desire, to increase of egotism, and 
 to the fall into untruth. If the ordinary 
 good of life was to be given up, for the sake 
 of the soul, how much more assuredly so, 
 these vanities of supernatural power ! Even 
 Christianity would have seemed to him a 
 higher creed, if it had had no miracles. 
 Buddha's abhorrence of wonders was the 
 eternal glory of Buddhism. At best their 
 value could only be to give a little confidence, 
 and that only for the first steps. "If there 
 
 446
 
 THE GOAL OF ALL 
 
 be powers, they shall vanish away ; charity 
 alone remaineth." Only to the soul that is 
 strong enough to avoid these temptations 
 does the door stand open. In the words of 
 Patanjali, "To him who is able to reject all 
 the powers, comes the cloud of virtue." He 
 , alone attains the very highest. 
 
 447
 
 XXIV. 
 
 THE SWAMI'S TEACHING ABOUT 
 DEATH. 
 
 ONE of the most impressive forms of 
 teaching practised by our Master was a 
 certain silent change wrought in the disciple 
 unawares, by his presence. One's whole 
 attitude to things was reversed ; one took 
 fire, as it were, with a given idea ; or one 
 suddenly found that a whole habit of thought 
 had left one, and a new opinion grown up 
 in its place, without the interchange of a 
 single word on the subject. It seemed as if 
 a thing had passed beyond the realm of dis- 
 cussion, and knowledge had grown, by the 
 mere fact of nearness to him. It was in this 
 way that questions of taste and value became 
 indifferent. It was in this way that the 
 longing for renunciation was lighted, like a 
 devouring flame, in the hearts of those about 
 
 448
 
 TEA CHING B Y SILENCE 
 
 him. And to nothing could this statement be 
 more applicable, than to the idea of death 
 that one seemed to imbibe from him. 
 
 In his own life-time, he became more 
 and more averse to any definite laying- 
 down of the law, on this subject. " I 
 suppose so, I do not know, " would be his 
 answer, to one who was striving to piece out 
 the eternal puzzle. He probably felt that 
 one of the subtlest forms of self-interest lay 
 in delightful dreams of a future happiness, 
 and he dreaded adding to the ignorance of 
 desire, by any emphasis laid on the condi- 
 tions of life outs' de the body. In death, as 
 in life, for himself, God was the only means, 
 and Nirvana was the goal. ' The highest 
 Samadhi was all that counted : all the rest 
 was wild oats.' Yet this very fact sheds all 
 the brighter light on the way in which one's 
 thought of death changed under him ; and 
 makes the more precious, those two or three 
 letters, in which personal experience and 
 
 449
 
 ABOUT DEATH 
 
 sympathy strike from him a definite expres- 
 sion of opinion. 
 
 For my own part, when I first met the 
 Swami, I had felt driven, for many years 
 past, to hold that, whatever our wishes 
 might be, we had no actual reason to 
 imagine any survival of personality, beyond 
 the death of the body. Such a thing was 
 either impossible or unthinkable. If we had 
 no personal experience of body without 
 mind, the experiencing medium, it was 
 equally true that we knew nothing whatever 
 of mind without body. Hence, if mind were 
 not actually the result of body " a note 
 struck upon the harp-strings " we must 
 suppose it, at best, to be only the opposite 
 pole of a single substance. The two body 
 and mind, not matter and mind were one, 
 and the idea of the persistence of personality 
 was a mere shadow, born of animal instinct. 
 Ethical conduct, rising even to supreme 
 self-sacrifice, was determined at bottom, 
 
 450
 
 EUROPEAN THOUGHT 
 
 by our personal preference for gratifications 
 that were socially beneficent.* 
 
 These positions were undermined, in 
 my own case, by the weight and emphasis 
 which the Indian thinker habitually threw 
 on MIND, as the pivot of life. What the 
 modern really believes is that man is a 
 body. Here the Oriental stands in sharp 
 and instinctive contrast to him. As the 
 Swami pointed out, "Western languages 
 declare that man is a body, and has a soul : 
 
 * Something like this may be taken as the characteristic 
 thought of Europe about death, during the second half of the 
 nineteenth century. " Is the soul," said one thinker, " a note 
 struck upon the harpstrings, or the rower seated in a boat ? " Recent 
 talk of the disintegration of matter, has now made it easy, 
 even for scientific workers, "to conceive of a cycle call it mind 
 in which matter practically is not." But even so, there remains 
 jet to be worked out, as far as the west is concerned, the 
 transition, from the individual mind and body to this sum of 
 mind and matter into which both may be resumed. It is not 
 intended, here, to imply that ethical conduct ultimately rests, in 
 any creed, on a belief in the immortality of the soul ; but only 
 to contrast the agnostic view of a spiritual life built up from below, 
 and the Hindu idea of a physical consciousness, which is after all, 
 merely an expression and mask of the spiritual life, with its insatiable 
 thirst, not for self-preservation, but for self-immolation. The 
 modern reasons from seen to unseen ; from detail to general ; the 
 Hindu reasons from universal to particular, and maintains that 
 in this specific case that is the true method of reasoning, the life 
 of the soul being, in fact, the only known. 
 
 451
 
 ABOUT DEATH 
 
 Eastern languages declare that he is a soul,, 
 and has a body." 
 
 As a result of the new hypothesis, I 
 began to speak to people, first postulating 
 to myself experimentally, that I was ad- 
 dressing the mind within, not the ear without. 
 The immense increase of response that this 
 evoked, led me from step to step, till twelve 
 months later, I suddenly found that I had 
 fallen into the habit of thinking of mind 
 as dominant, and could no longer imagine 
 ts being extinguished by the death of the 
 body ! Every new practice deepened this 
 conviction, and I became gradually possessed 
 of a conception of the world about us as 
 mind-born, while the occurrence of any great 
 and sudden change in our thought-world, 
 at a definite physical moment, began to- 
 seem absurd. 
 
 The Swami's thought on the question 
 went, however, much deeper than this. His 
 was the perpetual effort to avoid slipping: 
 
 45 2
 
 MAN NOT BODY 
 
 into any identification of himself with the 
 body. He would never even use the word 
 44 1 " in any sense that might be so construed, 
 preferring, rather quaintly to an English 
 ear, to give a slight gesture, with the words 
 ''all this." But he also fought shy ot the 
 danger of admitting that the life of the 
 senses, limited as this is by the alternating 
 opposites, was ' life ' at all. Victory or 
 defeat, love or hate, efficiency or ineffective- 
 ness, being each only a partial apprehension, 
 could never, amongst them, make up ab- 
 solute existence. Hundreds of lives like 
 the present, each bound in its own time to 
 have an end, could never, as he expressed 
 it, satisfy our hunger for immortality. For 
 that, nothing would do but the attainment 
 of deatklessness, and this could never be 
 interpreted as in any sense the multiplication 
 or exaltation of life within the senses, To 
 be of any security, it must be possible to 
 realise such deathlessness during this present 
 
 453
 
 ABOUT DEATH 
 
 life, for how else could the transcendence 
 of bodily experience be assured ? Western 
 people were in the habit of saying that 'the 
 soul comes and goes', thus betraying their 
 own tendency to identify themselves with 
 the body, watching the entrance and exit of 
 a higher entity. The speech of the Kentish 
 Druid who welcomed Augustine was typical 
 of all who held this world to be the warm 
 and lighted hall, and the soul a sparrow, 
 taking brief refuge there, from the wintry 
 storms without. Yet in this concept, there 
 were to the full as many assumptions, as in 
 its opposite. To one who was impelled 
 irresistibly upon the hypothesis that we are 
 not an aggregate of physical units at all, 
 but a hyper-physical unity, holding these in 
 suspension, to such a one it was equally clear 
 that we really know only that "the body 
 comes and goes" 
 
 By this constant insistence on man as 
 mind, not body, those with whom the Swami 
 
 454
 
 THE PRISONING BODY 
 
 was associated were brought to see death as 
 no terminal fatality, but only a link from the 
 midst of a chain, in the experience of the 
 soul. Our whole centre of vision was thus 
 shifted. Instead of the lighted hall, this 
 life became for us the prison of hypnotic 
 trance, a broken somnambulistic dream. 
 What ! was utterance to be for ever limited 
 and conditioned by human language ? Were 
 there not flashes, even as it was, of some- 
 thing that transcended this, something that 
 compelled without words ; that illuminated 
 without teaching ; communion direct, pro- 
 found ? Must knowledge remain for ever 
 relative, for ever based on the dim 
 and common-place perceptions of the 
 senses, for ever finding expression, in the 
 hard and narrow issues of conduct ? Well 
 might the Swami exclaim, as he did in 
 the course of a New York lecture, almost 
 with a groan, "Man, the infinite dreamer, 
 dreaming finite dreams !" 
 
 455
 
 ABOUT DEATH 
 
 By his scorn of such, by his own pas- 
 sionate longing to wander off, silent and 
 nude, along the banks of the Ganges, by 
 his constant turning to the super-conscious 
 as the only content of consciousness to be 
 desired, by his personal attitude to the 
 relationships of life as so many fetters and 
 impedimenta to the freedom of the soul, 
 Vivekanands built up in those about him 
 some sort of- measure of Real Existence, 
 and the idea that the mere fall of- the body 
 could seriously interrupt this, became im- 
 possible. We were saturated with the 
 thought that the accessories of life were but 
 so many externals of a passing dream, and 
 it seemed obvious that we should go on- 
 wards, after death, much as we were doing 
 before it, with only such added intensity and 
 speed as might be due to the subtler 
 medium in which we should find ourselves. 
 It seemed obvious too, that, as he declared, 
 an eternal heaven or hell, based on the deeds 
 
 456
 
 NO DOGMA 
 
 of this present life, was an absurdity, since 
 a finite cause could not, by any means, have 
 an infinite effect. 
 
 Yet the Swami laid down no hard and 
 fast conclusions on these subjects, for others 
 to accept. He carried those about him at 
 any given time, as far as they could go, by 
 the force of his own vision, by the energy 
 of his effort to express in words the thing 
 he himself saw. But he would have nothing 
 to do with dogma, and he was exceedingly 
 averse to making promises about the future. 
 As already said. "I do not know" became 
 more and more his answer, as years went 
 on to questions about the fate of the soul 
 in death. Each one, to his thinking, must 
 work out his own belief, basing it on the data 
 of his own experience. Nothing that he 
 should say must ever interfere with the free 
 growth of personal conviction. 
 
 Some things, however, were noticeable. 
 He appeared to share the common assump- 
 
 457
 
 ABOUT DEATH 
 
 tion that after death we meet again and 'talk 
 things out', so to speak, with those who have 
 preceded us. "When I stand before the old 
 man," he would say with a smile of whim- 
 sical tenderness, " I must not have to tell 
 him so and so ! " Nor did I ever see in 
 him any struggle against this assumption. 
 He appeared to take it simply, as one of the 
 facts of life. 
 
 A man who has once reached the 
 Nirvikalpa Samadhi must have passed 
 through many psychological conditions on. 
 the way, correspondent to disembodiment. 
 He must be accessible, during such phases, 
 to experiences from which we are ordinarily 
 debarred. Now and again, as the Swami 
 believed, he had met and held converse with 
 the spirits of the dead. To some one who- 
 spoke of the terror of the supernatural, he 
 said "This is always a sign of imagination. On 
 that day when you really meet what we call a 
 ghost, you will know no fear !'' There is a. 
 
 458
 
 A REQUIEM 
 
 story told, amongst his brethren, of certain- 
 suicides who came to him at Madras, urging 
 him to join them, and disturbing him great- 
 ly by the statement that his mother was 
 dead. Having ascertained by enquiry that 
 his mother was well, he remonstrated with 
 these souls for their untruthfulness, but was 
 answered that they were now in such unrest 
 and distress that the telling of truth or 
 falsehood was indifferent to them. They 
 begged him to set them at peace, and he 
 went out to the seashore at night, to perform 
 a Shraddh for them. But when he came to 
 that place, in the service, where offerings 
 should be made, he had nothing to offer, and 
 knew not what to do. Then he remember- 
 ed an old book that said, in the absence of 
 all other means of sacrifice, sand might 
 be used, and taking up great handfuls of 
 sand, he stood there on the shore casting 
 it into the sea, and with his whole mind 
 sending benediction to the dead. And 
 
 459
 
 ABOUT DEATH 
 
 those souls had rest. They troubled him 
 no more. 
 
 Another experience that he could 
 never forget, was his glimpse of Sri 
 Ramakrishna, in the week succeeding 
 his death. It was night. He, and 
 one other were sitting outside. the 
 house at Cossipore, talking, no doubt, of 
 that loss of which their hearts at the 
 moment were so full. Their Master had 
 left them, only some few days before. 
 Suddenly, the Swami saw a shining form 
 enter the garden, and draw near to 
 them.... "What was that ? What was that ?" 
 said his friend, in a hoarse whisper, a few 
 minutes later. It had been one of those 
 rare cases in which an apparition is seen by 
 two persons at once. 
 
 Experiences like these could not fail to 
 create a body of belief in the mind that 
 went through them, and in a letter written 
 from Thousand Island Park, dated August
 
 MAN THE HIGHEST BEING 
 
 1895, tne Swami gives expression to this^ 
 conviction. He says : " The older I grow, 
 the deeper I see into the idea of the Hindus 
 that man is the greatest of all beings. 
 The only so-called higher beings are the 
 departed, and these are nothing but men 
 who have taken another body. This is 
 finer, it is true, but still a man-body, with 
 hands and feet and so on. And they live on 
 this earth, in another akasha* without being 
 absolutely invisible. They also think, and 
 have consciousness, and everything else, 
 like us. So they also are men. So are 
 the devas, the angels. But man alone becomes 
 GOD, and they have all to become men 
 again, in order to become God." 
 
 To those who believe in our Master as 
 a " competent witness,*' all this will have 
 its own value. They will feel, even 
 where he expresses what' is only an infer- 
 
 * May be translated sky, space, or (in the present case) plane 
 or dtnuntion. 
 
 4 6l
 
 NEED OF RITUAL 
 
 ence, only an opinion, that it is yet an 
 opinion based upon unique opportunity of 
 experience. 
 
 By the time his first period of work in 
 America was finished, on the eve of coming 
 to England in 1896, he seems to have felt 
 the necessity of systematising his religious 
 teaching. Having at first given forth his 
 wealth of knowledge and thought without 
 stint, we may suppose that he had now be- 
 come aware of the vastness of his output, 
 that he saw its distinctive features clearly and 
 that he felt the possibility of unifying and 
 condensing it, round a few leading ideas. 
 Once started on this attempt, he would 
 realise, in all probability, that some state- 
 ment regarding the fate of the soul was 
 essential to a universal acceptance of the 
 Vedanta. A letter written to an English 
 friend, during his first visit to England, in 
 October 1895, showed plainly enough that 
 he was awake to the question of the definite 
 
 462
 
 ABOUT DEATH 
 
 -area to be covered by a religious system. 
 On this particular occasion, a visit from a 
 couple of young men who belonged to a "class 
 philosophically religious, without the least 
 mystery-mongering," had called his atten- 
 tion to the need of ritual. "This," he wrote, 
 " has opened my eyes. The world in general 
 must have some form. In fact religion 
 itself, in the ordinary sense, is simply philo- 
 sophy concreted, by means of symbols and 
 ritual. A mere loose system of philosophy 
 takes no hold on mankind." 
 
 The constructive imagination thus roused 
 was seen in two or three subsequent letters 
 to the same friend; and in one of these, while 
 still under the mental stimulus of conversation 
 with a distinguished electrician, he attacks 
 the whole problem of the relation between 
 force and matter, making at the same time 
 a brief but pregnant epitome of what he 
 regards as significant, in Hindu lore about 
 death. It is easy, as one reads this Letter, 
 
 463
 
 ABOUT DEATH 
 
 to see how he has been thrilled by the 
 congruity of ancient Indian thought with 
 modern science. " Our friend," he writes, 
 "was charmed to hear about the Vedantic 
 prana and akasa and the kalpas, which, 
 according to him, are the only theories 
 modern science can entertain. Now both 
 akasa and prana again, are produced from 
 the cosmic mahat, the universal mind, the 
 Brahma, or Iswara. He thinks he can 
 demonstrate mathematically that force and 
 matter are reducible to potential energy. 
 I am to go- and see him next week, to get 
 this new mathematical demonstration. 
 
 "In that case, the Vedantic cosmology 
 will be placed on the surest of foundations. 
 I am working a good deal now, upon the 
 cosmology and eschatology* of the Vedanta. 
 I clearly see their perfect unison with modern 
 science, and the elucidation of the one will 
 
 Eschatology means doctrine of the last things : according to 
 Christianity, Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell. In other words, 
 the fate of the soul. 
 
 464
 
 VEDA NT A AND SCIENCE 
 
 be followed by that of the other. I intend 
 to write a work later on, in the form of 
 questions and answers. The first chapter 
 will be on cosmology, showing the harmony 
 between Vedantic theories and modern 
 science. 
 
 Brahman = The Absolute. 
 Mahator Iswara= Primal Creative Energy. 
 
 I it I 
 
 Prana Akasa = Force and Matter. 
 
 The eschatology will be explained from 
 the Adwaitic standpoint only. That is to 
 say, the dualist claims that the soul after 
 death passes on to the Solar Sphere, thence 
 to the Lunar Sphere, thence to the Electric 
 Sphere. Thence he is accompanied by a 
 purusha to Brahmaloka. (Thence, says the 
 Adwaitist, he goes to Nirvana). 
 
 "Now on the Adwaitic side it is held 
 that the Soul neither comes nor goes, and 
 
 465
 
 ABOUT DEATH. 
 
 that all these spheres or layers of the 
 universe are only so many varying products 
 of akasa and prana. That is to say, the 
 lowest or most condensed is the Solar Sphere, 
 consisting of the visible universe, in which 
 Prana appear as physical force, and akasa 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 
 Akasa as Tanmatras, or fine particles. 
 Beyond this is the Electric Sphere, that is to 
 say, a condition in which the Prana is 
 almost inseparable from Akasa, and you can 
 hardly tell whether Electricity is force or 
 matter. Next is the Brahmaloka, where 
 there is neither Prana nor Akasa, but both 
 are merged into the Mind-stuff, the primal 
 energy. And here there being neither 
 Prana nor Akasa the/zzw contemplates the 
 whole universe as Samashti, or the sum- 
 
 466
 
 THE THEORY OF DUALISM. 
 
 total of Mahat, or mind. This appears as a 
 Purtiska, 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. Adwaitism says that these 
 are the visions which arise in succession 
 before the/Ym, who, himself, neither goes nor 
 comes, and that in the same way this present 
 vision has been projected. The projection 
 (Shrishti) and dissolution must take place in 
 the same order, only one means going back- 
 ward 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 
 
 467
 
 ABOUT DEATH. 
 
 name and form of a wave could never be, 
 without the wafer 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. 
 
 " I want to work all this out carefully, 
 but you will see at a glance that I am on 
 the right track. It will take more study in 
 physiology, on the relations between the 
 
 468
 
 SYNTHESIS OF BELIEFS. 
 
 higher and lower centres, to fill out the 
 psychology of mind, chitta and buddhi, and 
 soon. But I have clear light now, free 
 from all hocus-pocus." 
 
 Once more in this Letter, as so often 
 elsewhere, we see the reconciling and organ- 
 ising force of the Swami's genius. The 
 standard of Sankaracharya shall not be 
 moved, That " the soul neither comes nor 
 goes" remains to all time the dominant 
 truth. But the labours of those who began 
 their work at the opposite end shall not be 
 wasted either. The Adwaitin, with his 
 philosophic insight, and the Dualist, with 
 his scientific observation of successive 
 phases of consciousness, both are neces- 
 sary, to each other and to the new for- 
 mulation.* 
 
 * The Swami's plan, of writing a book in the form of questions 
 and answers, was never carried out. But in studying the lectures 
 he delivered in London in the year 1896, it is easy to see that his 
 mind was still working on the ideas here announced. See especially 
 his lectures" The Absolute and Manifestation" ; " The Cosmos : 
 the Macrocosm" ; and his American lectures, " The Real and the 
 Apparent Man" ; and " Cosmology." 
 
 469
 
 ABOUT DEATH. 
 
 Death, however, is pre-eminently a matter 
 which is best envisaged from without. Not 
 even under personal bereavement can we 
 see so clearly into the great truths of eternal 
 destiny, as when depth of friendship and 
 affection leads us to dramatise our sympathy 
 for the sorrow of another. The comfort 
 that we dared not lean on for ourselves 
 becomes conviction clear as the noonday 
 sun, when we seek it for others. To this 
 rule, the Swami was no exception, and 
 many of us, it may be. will think the greatest 
 of all his utterances on this subject, a certain 
 letter which he wrote to that American 
 woman whom he called " Dhira Mata, the 
 Steady Mother," on the occasion of the 
 loss of her father. In this we have the 
 very heart of his belief, made warm and 
 personal, and are made to apprehend 
 its bearing, on the fate of our own be- 
 loved dead. 
 
 "I had a premonition," he writes fronv 
 
 470
 
 A LETTER. 
 
 Brooklyn, to his bereaved friend, in January 
 1895, "f your father's giving up the old 
 body, and it is not my custom to write to 
 any one when a wave of would-be inhar- 
 monious maya strikes him. But these are 
 the great turning-points in life, and I know 
 that you are unmoved. The surface of the 
 sea rises and sinks alternately, but to 
 the observant soul, the child of light, each 
 sinking reveals more and more of the depth, 
 and of the beds of pearl and coral at the 
 bottom. Coming and going is all pure 
 delusion. The soul never comes nor goes. 
 Where is the place to which it shall go, 
 when all space is in the sou.lt When shall 
 be the time for entering and departing, when 
 all time is in tks sou/? 
 
 " The earth moves, causing the illusion 
 of the movement of the sun ; but the sun 
 does not move. So Prakriti, or Maya, or 
 Nature, is moving, changing, unfolding veil 
 after veil, turning over leaf after leaf of this
 
 ABOUT DEATH. 
 
 grand book, while the witnessing soul 
 drinks in knowledge, unmoved, unchanged. 
 All souls that ever have been, are, or shall 
 be, are all in the present tense, and to use 
 a material simile are all standing at one 
 geometrical point. Because the idea of 
 space does not occur in the soul, therefore 
 all that were ours, are ours, and will be 
 ours ; are always with us, were always 
 with us, and will be always with us. We 
 are in them. They are in us. 
 
 Take these cells. Though each separate, 
 they are all, nevertheless, 
 inseparably joined at A B. 
 There they are one. Each 
 is an individual, yet all are 
 one at the axis A B. 
 None can escape from that 
 axis, and however one may 
 strive to escape from it, 
 yet by standing at the axis, we may enter 
 any one of the chambers. This axis 
 
 472
 
 ALL ONE IN GOD. 
 
 is the Lord. There, we are one with Him, 
 all in all, and all in God. 
 
 "The cloud moves across the face of the 
 moon, creating the illusion that the moon is 
 moving. So nature, body, matter, moves on, 
 creating the illusion that the soul is moving. 
 Thus we find at last that that instinct (or 
 inspiration ?) which men of every race, 
 whether high or low, have had, to feel the 
 presence of the departed about them, is true 
 intellectually also. 
 
 " Each soul is a star, and all stars are set 
 in that infinite azure, that eternal sky, the 
 Lord. There is the root, the reality, the 
 real individuality, of each and all. Religion 
 began with the search after some of these 
 stars that had passed beyond our horizon, 
 and ended in finding them all in God, and 
 ourselves in the same place. The whole 
 secret is, then, that your father has given up 
 the old garment he was wearing, and is 
 standing where he was, through all eternity. 
 
 473
 
 ABOUJ DEATH. 
 
 Will he manifest another such garment, in- 
 this or any other world ? I sincerely pray 
 that he may not, until he does so in full 
 consciousness. I pray that none may be 
 dragged anywhither by the unseen power 
 of his own past actions. I pray that all may 
 be free, that is to say, may know that they 
 are free. And if they are to dream again, 
 let us pray that their dreams be all of peace 
 and bliss". 
 
 474
 
 XXV. 
 
 SUPER-CONSCIOUSNESS. 
 
 HE who crosses a chasm on a narrow 
 plank, is liable at any moment to an abrupt 
 accession of all his ordinary associations and 
 sensations, with a sudden fall from his giddy 
 height. Very like this, seem the stories 
 that we come across in sacred literature, 
 of man's occasional attainment of the mind- 
 world that lies beyond our common ex- 
 perience. Peter, walking on the sea, begins 
 to sink, the moment he remembers where 
 he is. A few weary men, sleeping on a 
 mountain-side, wake to behold their Master 
 transfigured before them. But again they 
 descend into the world, and already the great 
 vision has died away, and become an echoing 
 memory alone. Seated in the fields, watching 
 their flocks by night, and talking in hushed 
 voices on high themes, the shepherds become 
 
 475
 
 SUPER-CONSCIOUSNESS. 
 
 aware of the presence of angels. The mo- 
 ments pass, and with them the exaltation of 
 hour and place, and lo, the angels have 
 all faded out of the sky ! Their hearers 
 are driven to the common-place expedient 
 of a journey on foot into the neighbour- 
 ing village, to see what great thing has 
 come to pass. 
 
 In contrast to these, the Indian ideal is 
 that man whose lower mind is so perfectly 
 under his own control that he can at any 
 moment plunge into the thought-ocean, and 
 remain there at will ; the man who can be 
 swept along, on irresistible currents of 
 absorption, without the least possibility of a 
 sudden break and unexpected return to the 
 life of the senses ! Undoubtedly this power 
 comes nearer, with depth of education and 
 intensity of experience. But the only thing 
 that can make it a man's own, is a self- 
 command so strict that he can, at will, trans- 
 cend thought itself. To him who can so 
 
 476
 
 CONDITIONS OF INSIGHT 
 
 concentrate himself as to be able even to* 
 suppress it when he will, the mind becomes 
 an obedient servant, a fleet steed, and the 
 body, in its turn, the loyal subject of the 
 mind. Short of such power, there is no 
 perfect, no unwavering self-control. How 
 few must be the persons born to it, in any 
 single generation ! There is a luminous- 
 ness, an assuredness, about the deeds and 
 words of such, which cannot be mistaken. 
 ' They speak as those having authority, and 
 not as the scribes.' 
 
 We cannot question that Sri Ramkrishna 
 recognised such a soul, " a Brahmajnani 
 from his birth, " in the lad Noren, when he 
 first saw him ; recognised too, like a skilled 
 engineer measuring the force of a stream, 
 the height to which his thought-transcend- 
 ence had already mounted. " Tell me, do 
 you see a light when you are going to 
 sleep ? " asked the old man eagerly. 
 " Doesn't everyone ? " answered the boy, in. 
 
 477
 
 SUPER-CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 wonder. In later life, he would often men- 
 tion this question, and digress, to describe 
 to us the light he saw. Sometimes it would 
 come as a ball, which a boy was kicking 
 towards him. It would draw near. He 
 would become one with it, and all would be 
 forgotten. Sometimes it was a blaze, into 
 which he would enter. One wonders 
 whether sleep, thus beginning, is slumber at 
 all, in the ordinary sense. At any rate, it is 
 told, by the men who were young with 
 Vivekananda, that when he would throw 
 himself down to sleep, their Master, watch- 
 ing his breathing, would often tell the others 
 that he was only apparently resting, and 
 would explain to them what stage of medita- 
 tion had now been reached. On one such oc- 
 casion, while Sri Ramakrishna lay ill in the 
 house at Cossipur, Noren had seemed, to one 
 who was about him, to have been sleeping 
 for some hours, when suddenly, towards 
 midnight, he cried out. "Where is my 
 
 478
 
 SAMADHI 
 
 body?" His companion, now known as the 
 old monk Gopal Dada, ran to his aid, 
 and did all he could, by heavy massage, 
 to restore the consciousness that had been 
 lost, below the head. When all was in vain, 
 and the boy continued in great trouble 
 and alarm, Gopal Dada ran to the Master 
 himself, and told him of his disciple's con- 
 dition. He smiled when he heard, and 
 said ''Let him be! It will do him no harm 
 to stay there for a while. He has teased me 
 enough, to reach that state!" Afterwards he 
 told him and others, that for Noren the Nirvi- 
 kalpa Samadhi was now over, and his part 
 would henceforth lie in work. The Swami 
 himself described the early stages of this ex- 
 perience, later, to his gurubhai, Saradananda, 
 as an awareness of light, within the brain, 
 which was so intense that he took it for 
 granted that someone had placed a bright 
 lamp close to him, behind his head. Then, 
 we may understand, the moorings of 
 
 479
 
 SUPER-CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 sense-consciousness were cut, and he soared 
 into those realms of which none speaks. 
 
 In order to concentrate the mind, it will 
 be understood, it is first of all necessary 
 that we should be able to forget the body. 
 It is for this purpose that asceticism is prac- 
 tised, and austerities undertaken. Through- 
 out his life, a period of strict tapasya was 
 always a delight to the Swami, who was 
 constantly returning upon this, in spite of 
 the seeming fearlessness with which he 
 took possession of the world. Like a prac- 
 tised rider, touching the reins, or a great 
 musician, running his fingers over the keys, 
 he loved to feel again the response of the 
 body to the will, rejoiced to realise afresh, 
 his own command of his instrument. " I 
 see that I can do anything \ " he said, when, 
 at the end of his lite, having undertaken to 
 go through the hot season in Calcutta without 
 swallowing water, and being allowed to rinse 
 out the mouth, he found that the muscles 
 
 480
 
 SUPER-CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 of his throat closed, of their own accord, 
 against the passage of a single drop, and 
 he could not have drunk it, if he would. 
 In his neighbourhood when he was keeping 
 a fast-day, food always seemed to another 
 unnecessary, and difficult to conceive. I have 
 heard of an occasion when he sat, seeming 
 as if he scarcely heard, surrounded by per- 
 sons who were quarrelling and disputing. 
 Suddenly an empty tumbler in his hand was 
 crushed into fragments, the only sign he 
 ever gave, of the pain this discussion had 
 caused him ! 
 
 It is not easy to realise the severity of 
 the practices on which such a power of self- 
 control had been developed ; the number of 
 hours spent in worship and meditation ; the 
 fixity of the gaze ; the long-sustained 
 avoidance of food and sleep. With regard 
 to this last, indeed, there was one time when 
 he had spent twenty-five days, allowing 
 himself only half-an -hour's sleep, out of 
 
 481
 
 RULE OF LIFE 
 
 every twenty-four hours. And from this 
 half-hour, he awoke himself ! Sleep never 
 afterwards, probably, was a very insistent 
 or enduring guest with him. He had the 
 4 Yogi's eyes ' as Devendra Nath Tagore 
 had told him, in his childhood, when he 
 climbed into his house-boat on the Ganges, 
 to ask " Sir, have you seen God ? " the 
 ' Yogi's eyes,' which are said never to shut 
 completely, and to open wide, at the first 
 ray of light. In the west, those staying 
 in the same house with him, would hear the 
 chant of ' Para Brahman,' or something of 
 the sort, as he went, in the small hours of 
 the morning, to take his early plunge. He 
 never appeared to be practising austerity, 
 but his whole life was a concentration so 
 profound that to anyone else, it would have 
 been the most terrible asceticism. The 
 difficulty with which he stopped the momen- 
 tum that would carry him into meditation, 
 had been seen by his American friends, in 
 
 482
 
 5 UPER- CON SCI O USNESS 
 
 the early days of his life, in that country 
 of railroads and tramways and complicated 
 engagement-lists. " When he sits down to 
 meditate," one of his Indian hosts had said, 
 "it is not ten minutes, before he becomes 
 insensitive, though his body may be black 
 with mosquitoes ! " This was the habit he 
 had to control. At first, his lapses into the 
 depths of thought, when people were per- 
 haps waiting for him at the other end of a 
 journey, caused him much embarassment. 
 On one occasion, teaching a New York class 
 to meditate, it was found at the end, that 
 he could not be brought back to conscious- 
 ness, and one by one, his students stole 
 quietly away. But he was deeply mortified, 
 when he knew what had happened, and 
 never risked its repetition. Meditating in 
 private, with one or two, he would give a 
 word, by which he could be recalled. 
 
 Apart altogether, however, from medita- 
 tion, he was constantly, always, losing him- 
 
 483
 
 THE DEPTHS OF THOUGHT 
 
 self in thought. In the midst of the chatter 
 and fun of society, one would notice the 
 eyes arrow still, and the breath come at longer 
 and longer intervals ; the pause ; and then the 
 gradual return. H is friends knew these things, 
 and provided for them. If he walked into- 
 the house, to pay a call, and forgot to speak ; 
 or if he was found in a room, in silence, 
 no one disturbed him ; though he would 
 sometimes rise and render assistance to the 
 intruder, without breaking his silence. Thus 
 his interests lay within, and not without. To- 
 the scale and range of his thought, his con- 
 versation was of course our only clue. His 
 talk was always of the impersonal. It was 
 not always religious, as that word goes, any 
 more than his own Master's had been. It 
 was very often secular. But it was always 
 vast. There was never in it anything mean 
 or warped or petty. There was no limitation 
 of sympathy anywhere. Even his criticism 
 was felt merely as definition and analysis. It 
 
 484
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 had no bitterness or resentment in it. " I 
 can criticise even an avatar", he said of him- 
 self one day, "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 ! " No 
 sentiment of dislike or contempt remained 
 from his analysis, even in the mind of 
 the listener. 
 
 This largeness and sweetness of outlook, 
 was firmly based on his reverence for his own 
 guru. "Mine is the devotion of the dog !" 
 he exclaimed once. "I don't want to know 
 why! I am contented simply to follow!" and Sri 
 Ramakrishna, in his turn, had had a similar 
 feeling for Tota Puri that great master, who 
 had left his own disciples, at Kaithal, near 
 Umballa, one day, "to go into Lower Bengal, 
 where I feel that a soul needs me." He had 
 gone back to his people again, when his 
 work was done at Dakhineswar, and his 
 grave in the North-West is honoured to 
 
 485
 
 SUPER. CONSCIO USNESS 
 
 this day. But he whom he had initiated 
 felt for him, ever after, a reverence so great 
 that he would not even utter his name. 
 "Nangta, the Naked One, said unto me " 
 was his customary way of referring to him. 
 Perfect love for the world and perfect faith in 
 man are only possible, to that heart which 
 has once seen its ideal realised. 
 
 But power to transcend the consciousness 
 of the body is not the only condition of a 
 development like our Master's. It is the 
 Hindu belief that for the evolution of supreme 
 force, it is necessary first to evoke intense 
 energy of emotion, and then to hold this 
 in absolute restraint. This points to a cycle 
 of experience beyond the imagination of most 
 of us, yet an incident in the life of the disciple 
 Noren, gives us a glimpse of it. He was 
 still young, when a sudden death brought 
 about a crisis in the fortunes of his family.. 
 Day after day, as the eldest son, he was 
 racked with anxiety on their behalf. The 
 
 486
 
 THE GREAT TEST 
 
 sufferings of those who were dear to him 
 tore his very heartstrings, and the sudden 
 reversal, from ease and prosperity, filled him 
 with perplexity. He could hardly believe 
 in the extent of their disaster. 
 
 At last, unable longer to bear the anguish, 
 he fled to his Master, and overwhelmed him 
 with reproaches. The old man listened 
 patiently, and said, with a tender smile, "Go 
 yonder, my lad, and pray, before the image 
 of Mother. AND WHATEVER YOU ASK HER 
 
 FOR, SHE WILL ASSUREDLY BESTOW." 
 
 Looked at even from the most ordinary 
 point of view, there was nothing wild or 
 extravagant in the promise thus made ; for 
 Sri Ramkrishna was surrounded by wealthy 
 disciples, of the Marwarri caste, who would 
 have thought no cost too great, to have 
 redeemed his word. The boy, somewhat 
 soothed by the quietness and assurance of 
 the direction, left his presence and went to 
 pray before the image. It was some time 
 
 487
 
 S UPER- CON SCI O US NESS 
 
 before he returned, and when he came, he 
 had a dazed look, say those who were 
 present, and seemed to speak with some 
 difficulty. " Well, did you pray ? " asked 
 Sri Ramakrishna. "Oh yes !" answered his 
 disciple. 
 
 "And what did you ask Mother to give 
 you ?" said the Master. 
 
 "The highest bhakti and Gnanam !" 
 replied Noren, 
 
 "Go again," said Sri Ramakrishna, 
 briefly, without further comment, and again 
 he went. 
 
 But there was no change. Three times 
 he was sent, to ask for what he would ; and 
 three times he came back, with the same 
 reply. Once before the Mother, he had 
 forgotten all else, and could not even 
 remember the cause that had brought him 
 there. Have any of us risen at times to 
 the height where we lose the memory of 
 self, in intensity of prayer for the beloved ? 
 
 488
 
 THOUGHT-CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 If so, we have perhaps gained some measure 
 of the infinitely greater remoteness of this 
 experience, from our common world of 
 relativity and difference. 
 
 The Swami's thought soared, as he talk- 
 ed. Is thought itself but one form of ex- 
 pression of the inner Self, the Adki Saktit 
 And is the force spent in it to be reckoned 
 as lost, from the point of view of the 
 thinker's own good ? First, a circle of pheno- 
 mena ; then a circle of thought ; lastly, 
 the Supreme! If so, surely there can be no 
 greater unselfishness than the sharing of 
 their mind-treasure by the great souls, the 
 Maha-purushas. To enter into their dream, 
 must in itself be redemption, for it is the 
 receiving objectively, of a seed that cannot 
 die, till it has become, subjectively, the 
 Beatific Vision ! 
 
 Ideals were the units of our Master's 
 thought, but ideals made so intensely living 
 that one never thought of them as abstrac- 
 
 489
 
 SUPER-CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 tions. Men and nations alike, were inter- 
 preted by him through their ideals, their 
 ethical up-reaching. I have sometimes 
 thought that two different grades of mind 
 are distinguishable, according to their ins- 
 tinct for classification under two heads or 
 three. The Swami's tendency was always 
 to divide into three. Recognising the two- 
 extremes of a quality, he never failed to 
 discriminate also that point of junction bet- 
 ween them, where, being exactly balanced, 
 both might be said to be non-existent. Is 
 this a universal characteristic of genius, or 
 is it a distinction of the Hindu mind ? 
 
 One never knew what he might see in a 
 thing, never quite knew what might appeal 
 to him. He would often speak in answer 
 to thought, or respond to a thought more 
 easily and effectively than to words. It 
 was only gradually, from a touch here, and 
 a hint there, that one could gather the great 
 pre-occupation, that all words and thoughts^ 
 
 490
 
 CONSTANT DEVOTION 
 
 were designed to serve. It was not till the 
 end of our summer in Kashmir, that he told 
 us how he was always conscious of the form 
 of the Mother, as a bodily presence, visible 
 amongst us. Again, in the last winter of 
 his life, he told his disciple Swarupananda 
 that for some months continuously, he had 
 been conscious of two hands, holding his- 
 own in their grasp. Going on a pilgrimage r 
 one would catch him telling his beads. 
 Seated with one's back to him in a carriage 
 one would hear him repeating an invocation 
 over and over. One knew the meaning of 
 his early-morning chant, when, before 
 sending a worker out to the battle, he said, 
 "Ramakrishna Paramahamsa used to begin 
 every day by walking about in his room for 
 a couple of hours, saying ' Satchidananda !' 
 or 'Sivoham !' or some other holy word." 
 This hint, publicly given, was all. 
 
 Constant devotion, then, was the means by 
 which he maintained his unbroken concentra- 
 
 491
 
 5 UPER- CON SCI O USNESS 
 
 tion. Concentration was the secret of those 
 incessant flashes of revelation, which he was 
 .always giving. Like one who had plunged his 
 cup into a deep well, and brought up from it 
 water of a sparkling coldness, was his entrance 
 into a conversation. It was the quality of his 
 thought, quite as much as its beauty or its 
 intensity, that told of the mountain-snows 
 of spiritual vision, whence it was drawn. 
 
 Some measure of this concentration was 
 afforded by the stories he would tell of his 
 lecturing experiences. At night, in his own 
 room, a voice, he said, would begin to shout 
 at him the words he was to say on the mor- 
 row, and the next day he would find himself 
 repeating, on the platform, the things he had 
 heard it tell. Sometimes there would be 
 two voices, arguing with each other. 
 Again the voice would seem to 
 come from a long distance, speaking to 
 him down a great avenue. Then it might 
 draw nearer and nearer, till it would become 
 
 492
 
 THE MIND THE GURU 
 
 a shout. "Depend upon it," he would sayv 
 "Whatever in the past has been meant by ins- 
 piration, it must have been something like 
 this!" 
 
 In all this, however, he saw no miracle.- 
 It was merely the automatic working of the 
 mind, when that had become so saturated 
 with certain principles of thought, as to re- 
 quire no guidance in their application. It was 
 probably an extreme form of the experience 
 to which Hindus refer, as the 'mind becoming 
 the guru.' It also suggests that, almost 
 perfectly balanced as the two highest senses 
 were in him, the aural may have had a slight 
 preponderance over the visual. He was, as- 
 one of his disciples once said of him, " a most 
 faithful reporter of his own states of mind," 
 and he was never in the slightest danger of 
 attributing these voices to any but a subjec- 
 tive source. 
 
 Another experience of which I heard from- 
 him, suggesting the same automatic mentality,. 
 
 493
 
 S UPER- CON SCI O US NESS 
 
 perhaps in less developed form, was that 
 when any impure thought or image appeared 
 before him, he was immediately conscious 
 of what he called 'a blow/ a shattering, 
 paralysing blow, struck from within upon 
 the mind itself, as if to say 'no ! not this 
 way! ' 
 
 He was very quick to recognise in others 
 those seemingly instinctive actions, that were 
 really dictated by the higher wisdom of 
 super-consciousness. The thing that was 
 right, no one could tell why, while yet it 
 would have seemed, judged by ordinary 
 standards, to have been a mistake, -in such 
 things he saw a higher impulsion. Not all 
 ignorance was, in his eyes, equally dark. 
 
 His Master's prophecy that again he 
 would eat his mango, of the Nirvikalpa 
 Sainzdki, when his work was done, was 
 never forgotten, by the brethren of his youth. 
 None at any time knew the moment when 
 the work might be .ended, and the mounting 
 
 494
 
 AN UNEXPECTED ANSWER 
 
 realisation some may have suspected. During 
 the last year of his life, a group of his early 
 comrades were one day talking over the 
 -old days, and the prophecy that when Noren 
 should realise who and what he had already 
 been, he would refuse to remain in the body, 
 was mentioned. At this, one of them turned to 
 him, half-laughing, " Do you know yet, who 
 you were, Swamiji ?" he said, "Yes, il know 
 now," was the unexpected answer, awing 
 them into earnestness and silence, and no 
 one could venture at that time to question 
 him further. 
 
 As the end came nearer, meditation and 
 austerity took up more and more of life. 
 Even those things that had interested him 
 most, elicited now only a far away concern. 
 And in the last hour, when the supreme 
 realisation was reached, some ray of its vast 
 super-conscious energy seemed 'to touch 
 many of those who loved him, near and far. 
 One dreamt that Sri Ramkrishna had died 
 
 495
 
 S UPER-CONSCIO USNESS 
 
 again that night, and woke in the 
 dawn to hear the messenger at his gate. 
 Another, amongst the closest friends of his 
 boyhood, had a vision of his coming in 
 triumph and saying " Soshi ! Soshi ! I have 
 spat out the body ! " and still a third, drawn 
 irresistibly in that evening hour, to the place 
 of meditation, found the soul face to face with 
 an infinite radiance, and fell prostrate before 
 it, crying out ' Siva Guru ! ' 
 
 496
 
 XXVI. 
 THE PASSING OF THE SWAM! 
 
 LATE in the year 1900, the Swami broke 
 off from the party of friends with whom he 
 was travelling in Egypt, and went home 
 suddenly, to India. "He seemed so tired !"' 
 says one of those who were with him at 
 this time. As he looked upon the Pyramids 
 and the Sphinx, and the rest of the great 
 sights in the neighbourhood of Cairo, it was 
 in truth like one who knew himself to be 
 turning the last pages in the book of ex- 
 perience ! Historic monuments no longer 
 had the power to move him deeply. 
 
 He was cut to the quick, on the other 
 hand, to hear the people of the country 
 referred to constantly as 4l natives," and to 
 find himself associated, in his visit, rather 
 with the foreigner than with them. In this 
 respect, indeed, it would seem that he had 
 
 497
 
 PASSING OF THE SWAMI 
 
 enjoyed his glimpse of Constantinople vastly 
 more than Egypt, for towards the end of 
 his life he was never tired of talking about 
 a certain old Turk who kept an eating-house 
 there, and had insisted on giving entertain- 
 ment without price to the party of stangers, 
 one of whom came from India. So true it was, 
 that to the oriental, untouched by modern 
 secularity, all travellers were pilgrims, and 
 all pilgrims guests. 
 
 In the winter that followed, he paid a 
 visit to Dacca, in East Bengal, and took a 
 large party up the Brahmaputra, to make 
 certain pilgrimages in Assam. How rapidly 
 his health was failing at this time, only those 
 immediately around him knew. None of 
 us who were away, had any suspicion. 
 He spent the summer of 1901 at Bellur, 
 'hoping to hear again the sound of the 
 rains, as they fell in his boyhood ! ' And 
 when the winter again set in, he was so ill 
 as to be confined to bed. 
 
 498
 
 BODH-GA YA AND BENARES 
 
 Yet he made one more journey, lasting 
 through January and February 1902, when 
 he went, first to Bodh-Gaya and next to 
 Benares, It was a fit end to all his wander- 
 ings. He arrived at Bodh-Gaya on the 
 morning of his last birthday, and nothing 
 could have exceeded the courtesy and hos- 
 pitality of the Mahunt. Here, as after- 
 wards at Benares, the confidence and 
 affection of the orthodox world were brought 
 to him in such measure and freedom that 
 he himself stood amazed at the extent of 
 his empire in men's hearts. Bodh-Gaya, 
 as it was now the last, had also been the 
 first, of the holy places he had set out to 
 visit. And it had been in Benares, some 
 few years later that he had said farewell to 
 one, with the words, " Till that day when 
 I fall on society like a thunderbolt I shall 
 visit this place no more ! " 
 
 Many of his disciples from distant parts 
 of the world gathered round the Swami on 
 
 499
 
 PASSING OF THE SWA MI 
 
 his return to Calcutta. Ill as he looked, 
 there was none, probably, who suspected 
 how near the end had come. Yet visits 
 were paid, and farewells exchanged, that it 
 had needed voyages half round the world 
 to make. Strangely enough, in his first con- 
 versation after coming home from Benares, 
 his theme was the necessity of withdraw- 
 ing himself for a time, in order to leave 
 those that were about him a free hand. 
 
 " How often," he said, " does a man 
 ruin his disciples, by remaining always with 
 them ! When men are once trained, it is 
 essential that their leader leave them, for 
 without his absence they cannot develop 
 themselves ! " 
 
 It was as the result of the last of those 
 foreign contacts that had continued without 
 intermission throughout his mature life, that 
 he realised suddenly the value to religion of 
 high ideals of faithfulness in marriage. To 
 the monk, striving above all things to< 
 
 500
 
 SOCIAL IDEALS 
 
 3>e true to his own vows, not only in 
 word and deed, but still more earnestly 
 and arduously, in thought itself, the ideals 
 of social life are apt to appear as so much 
 waste material. Suddenly the Swami saw 
 that a people to whom chastity was not 
 precious, could never hope to produce a 
 faithful priesthood, or a great monastic order. 
 Only where the inviolability of marriage was 
 fully recognised, could the path that lay 
 outside marriage be truthfully held. By the 
 sacredness of the social ideal, was the holi- 
 ness of the super-social rendered possible. 
 
 This realisation was the crown of his 
 philosophy. It could not but mark the end 
 of "the play of Mother." The whole of society 
 was necessary, with its effort and its attain- 
 ment, to create the possibility of the life of 
 Sannyas. The faithful householder was as 
 essential to the Sanathan Dharmma as 
 the faithful monk. The inviolability of 
 marriage and the inviolability of the
 
 PASSING OF THE SWAMI 
 
 monastic vow, were obverse and reverse 
 of a single medal. Without noble citizen- 
 ship, there could be no mighty apostolate. 
 Without the secular, no sacerdotal, without 
 temporal, no spiritual. Thus all was one, 
 yet no detail might be wilfully neglected, for 
 through each atom shone the whole. It 
 was in fact his own old message in a new 
 form. Integrity of character, as he and his 
 Master before him, had insisted, was a 
 finer offering than religious ecstacy. Without 
 strength to hold, there was no achievement 
 in surrender. 
 
 For the sake of the work that constantly 
 opened before him, the Swami made a great 
 effort, in the spring of 1902, to recover his 
 health, and even undertook a course of 
 treatment under which, throughout April, 
 May, and June, he was not allowed to 
 swallow a drop of cold water. How far 
 this benefitted him physically, one does not 
 know; but he was overjoyed to find the un- 
 
 502
 
 FORE-KNO WLEDGE. 
 
 flawed strength of his own will, in going 
 through the ordeal. 
 
 When June closed, however, he knew 
 well enough that the end was near. " I am 
 making ready for death, " he said to one who 
 was with him, on the Wednesday before he 
 died. " A great tapasya and meditation has 
 come upon me, and I am making ready for 
 death. " 
 
 And we who did not dream that he would 
 leave us, till at least some three or four years 
 had passed, knew nevertheless that the words 
 were true. News of the world met but a 
 far away rejoinder from him at this time. 
 Even a word of anxiety as to the scarcity of 
 the rains, seemed almost to pass him by as 
 in a dream. It was useless to ask him now 
 for an opinion on the questions of the day. 
 "You maybe right," he said quietly, "but I 
 cannot enter any more into these matters. I 
 am going down into death." 
 
 Once in Kashmir, after an attack of ill- 
 
 503
 
 PASSING OF THE SWAMI 
 
 ness I had seen him lift a couble of pebbles,, 
 saying, "Whenever death approaches me, all 
 weakness vanishes. I have neither fear, nor 
 doubt, nor thought of the external. I simply 
 busy myself making ready to die. I am as- 
 hard as that" and the stones struck one 
 another in his hand "for I have touched the 
 feet of God!" 
 
 Personal revelation was so rare with him,, 
 that these words could never be forgotten. 
 Again, on returning from the cave of Amar- 
 nath, in that same summer of 1898, had he 
 not said, laughingly, that he had there re- 
 ceived the grace of Amar Nath not to die till 
 he himself should will to do so ? Now this, 
 seeming to promise that death would never 
 take him by surprise, had corresponded so* 
 well with the prophecy of Sri Ramkrishna 
 that when he should know who and what he 
 was, he would refuse to remain a moment 
 longer in the body that one had banished, 
 from one's mind all anxiety on this score, and 
 
 504
 
 THE WORK 
 
 even his own grave and significant words at 
 the present time did not suffice to revive it. 
 Did we not remember, moreover, the 
 story of the great Nirvikalpa Samadhi of 
 his youth, and how, when it was over, his 
 Master had said, "This is your mango, Look I 
 I lock it in my box. You shall taste it once 
 more, when your work in finished." 
 
 " And we may wait for that," said the 
 
 monk who told me the tale. "We shall know 
 when the time is near. For he will tell us 
 that again he has tasted his mango." 
 
 How strange it seems now, looking back 
 on that time, or realise in how many ways the 
 expected hint was given, only to fall on ears 
 that did not hear, to reach minds that could 
 not understand ! 
 
 I would seem, indeed, that in his with- 
 drawal from all weakness and attachment, 
 there was one exception. That which had 
 ever been dearer to him than life, kept still 
 its power to move him. It was on the last 
 
 505
 
 PASSING OF THE SWAM I 
 
 Sunday before the end that he said to one of 
 his disciples, "You know the WORK is always 
 my weak point ! When I think that might 
 come to an end, I am all undone !" 
 
 On Wednesday of the same week, the 
 day being Ekadasi, and himself keping the 
 fast in all strictness, he insisted on serving 
 the morning meal to the same disciple. Each 
 dish as it was offered boiled seeds of the 
 jack-fruit, boiled potatoes, plain rice, and ice- 
 culd milk formed the subject of playful chat; 
 and finally, to end the meal, he himself pour- 
 ed the water over the hands, and dried them 
 with a towel. 
 
 "It is I who should do these things for 
 you Swamiji ! Not you, for me !" was the 
 protest naturally offered. But his answer 
 was startling in its solemnity "Jesus washed 
 the/^/ of His disciples !" 
 
 Something checked the answer "But that 
 was the last time !" as it rose to the lips, 
 and the words remained unuttered. This 
 
 506
 
 THE PL A Y OF LIFE 
 
 was well. For here also, the last time 
 had come. 
 
 There was nothing sad or grave about 
 the Swami, during these days. In the midst 
 of anxiety about over-fatiguing him, in spite 
 of conversation deliberately kept as light as- 
 possible, touching only upon the animals that 
 surrounded him, his garden, experiments, 
 books, and absent friends, over and beyond 
 all this, one was conscious the while of a 
 luminous presence, of which his bodily form 
 seemed only as a shadow, or symbol. 
 Never had one felt so strongly as now, before 
 him, that one stood on the threshold of an 
 infinite light. Yet none was prepared, least 
 of all on that last happy Friday, July the 4th, 
 on which he appeared so much stronger and 
 better than he had been for years, to see the 
 end so soon. 
 
 He had spent hours of that day in formal 
 meditation. Then he had given a long 
 Sanskrit lesson. Finally he had taken a. 
 
 507
 
 THE PASSING OF THE SWAMI 
 
 walk from the monastery gates to the distant 
 highroad. 
 
 On his return from this walk, the bell 
 was ringing for evensong, and he went to his 
 own room, and sat down, facing towards the 
 Ganges, to meditate. It was the last time. 
 The moment was come that had been fore- 
 told by his Master from the beginning. Raff 
 an hour went by, and then, on the wings of 
 that meditation, his spirit soared whence 
 there could be no return, and the body was 
 left, like a folded vesture, on the earth.
 
 XXVII. 
 THE END. 
 
 Towards Christmas of the year 1902, a 
 few of the Swami Vivekananda's disciples 
 gathered at Khandagiri near Cuttack to 
 keep the festival. It was evening, and we 
 sat on the grass, round a lighted log, while 
 on one side of us rose the hills, with their 
 caves and carven rocks, and all around us 
 whispered the sleeping forest. We were 
 to keep Christmas Eve, in the old-time 
 fashion of the order of Ramakrishna. One 
 of the monks held a long crook, and we 
 had with us a copy of the Gospel of St. 
 Luke, wherewith to read and picture the 
 coming of the angels, and the singing of 
 the world's first Gloria.* 
 
 We lost ourselves in the story, however, 
 
 * Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good- 
 will to men. ! The Song of the Angels. 
 
 509
 
 THE END 
 
 and the reading could not be stopped at 
 Christmas Eve, but must needs drift on from 
 point to point. The Great Life as a whole 
 was passed in review ; then the Death ; and 
 finally the Resurrection. We turned to the 
 twenty-fourth chapter of the Gospel, and 
 read incident after incident. 
 
 But the tale sounded as never before, 
 in our ears. Instead of a legal document, 
 dated and attested, whose credibility must 
 stand or fall by the clearness and coherence 
 of its various parts, it read now like the 
 gasping, stammering witness of one who 
 had striven to put on record the impalpable 
 and the intangible. The narrative of the 
 Resurrection was no longer, for us, an ac- 
 count of an event, to be accepted or rejec- 
 ted. It had taken its place for evermore 
 as a spiritual perception, which one who 
 experienced it had striven, not always suc- 
 cessfully, to put into words. The whole 
 chapter sounded fragmentary, cumulative,
 
 THE RESURECTION-TALE 
 
 like some longing attempt to convince, not 
 the reader only, but even, to some extent, 
 the writer himself. 
 
 For had we not had our own glimmerings 
 of a like back-coming to put beside it? 
 One remembered and understood suddenly, 
 the clear and deliberate statement of our 
 Master himself "Several times in my life I 
 have seen returning spirits ; and once in 
 the week after the death of Ramakrishna 
 Paramahamsa the form was luminous." 
 
 We were face to face, not merely with 
 the longing of the disciples to see once 
 more the master who had gone from them, 
 Tjut with the far deeper yearning of the 
 Incarnation, to return again, to comfort and 
 bless the disciples He had left. 
 
 "Did not our hearts burn within us, 
 while he talked with us by the way?" How 
 many moments of such exaltation had we 
 ourselves not known, in the first weeks after 
 the passing of the Master, when we would
 
 THE END 
 
 fain have believed that his actual presence- 
 had been with us ! 
 
 "He was knoivn unto them in the break- 
 ing of bread" Even so. Only a touch 
 here, a word there, a moment of sweetness, 
 or a flash of inner clearness and know- 
 ledge, any of these had been sufficient, 
 at various times in those early weeks, to> 
 bring back the throbbing awareness of the 
 beloved presence, with the mingling of doubt 
 and assurance in its poignant longing. 
 
 We passed over, that night at Khanda- 
 giri, those features of the Resurrection tha t. 
 would seem to have been added later by 
 minds that believed in the hard and fast,, 
 black and white, character of the story. It 
 was the older record, shining through this 
 palimpsest, on which our thoughts were 
 fastened, that simple old record, full of the 
 pathos of sudden sights and vanishings, 
 with its gatherings of the Eleven, whispering 
 amongst themselves " The Lord is risen 
 
 512
 
 A PRESENCE BEYOND DEATH 
 
 indeed ! " with its tale, at the last, of a parting 
 in the midst of a benediction. 
 
 It was not of any re-appearances of the 
 body at all, as it seemed to us reading, 
 that this older story had told, but of sudden 
 and unforeseen meetings of the will, returns 
 of thought and love, brief upliftings of prayer, 
 from One who in the Vedic phrase, had 
 been 'resumed into His shining Self,' and 
 moved now on subtler and more penetrative 
 planes of action than we, entangled amidst 
 the senses, could conceive. 
 
 Nor were they so objective that all alike 
 might be equally conscious of these fleet- 
 ing gleams, half-seen, half-heard. The grosser 
 perception they passed by altogether. Even 
 to the finest, they were matters to be ques- 
 tioned, to be discussed eagerly, to be pieced 
 together in sequence, and cherished tenderly 
 in the heart. Amongst the closest and most 
 authoritative of the apostles, there might well 
 be some who doubted altogether. And 
 
 513
 
 THE END 
 
 and yet, in the midst of the caves and forests 
 of Khandagiri that night, we who followed 
 the Christian story of the Resurrection, 
 could not but feel that behind it, and through 
 it, glistened a thread of fact ; that we were 
 tracing out the actual footsteps left by a 
 human soul somewhere, somewhen, as it 
 trod the glimmering pathway of this fugitive 
 experience. So we believed, so we felt, 
 because, in all its elusiveness, a like revela- 
 tion, at a like time, had made itself evident 
 to us also. 
 
 May God grant that this living presence of 
 our Master, of which death itself had not 
 had power to rob us, become never, to us 
 his disciples, as a thing to be remembered, 
 but remain with us always in its actuality, 
 -even unto the end ! 
 
 THE END. 
 
 514
 
 APPENDIX A, TO CHAPTER I 
 
 NOTES OF A LECTURE DELIVERED IN LONDON 
 
 Nov. 1 6. 1895. 
 
 Just as it is necessary for a man to go through 
 symbols and ceremonies first, in order to arrive at 
 the depths of realisation, so we say in India : 'It is 
 good to be born in a church, but bad to die in one.' 
 A sapling must be hedged about for protection, 
 but when it becomes a tree, a hedge would be a 
 danger. So there is no need to criticise and con~ 
 demn the old forms. We forget that in religion 
 there must be growth. 
 
 At first we think of a Personal God, and call 
 Him Creator, Omnipotent, Omniscient, and so forth. 
 But when love comes, God is only love. The lov- 
 ing worshipper does not care what God is, because 
 he wants nothing from Him. Says an Indian saint 
 "I am no beggar !" Neither does he fear. Man should 
 not try to approach God : to come to God is all he 
 has to do. Anthropomorphic conceptions follow. 
 God is loved as a human being. 
 
 Here are some of the systems founded on love, 
 (i) Santlk, common, peaceful love, with such 
 thoughts as those of fatherhood and help ; (2)
 
 , the ideal of service ; God as master or 
 general or sovereign, giving punishments and 
 rewards ; (3) Vdtsalyam, God as mother or child. 
 In India the mother never punishes. 
 
 In each of these stages, the worshipper forms an 
 ideal of God and follows it. Then He becomes (4) 
 the Friend. There is here no fear. There is also the 
 feeling of equality and familiarity. There are some 
 Hindus who worship God as friend and play-mate. 
 Next comes (5) Madhuram, sweetest love, the love 
 of husband and wife. Of this S. Teresa and the 
 ecstatic saints have been examples. Amongst 
 the Persians, God has been looked upon as the 
 wife, amongst Hindus as the husband. We may 
 recall the great queen Meera Bae, who preached 
 that the Divine Spouse was all. Some carry this 
 to such an extreme that to call God 'mighty 1 or 
 'father' seems to them blasphemy. The language of 
 this worship is erotic. Some even use that of 
 illicit passion. To this cycle belongs the story of 
 Krishna and the Gopi-girls. All this probably 
 seems to you to entail great degeneration on the 
 worshipper. And so it does. Yet many great 
 saints have been developed by it. And no human 
 institution is beyond abuse. Would you cook no- 
 thing because there are beggars ? Would you pos-
 
 Ill 
 
 sess nothing because there are thieves ? "Oh Be- 
 loved, one kiss of Thy lips, once tasted, hath made 
 me mad !" 
 
 The fruit o this idea is that one can no longer 
 belong to any sect, or endure ceremonial. Religion 
 in India culminates in freedom. But even this 
 comes to be given up, and all is love, for love's 
 sake. 
 
 Last of all comes LOVE WITHOUT DISTINCTION, 
 the Self. There is a Persian poem that tells how a 
 lover came to the door of his beloved, and knocked. 
 She asked, "Who art thou?" and he replied " I am so 
 and so, thy beloved !" and she answered only, "Go ! 
 I know none such !" But when she had asked for 
 the fourth time, he said "I am thyself, O my Be- 
 loved, therefore open thou to me ! " and the door 
 was opened. 
 
 A great saint said, using the language of a girl, 
 describing love. " Four eyes met. There were 
 changes in two souls. And now I cannot tell 
 whether he is a man, and I a woman, or he a woman 
 and I a man. This only I remember, two souls 
 were. Love came, and there was one." 
 
 In the highest love, union is only of the spirit. 
 All love of another kind is quickly evanescent. 
 Only the spiritual lasts, and this grows.
 
 IV 
 
 Love sees the Ideal. This is the third angle 
 of the triangle. God has been cause, Creator, 
 Father. Love is the culmination. The mother 
 regrets that her child is humpbacked, but when she 
 has nursed him for a few days, she loves him and 
 thinks him most beautiful. The lover sees Helen's 
 beauty in a brow of Egypt. We do not commonly 
 realise what happens. The brow of Egypt is 
 merely a suggestion .- the man sees Helen. His 
 ideal is thrown upon the suggestion and covers it, 
 as the oyster makes sand into a pearl. God is this 
 ideal, through which man may see all. 
 
 Hence we come to love Love itself. This love 
 cannot be expressed. No words can utter it. We 
 are dumb about it. 
 
 The senses become very much heightened in 
 love. Human love, we must remember, is mixed up 
 with attributes. It is dependent, too, on the other's 
 attitude. Indian languages have words to describe 
 this interdependence of love. The lowest love is sel- 
 fish ; it consists in the pleasure of being loved. We 
 say in India, ' one gives the cheek the other kisses.' 
 Above this is mutual love. But this also ceases 
 mutually. True love is all giving. We don't even 
 want to see the other, or to do anything to ex- 
 press our feeling. It is enough to give. It is
 
 almost impossible to love a human being like this, 
 but it is possible so to love God. 
 
 In India, there is no idea of blasphemy, if boys 
 fighting in the street use the name of God. We say 
 'put your hand into the fire, and whether you feel 
 it or not, you will be burnt. So to name the name 
 of God can bring nothing but good. ' 
 
 The notion of blasphemy comes from the Jews, 
 who were impressed by the spectacle of Persian 
 royalty. The ideas that God is judge and punish- 
 er are not in themselves bad, but they are low and 
 vulgar. The three angles of the triangle are : Love 
 begs not. Love knows no fear. Love is always of 
 the ideal. 
 
 "Who would be able to live one second, 
 Who would be able to breathe one moment, 
 If the Loving one had not filled this universe ? >r 
 Most of us will find that we were born for ser- 
 vice. We must leave the results to God. If failure 
 comes, there need be no sorrow. The work was 
 done only for God. 
 
 In women, the mother-nature is much develop- 
 ed. They worship God as the child. They ask 
 nothing, and will do anything. 
 
 The Catholic Church teaches many of these 
 deep things, and though it is narrow, it is religious
 
 VI 
 
 in the highest sense. In modern society, Protestant- 
 ism is broad but shallow. To judge truth by what 
 good it does, is as bad as to question the value of a 
 scientific discovery to a baby. 
 
 Society must be outgrown. We must crush law 
 and become outlaws. We oil ow nature, only in 
 order to conquer her. Renunciation means that 
 none can serve God and Mammon. 
 
 Deepen your own power of thought and love. 
 Bring your own lotus to blossom : the bees will 
 come of themselves. Believe first in yourself, 
 then in God. A handful of strong men will move 
 the world. We need a heart to feel ; a brain 
 to conceive ; and a strong arm to do the work 
 Buddha gave himself for the animals. Make 
 yourself a fit agent to work. But it is God who 
 works, not you. One man contains the whole 
 universe. One particle of matter has all the 
 energy of the Universe at its back. In a conflict 
 between the heart and the brain follow your 
 heart. 
 
 Yesterday, competition was the law. To-day, 
 co-operation is the law. To-morrow, there is 
 no law. Let sages praise thee, or let the world 
 blame. Let fortune itself come, or let poverty 
 and rags stare thee in the face. Eat the herbs of
 
 Vll 
 
 the forest one day, for food ; and the next, share 
 a banquet of fifty courses. Looking neither to the 
 right hand nor to the left, follow thou on !
 
 APPENDIX B, TO CHAPTER I 
 
 NOTES OF A LECTURE DELIVERED IN LONDON 
 NOVEMBER 23RD, 1895. 
 
 THE Swami began by telling, in anwer to 
 questions, the story of how Pavhari Baba snatched 
 up his own vessels, and ran after the thief, only 
 to fall at his feet and say 
 
 t( O Lord, I knew not that Thou wast there ! 
 Take them ! They are Thine ! Pardon me, Thy 
 child ! " 
 
 Again he told how the same saint was bitten by 
 a cobra, and when, towards nightfall he recovered, he 
 said " A messenger came to me from the Beloved." 
 
 The greatest force is derived from the power 
 of thought. The finer the element, the mort power- 
 ful. The silent power of thought influences 
 people, even at a distance, because mind is one, 
 as well as many. The universe is a cobweb ; minds 
 are the spiders. 
 
 The universe equals the phenomena of one
 
 IX 
 
 Universal Being. He, seen through our senses, 
 is the Universe. Jesus or Buddha sees the 
 Universe as God. This is Maya. So the world 
 is illusion, that is, the imperfect vision of the 
 Real, a semi-revelation, even as the sun in the 
 morning is a red ball. Thus all evils and wicked- 
 ness are but weakness, the imperfect Vision of 
 Goodness. 
 
 A straight line projected infinitely becomes 
 a circle. The search for God comes back to 
 self. I am the whole mystery, God. I am a 
 body, the lower self; and I am the Lord of the 
 Universe. 
 
 Why should a man be moral and pure ? Be- 
 cause this strengthens his will. Everything that 
 strengthens the will, by revealing the real nature, is 
 moral. Everything that does the reverse, is im- 
 moral. The standard varies from country to 
 country, and from individual to individual. Man 
 must recover from his state of slavery to laws, 
 to words, and so on. We have no freedom of the 
 vill now, but we shall have, when we are free, 
 denunciation is this giving up of the world. 
 Ihrough the senses, anger comes, and sorrow 
 ccmes. As long as it is not yet there, self and 
 ths passion are different. At last they become
 
 identified, and the man is an animal at once. 
 The instrument within is infinite. Become pos- 
 sessed with the feeling of renunciation. 
 
 I once had a body, was born, struggled, and 
 -died. What awful hallucinations ! to think that 
 one was cramped in a body, weeping for salva- 
 tion ! 
 
 But does renunciation demand that we all 
 become ascetics ? Who then is to help the others ? 
 Renunciation is not asceticism. Are all beggars 
 Christs? Poverty is not a synonym for holiness ; 
 often the reverse. Renunciation is of the mind. 
 How does it come ? In a desert, when I was 
 thirsty, I saw a lake. It was in the midst of a 
 beautiful landscape. There were trees surrounding 
 it, and their reflections could be seen in the 
 water, upside down. But the whole thing proved 
 to be a mirage. Then I knew that every day 
 for a month I had seen this, and only today, 
 being thirsty, had learnt it to be unreal. Ever/ 
 day for a month I should see it again. But I 
 should never again take it to be real. So, when 
 we reach God, the idea of the universe, the bocy 
 .and so on, will vanish. It will return, afterwards. 
 But next time we shall know it to be unreal. 
 
 The history of the world is the history of
 
 XI 
 
 'Buddha and Jesus. The passionless and unattach- 
 ed do most for the world. Picture Jesus in the 
 slums. He sees beyond the misery, "You, my 
 brethren, are all divine." His work is calm. He 
 .removes causes. You are only able to work for 
 the good of the world, when you know for a fact 
 that this work is all illusion. The more uncons- 
 cious this work, the better, because the more super- 
 conscious. Our search is not for good or evil ; but 
 happiness and good are nearer to truth than their 
 opposites. A man ran a thorn into his finger, and 
 with another thorn took it out. The first thorn is 
 Evil. The second thorn is Good. The Self is that 
 .Peace which passeth beyond both evil and good. 
 The universe is melting down : man draws nearer 
 >to God. For one moment, he is real God. He 
 is re-differentiated a prophet. Before him, now, the 
 world trembles. A fool sleeps, and wakes a fool. 
 A man, unconscious and super-conscious, returns 
 ^with infinite power, purity, and love the God- 
 Man. This is the use of the super-conscious 
 rstate. 
 
 Wisdom can be practised even on a battle-field. 
 The Gita was preached so. There are three states 
 of mind : the active, the passive, and the serene. 
 The passive state is characterised by slow vibra-
 
 Xll 
 
 tions ; the active, by quick vibrations, and 
 the serene by the most intense vibrations of 
 all. Know that the soul is sitting in the chariot. 
 The body is the chariot; the outer senses are the 
 horses ; and the inner senses the charioteer. So 
 man crosses the ocean of Maya. He goes beyond. 
 He reaches God. When a man is under the con- 
 trol of his senses, he is of this world. When he 
 has controlled the senses, he has renounced. 
 
 Even forgiveness, if weak and passive, is not 
 true : fight is better. Forgive when you could 
 being legions of angels to the victory. Krishna, 
 the charioteer of Arjuna, hears it said, "The 
 general will forgive," and answers "You speak the 
 words of wise men, but you are not a wise man, 
 but a coward." As a lotus-leaf, living in the water 
 yet untouched by it, so should the soul be, in the 
 world. This is a battle field, fight your way out. 
 This world is a poor attempt to see God. Make 
 your life a manifestation of will strengthened by 
 renunciation. 
 
 We must learn to control all our brain-centres 
 consciously. The first step is happiness. Asce- 
 ticism is fiendish. To laugh is better than to 
 pray. Sing. Get rid of misery. Don't for heaven's 
 sake infect others with it. Never think God sells-
 
 Xlll 
 
 a little happiness and a little unhappiness. Sur- 
 round yourself with flowers and pictures and incense. 
 The saints went to the mountain tops to enjoy 
 nature. 
 
 The Second Step is Purity. 
 
 The third is full training of the mind. eason 
 out what is true from what is untrue. See that 
 God alone is true. If for a moment you think 
 you are not God, great terror will seize you. As 
 soon as you think / am He, great peace and joy 
 will come to you. Control the senses. If a man 
 curse, see in him God, whom through my weak- 
 ness I see as curser, as tiger, as chair. The 
 poor to whom you do good, are extending a privi- 
 lege to you. He allows you, through His mercy, 
 to worship Him thus. 
 
 The history of the world is the history of a 
 few men who had faith in themselves. That faith 
 calls out the divinity within. You can do 
 anything. You fail, only when you do not strive 
 sufficiently to manifest infinite power. As soon as 
 a man, or a nation, loses faith in himself, death 
 comes. 
 
 There is a divine within, that cannot be over- 
 come, either by church dogmas or by black- 
 guardism. A handful of Greeks speak, wherever
 
 XIV 
 
 there is civilisation. Some mistakes there must 
 always be. Do not grieve. Have great insight. 
 Do not think "What is done is done. Oh that 
 'twere done better !" If man had not been God, 
 humanity would by this time have become insane, 
 with its litames and its penitence. 
 
 None will be left, none destroyed. All will 
 in the end be made perfect. Say, day and night, 
 'come up, my brothers! You are the infinite 
 Ocean of Purity ! Be God ! Manifest as God ! ' 
 
 What is civilisation ? It is the feeling of the 
 divine within. When you find time, repeat these 
 ideas to yourself, and desire freedom. That is all.. 
 Deny everything that is not God. Assert every- 
 thing that is God. Mentally assert this, day and 
 night. So the veil grows thinner. 
 
 I am neither man nor angel. I have no sex 
 nor limit. I am knowledge itself. I am He. I 
 have neither anger nor hatred. I have neither 
 pain nor pleasure. Death or birth I never had. 
 For I am Knowledge Absolute, and Bliss Absolute. 
 I am He, my soul, I am He ! 
 
 Find yourself bodiless. You never had a body. 
 It was all superstition. Give back the divine cons- 
 ciousness to all the poor, the down-trodden, the 
 oppressed, and the sick.
 
 XV 
 
 Apparently, every five hundred years or so, a 
 wave of this thought comes over the world. Little 
 waves arise, in many directions : but one swallows 
 up all the others, and sweeps over society. That 
 wave does this, which has most character at its back. 
 
 Confucius, Moses, and Pythagoras ; Buddha r 
 Christ, Mahomet ; Luther, Calvin, and the Sikhs ; 
 Theosophy, Spiritualism, and the like ; all these 
 mean only the preaching of the Divine-in- Man. 
 
 Never say man is weak. Wisdom-Yoga is no- 
 better than the others. Love is the ideal, and 
 requires no object. Love is God. So even through 
 devotion we reach the subjective God. I am He f 
 How can one work, unless one loves, city, country, 
 animals, the universe? Reason leads to the find- 
 ing of unity in variety. Let the atheist and the 
 agnostic work for the social good. So God comes. 
 
 But this you must guard. Do not disturb the 
 faith of any. For you must know that religion 
 is not in doctrines. Religion lies in being and be- 
 coming, in realisation. All men are born idolators. 
 The lowest man is an animal. The highest man 
 is perfect. And between these two, all have to 
 think in sound and colour, in doctrine and ritual. 
 
 The test of having ceased to be an idolater is, 
 'When you say ' /', does the body come into your
 
 XVI 
 
 thought, or not ? If it does, then you are still a 
 worshipper of idols. Religion is not intellectual 
 jargon at all, but realisation. If you think about 
 God, you are only a fool. The ignorant man, by 
 prayer and devotion, can reach beyond the philo- 
 sopher. To know God, no philosophy is necessary. 
 Our duty is not to disturb the faith of others. 
 Religion is experience. Above all and in all, be 
 sincere. Identification brings misery, because it 
 brings desire. Thus the poor man sees gold, and 
 identifies himself with the need of gold. Be the 
 witness. Learn never to react. 
 
 In answer to * question : The artist is the wit- 
 ness who testifies of the beautiful. Art is the 
 most unselfish form of happiness in the world.
 
 APPENDIX C, TO CHAPTER XVL 
 
 NOTES OF LECTURES DKLIVERED AT THE VEDANTA SOCIETY, 
 NEW YORK ; SUNDAY AFTERNOONS JUNE, 1900. 
 
 THE UNITY. 
 
 The different sectarian systems of India alt 
 radiate from one central idea of Unity or Dualism. 
 
 They are all under Vedanta, all interpreted 
 by it. Their final essence is the teaching of Unity. 
 This, which we see as many, is God. We perceive 
 matter, the world, manifold sensation. Yet is 
 there but one existence. 
 
 These various names mark only differences of 
 degree in the expression of that One. The worm 
 of to-day is the God of to-morrow. These dis- 
 tinctions which we so love are all parts of one 
 infinite fact, and only differ in the degree of 
 expression. That one infinite fact is the attain- 
 ment of Freedom. 
 
 However mistaken we may be, as to the method,, 
 all our struggle is really for Freedom. We seek 
 neither misery nor happiness, but Freedom. This.
 
 XV111 
 
 one aim is the secret of the insatiable thirst of 
 man. Man's thirst, says the Hindu, man's thirst, 
 says the Buddhist, is a burning, unquenchable thirst, 
 for more and more. You Americans are always 
 looking for more pleasure, more enjoyment. You 
 cannot be satisfied. True, but at bottom what 
 you seek is Freedom. 
 
 This vastness of his desire is really the sign 
 of man's own infinitude. It is because he is 
 is infinite, that he can only be satisfied, when 
 his desire is infinite, and its fulfilment infinite. 
 
 What then can satisfy man ? Not gold. Not 
 joy. Not beauty. One Infinite alone can satisfy 
 him, and that infinite is Himself. When he realises 
 this, then alone comes Freedom. 
 
 "This flute, with the sense-organs as its key-holes, 
 With all its sensations, perceptions, and song, 
 Is singing only one thing. It longs to go 
 
 back to the wood whence it was cut ! " 
 " Deliver thou thyself by thyself ! 
 Ah, do not let thyself sink ! 
 For thou art thyself thy greatest friend. 
 And thou thyself thy greatest enemy. 
 Who can help the Infinite ? Even the hand that 
 comes to you through the darkness will have to be 
 your own.
 
 XIX 
 
 Fear and desire are the two causes of all this, 
 and who creates them ? We ourselves. Our lives 
 are but a passing from dream to dream. Man. 
 the infinite dreamer, dreaming finite dreams ! 
 
 Oh the blessedness of it, that nothing external 
 can be eternal ! They little know what they 
 mean, whose hearts quake when they hear that 
 nothing in this relative world can be eternal. 
 
 I am the infinite blue sky. Over me pass these 
 clouds of various colours, remain a moment, and 
 vanish. I am the same eternal blue. I am the 
 witness, the same eternal witness, of all. I see,, 
 therefore nature exists. I do not see, therefore 
 she does not. Not one of us could see or speak,, 
 if this infinite unity were broken for a moment.
 
 XX 
 
 WHAT IS RELIGION ? 
 
 A locomotive, with all its powers, is only a 
 machine ; and a little worm is a living being. 
 What is it that makes us differentiate, between the 
 living and the dead ? 
 
 All over the world is worship, of ghosts, of 
 serpents, trees, gods. The whole world expects a 
 miracle. We are all running after the curious, the 
 extraordinary. 
 
 We dismiss this as ignorance, but the fact 
 remains. I believe nothing to be vain or meaning- 
 less. The Jews were not singular : the whole 
 world asks for a sign. Then there is this universal 
 dissatisfaction. We work for an object, or an ideal, 
 and before we reach it, our desire has changed. Man 
 is a born rebel against nature, and nature's laws. 
 
 The first act of our life is one of rebellion 
 against life. The earth, moon, and stars, tremend- 
 ous as they are, are but machines. Life, from its 
 first twinkling to its highest growth, is above all 
 these. 'Freedom, oh Freedom !' is the cry of life. 
 ^Freedom, oh Freedom !' is the song of the soul. 
 All worship, all desire for miracles, is, at bottom, 
 this thirst for Freedom. Science on her countless 
 watch-towers signals back to the asking soul, 'No, 
 not yet ! Nature has no freedom. She is all law.'
 
 XXI 
 
 This is why the idea of God is essential to the 
 Mind. There must be the concept of some being 
 or beings with Freedom. 
 
 Religion thus becomes only a question of the 
 materialisation or personification of the idea. 
 Even a plant could not be, without this notion of 
 Freedom. Embodied Freedom, the Master of 
 Nature, is what we call God. 
 
 Which of you would come or go or eat, if you 
 did not believe yourself FREE to do or not to do ? 
 This may be a false notion, yet it shows the con- 
 ception, and this is as much a fact as the bondage 
 itself. Freedom must bring the mastery of nature. 
 Omnipotence, Omniscience, and Freedom must go 
 hand in hand, and must be beyond nature. All 
 its dust and mire leaves Him unstained. In us, 
 every little thing produces change. Not so in 
 Him ! So SATCHITANANDA alone describes Him. 
 
 "He is the Ruler of this universe. Him the 
 sun cannot illumine, nor the moon, nor the stars. 
 The flash of the lightning cannot irradiate Him. 
 How then speak of this mortal fire ?" 
 
 He depends upon Himself alone. All move- 
 ment is His Worship. No action, no movement, 
 no throb in the universe, but goes towards Him. 
 Not only all that we call good, but evil also, is
 
 XX11 
 
 from the Lord. "I am the Real : I am the 
 
 Unreal." He who gave us life, He is pouring out 
 of His vial, the direst death. 'He whose shadow 
 is death, whose shadow is immortality !' We may 
 bury our heads in the sand, like the ostrich. But 
 there is no escape that way ! Once, in (Benares, 
 I was pursued by troops of monkeys, and I turned 
 to flee, when suddenly I heard the voice of an old 
 sannyasin behind me call out "Stop! Always 
 face the brute !" So, face nature. Face ignorance. 
 Face illusion. Never fly. You remember the 
 story of the king who saw the vision of an enchant- 
 ed palace, but he spat upon the ground, and all 
 vanished ? 
 
 Your own child comes to you masked. A 
 moment of terror, and then It is the Lord ! The 
 world has been ever preaching the God of virtue. 
 I preach to you a God of virtue and of sin. No 
 more looking up and down at each other ! The 
 less differentiation, the sooner God. This is the 
 one sin, differentiation. This is the door to hell, 
 differentiation. Only when this is broken, when it 
 is pulverised to atoms, can we attain the 
 Can we, or can we not, see God in all equally ? 
 
 "Thou art the man, Thou art the woman ! 
 
 Thou art the youth, in the pride of his youth,
 
 XXlll 
 
 And thou the old man tottering on his crutches. 
 
 Thou the sinner, thou the saint !" 
 
 Two birds of golden plumage sat on the same 
 
 "tree. One above, and one below. The lower bird 
 
 was pecking at the berries, some sweet, some bitter, 
 
 at last he ate one most bitter, and looking up, saw 
 
 his fellow, calm, majestic, immersed in his own 
 
 glory. Then he drew nearer and nearer, till the 
 
 rays of light from the plumage of the upper bird 
 
 fell on himself ; drew nearer, till he found that the 
 
 upper bird was all. He, the lower, had been only 
 
 a reflection seen amongst the branches. 
 
 The man who is groping his way through sin 
 and misery, the man who has chosen for himself 
 the path that runs through hell, will also reach. 
 But we may choose for ourselves the path that 
 runs through heaven, the path of unselfishness, of 
 purity, of love, and virtue. Let us come conscious- 
 ly, by seeing all beings as identified with ourselves. 
 We want to move consciously. Let us be rid, 
 then, of all these limited ideas, and see Him, the 
 Ever-Present Self, evident, nearer to us than our 
 own selves ! This has to be felt. This has to be 
 realised. 
 
 May it please the Lord to grant us soon this 
 'knowledge of ourselves as one with the universe.
 
 XXIV 
 
 This is the highest development of humility. 
 
 "Sharp as the blade of a razor, long, and distant, 
 and the way so hard to find ! 
 
 So the sages have declared. 
 
 Yet do not despond ! Awake ! Arise ! 
 
 Struggle on ! and stop not, till the goal is 
 reached !" 
 
 "Giving up all these paths and struggles do 
 thou take refuge in Me ! I will take thee unto 
 the other shore. Be not afraid ! Be not afraid !" 
 Say all the scriptures of the world. 
 
 Either say : 'I am thou, O Lord !' thus killing 
 the lower /; or, 'I am nothing. Thou art all. 
 Thy will be done on earth !' This last is a little 
 easier. But we slip, and we stretchout the hand to 
 the Mother ! It has all been done. Well said an 
 Indian philosopher, "who says, Thy will be 
 done !' twice, commits a sin." Manu says salva- 
 tion is for all, save only for a traitor. We all stand 
 condemned as traitors, traitors against our own 
 selves, against the majesty of Mother. 
 
 "For Thine is the Kingdom and the power 
 the glory ! For ever and ever !"
 
 APPENDIX D. 
 THE WORSHIP OF THE DIVINE MOTHER. 
 
 FRAGMENTARY NOTES, TAKEN BY Miss WALDO, ON A SUNDAY 
 
 AFTERNOON IN JUNE, igoo. 
 
 From the tribal or clan- God, man arrives, in 
 every religion, at the sum, the God of gods. 
 
 Confucius alone has expressed the one eternal 
 idea of Ethics. ' Manu Deva ' was transformed 
 into Ahriman. In India, the mythological ex- 
 pression was suppressed, but the idea remained. 
 In an old Veda is found the Mantram " I am 
 the Empress of all that lives, the Power in 
 everything." 
 
 Mother-Worship is a distinct philosophy in 
 itself. Power is the first of our ideas. It impinges 
 upon man, at every step. Power felt within, is the 
 soul ; without, nature. And the battle between 
 the two makes human life. All that we know or 
 feel is but the resultant of these two forces. Man 
 saw that the sun shines on the good and the evil 
 ^alike. Here was a new idea of God, as the 
 Universal Power behind all. The Mother-idea was 
 'born.
 
 XXVI 
 
 Activity, according to Sankhya, belongs to 
 Prakriti, to nature, not to Purusha, or soul. Of 
 all feminine types, in India, the mother is pre- 
 eminent. The mother stands by her child through 
 everything. Wife and children may desert a man,, 
 but his mother, never ! Mother, again, is the 
 impartial energy of the Universe, because of the 
 colourless love, that asks not, desires not, cares not 
 for the evil in her child, but loves him the more. 
 And to-day Mother-Worship is the worship of all 
 the highest classes amongst the Hindus. 
 
 The goal can only be described as something 
 not yet attained. Here, there is no goal. This 
 world is all alike the play of Mother. But we 
 forget this. Even misery can be enjoyed, when 
 there is no selfishness, when we have become the 
 witness of our own lives. The thinker of this 
 philosophy has been struck by the idea that one 
 power is behind all phenomena. In our thought 
 of God, there is human limitation, personality : 
 with Sakti comes the idea of One Universal Power. 
 " I stretch the bow of Rudra, when He desires to 
 kill," says Sakti. The Upanishads did not de- 
 velope this thought; for Vedanta does not care 
 for the God-idea. But in the Gita comes the 
 significant saying, to Arjuna, "I am the Real,,
 
 XXV11 
 
 and I am the Unreal. I bring good, and I bring: 
 evil." 
 
 Again the idea slept. Later came the new 
 philosophy. This universe is a composite fact, of 
 good and evil ; and one Power must be manifesting 
 through both. " A lame one-legged universe 
 makes only a lame one-legged God." And this,, 
 in the end, lands us in want of sympathy, and 
 makes us brutal. The ethic built on such a concept 
 is an ethic of brutality. The saint hates the sinner^ 
 and the sinner struggles against the saint. Yet 
 even this leads onward. For finally, the wicked 
 self-sufficient mind will die, crushed under repeated 
 bows, and then we shall awake and know 
 the Mother. 
 
 Eternal, unquestioning self-surrender to Mother 
 alone can give us peace. Love Her for Herself^ 
 without fear or favour. Love Her because you are 
 Her child. See Her in all, good and bad alike. 
 Then alone will come " Sameness", the Bliss 
 Eternal that is Mother Herself, when we realise 
 Her thus. Until then, misery will pursue us*. 
 Only resting in Mother are we safe.
 
 THE WORKS OF THE SWAMI 
 VIVEKANANDA. 
 
 RAJA YOGA v 
 KARMA YOGA 
 BHAKTI YOGA 
 GNANA YOGA s 
 HARVARD ADDRESS 
 COLOMBO TO ALMORA 
 MY MASTER 
 
 And other lectures and writings, may be 
 -ordered through the Udbodhan Office, Gopal 
 Chunder Neogi's Lane, Bagh Bazar, Calcutta; 
 or through the Office of the Prabuddha 
 Bharata, Mayavati, Lohaghat Post Office, 
 via Almora, U. P. ; or through the Office 
 -of the Brahmavadin, Triplicane, Madras.
 
 OTHER WORKS OF THE SISTER 
 NIVEDITA. 
 
 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE : Published by 
 Messrs. Heineman & Co. London ; and 
 Henry Holt & Sons, New York. 
 
 CRADLE TALES OF HINDUISM : Published by 
 Messrs. Longmans Green & Co. Cheap 
 Edition for Circulation in India. 
 
 KALI THE MOTHER : Published by Messrs. 
 Swan Sonnenschein & Co. 
 
 LOVE AND DEATH : Published by Messrs. 
 Longmans Green & Co. 
 All these may be obtained through the 
 
 office of the Udbodhan, Prabuddha Bharata y 
 
 or Brahmavadin.
 
 
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