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REMINISCENCES OF SWAMI VIVEKANANDA
G. S. BHATE

I HAD the rare privilege of having the late Swami Vivekananda as our guest at Belgaum, I believe some time in 1892. I am not sure of the date, but it was about six months before he reached Madras and there became, better known than he was before. If I remember aright, it was his first visit to Madras that led to his selection as representative of India at the Congress of Religions held at Chicago. As very few people in India had the advantage of knowing him before he made a name for himself, I think it would be interesting to set down a few reminiscences, however hazy, of his visit and stay at Belgaum.

The Swami came to Belgaum from Kolhapur with a note from Mr. Golvalkar, the Khangi Karbhari of the Maharaja. He had reached Kolhapur with a note from the Durbar of Bhavnagar to the Durbar of Kolhapur. I do not remember whether the Swami had stayed in Bombay or merely passed through. I remember him appearing one morning about six o’clock with a note from Mr. Golvalkar who was a great friend of my father’s. The Swami was rather striking in appearance and appeared to be even at first sight somewhat out of the common run of men. But neither my father nor any one else in the family or even in our small town was prepared to find in our guest the remarkable man that he turned out to be.

From the very first day of me Swami’s stay occurred little incidents which led us to revise our ideas about him. In the first place, though he wore clothes bearing the familiar colour of a Sannyasin’s garments, he appeared to be dressed differently from the familiar brotherhood of Sannyasins. He used to wear a banyan. Instead of the danda he carried a long stick, something like a walking-stick. His kit consisted of the usual gourd, a pocket copy of the Gita, and one or two books (the names of which I do not remember, possibly they were some Upanishads). We were not accustomed to see a Sannyasin using the English language as a medium of conversation, wearing a banyan instead of sitting bare-bodied, and showing versatility of intellect and variety of information which would have done credit to an accomplished man of the world. He used to speak Hindi quite fluently; but as our mother-tongue was Marathi, often he found it more convenient to use English than Hindi.

The first day after the meal, the Swami made a request for betel-nut and pan (betel). Then either the same day or the day after, he wanted some tobacco for chewing. One can imagine the kind of horror which would be inspired by a Sannyasin who is commonly regarded as having gone above these small creature comforts, showing a craving for these things. We had discovered by his own admission that he was a non-Brahmin and yet a Sannyasin, that he was a Sannyasin and yet craved for things which only householders are supposed to want. This was really topsy-turvydom, and yet he succeeded in changing our ideas. There was really nothing very wrong in a Sannyasin wanting pan and supari (betel-nut) or tobacco for chewing, but the explanation he gave of his craving disarmed us completely. He said that he was a gay young man and a distinguished graduate of the Calcutta University and that his life before he met Shri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa was entirely different to what he became afterwards. As a result of teachings of Shri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa he had changed his life and outlook, but some of these things he found it impossible to get rid of, and he let them remain as being of no very great consequence. As regards food, when he was asked whether he was a vegetarian or a meat-eater, he said that as a man belonging not the ordinary order of Sannyasins but to the order of the Paramahamsas, he had no option in the matter. The Paramahamsa, by the rules of that order, was bound to eat whatever was offered, and in cases where nothing could be offered he had to go without food. And a Paramahamsa was not precluded from accepting food from any human being irrespective of his religious beliefs. When he was asked whether he would accept food from non-Hindus, be told us that he had several times been under the necessity of accepting food from Mohammedans.

The Swami appeared to be very well grounded in the old Pandit method of studying Sanskrit. At the time of his arrival, I was getting up the Ashtadhyayi by rote, and to my great surprise as a boy, his memory even in quoting portions of the Ashsadhyayi which I had been painfully trying to remember, was much superior to mine. If I remember aright, when my father wanted me to repeat the portions that I had been preparing, I made some slips which to my confusion the Swami smilingly corrected. The effect of this was almost overwhelming as far as my feelings towards him were concerned, When there was another occasion for repeating some portions of the Amarakosha, I thought it better to be prudent than clever; and as I felt doubtful about my ability to repeat the portion with accuracy, I frankly confessed that I was unable to do so without committing mistakes. My father was naturally angry and annoyed at my failure to come up to his expectation; but I did not want to be caught once more, and I preferred the temporary annoyance of my father to what I regarded as a humiliation at the hand of our newly arrived guest.

For a day or two after his arrival my father was busy in trying to take a measure of his guest. In that period he made up his mind that the guest was not only above the ordinary, but was an extraordinary personality. So he got a few of his personal friends together in order to fortify his own opinion of the Swami. They soon agreed that it was quite worth while to get all the local leaders and learned men together. What struck us most in the crowded gatherings, which began to be held every day after the presence of the Swami became known to all in Belgaum, was the unfailing good humour which the Swami preserved in his conversations and even heated arguments. He was quick enough at retort, but the retort had no sling in it. One day we had a rather amusing illustration of the Swami’s coolness in debate. There was at that time in Belgaum an Executive Engineer who was the best-informed man in our town, He was one of the not uncommon types among Hindus. He was in his everyday life an orthodox Hindu of the type that I believe Southern India alone can produce. But in his mental outlook he was not only a sceptic, but a very dogmatic adherent of what used to be then regarded as the scientific outlook. He almost appeared to argue inspite of his orthodox mode of life that there was practically no sanction for religion or belief in religion except that the people were for a long time accustomed to certain beliefs and practices. Holding these views he found the Swami rather an embarrassing opponent, because the Swami had larger experience, knew more philosophy and more science than this local luminary. Naturally, he more than once lost temper in argument and was discourteous, if not positively rude, to the Swami. So my father protested, but the Swami smilingly intervened and said that he did not feel in any way disturbed by the methods of show of temper on the part of this Executive Engineer. He said that in such circumstances the best method to adopt was the one adopted by horse-trainers. He said that when a trainer wants to break colts, he merely aims at first to get on their backs, and having secured a hold on the back, limits his exertions to keeping his seat. He lets the colts try their best to throw him off and in that attempt to exhaust their untrained energies; but when the colts have done their best and failed, then begins the real task of the trainer. He becomes the master, and soon makes the colts feel that he means to be the master; and then the course of training is comparatively smooth. He said that in debates and conversations this was the best method to adopt. Let your opponent try his best or worst, let him exhaust himself; and then when he has shown signs of fatigue, get control of him and make him do just whatever you wish him to do. In short, conviction rather than constraint or compulsion must be the aim of a man who wants something more than mere silence from an opponent. Willing consent on the part of the opponent must be the inevitable result of such a procedure.

The Swami was a most embarrassing opponent for an impatient and dogmatic reasoner. He soon nonplussed in argument all the available talent in a mofussil town. But his aim appeared to be not so much victory in debate and argumentation, as a desire to create and spread the feeling that the time had come for demonstrating to the country and to the whole world that the Hindu religion was not in a moribund condition. The time had come, he used to say, for preaching to the world the priceless truths contained in Vedanta. His view of Vedanta was, it appears to me, a great deal different from the view that has become traditional. His complaint appeared to be that Vedanta had been treated too much as the possession of a sect competing for the loyalty of the Hindu along with other sects, and not as a life-giving perennial source of inspiration that it really was. He used to say that the particular danger of Vedanta was that its tenets and principles lent themselves easily to profession even by cowards. He used to say that the Vedanta may be professed by a coward, but it could be put into practice only by the most stout-hearted. The Vedanta was strong meat for weak stomachs. One of his favourite illustrations used to be that the doctrine of non-resistance necessarily involved the capacity and ability to resist and a conscious refraining from having recourse to resistance. If a strong man, he used to say, deliberately refrained from making use of his strength against either a rash or a weak opponent, then be could legitimately claim higher motives for his action. If, on the other hand, there was no obvious superiority of strength or the strength really lay on the side of his opponent, then the absence of the use of strength naturally raised the suspicion of cowardice. He used to say that that was the real essence of the advice by Shri Krishna to Arjuna. The wavering of mind on the part of Arjuna may have been easily due to other causes besides a genuine reluctance to use his undoubted and unfailing strength. Therefore the long and involved argument embodied in the eighteen chapters of the Gita.

(Prabuddha Bharata, July 1923)

REMINISCENCES OF SWAMI VIVEKANANDA
K. SUNDARAMA IYER

I MET Swami Vivekananda for the first time at Trivandrum in December 1892, and was then privileged to see and know a good deal of him. He came to Trivandrum in the course of an extended Indian tour, fulfilling the time-honoured practice obtaining among Indian monks of paying a visit to, and making tapas (spiritual austerities) at the sacred shrines in the four corners of the punyabhumi (sacred land), viz Badari, Kedara, Dwaraka, Puri, and Rameswaram, and claiming the hospitality and obeisance due to his sacred order from the Hindu householder. He came to me accompanied by a Mohammedan guide. My second son — a little boy of twelve, who has since passed away — took him for, and announced him to me as, a Mohammedan too, as he well might from his costume which was quite unusual for a Hindu Sannyasin of Southern India. I took him upstairs, entered into conversation, and made him due obeisance as soon as I learnt what he was. Almost the first thing he asked me to do was to arrange for his Mohammedan attendant’s meals. His Mohammedan companion was a peon in the Cochin State service, and had been detailed to accompany him to Trivandrum by the then Secretary to the Dewan, Mr. W. Ramaiyya, B.A., formerly Principal of the Vizagapatnam College. For himself the Swami would take no introduction, or have any sort of arrangement previously made for his comfort while on the way or after reaching Trivandrum. The Swami had taken almost nothing except a little milk during the two previous days, and only after his Mohammedan peon had been provided with meals and taken leave would he have any thought bestowed on himself.

Within a few minutes’ conversation, I found that the Swami was a mighty man. Having ascertained from him that, since leaving Ernakulam he had taken almost nothing, I asked him what food he was accustomed to. He replied, “Anything you like; we Sannyasins have no tastes.” We had some little conversation, as there was yet an interval of a few minutes before dinner. On learning that the Swami was a Bengali, I made the observation that the Bengalis had produced many great men — and, foremost of them all, the Brahmo preacher, Keshab Chandra Sen. It was then that the Swami mentioned to me the name of his guru Shri Ramakrishna, and expatiated briefly on his eminent spiritual endowments, and took my breath completely away by the remark that Keshab was a mere child when compared with Shri Ramakrishna, that not only he, but many eminent Bengalis of a generation past, had been influenced by the sage, that Keshab had in later life received the benefit of his inspiration and had undergone some considerable change for the better in his religious views, that many Europeans had sought the acquaintance of Shri Ramakrishna and regarded him as a semi-divine personage, and that no less a man than the late Director of Public Instruction in Bengal, Mr. C.H. Tawney, had written a paper on the character, genius, catholicity, and inspiring power of the great sage.

All this conversation had occupied us while the Swami’s food was being prepared and during the time he was breaking his nearly two days’ fast by a hearty dinner. The Swami’s presence, his voice, the glitter in his eyes, and the flow of his words and ideas were so inspiring that I excused myself that day from attending at the palace of the late Martanda Varma, the First Prince of Travancore, who was prosecuting his M. A. studies under my tuition — my services having been lent to the Travancore State by the Madras government to prepare him first for the B.A. Degree and later for the M.A. The Swami having had some rest, I took him in the evening to the house of Prof. Rangacharya, who was then professor of chemistry in the Trivandrum College — his services, too, having then been lent to the Travancore State — and who was even then at the height of his reputation as a scholar and man of science not only in Travancore, but throughout Southern India. Not finding him at home, we drove to the Trivandrum Club. There I introduced the Swami to various gentlemen present, and to Prof. Rangacharya when he came in later on. to the late Prof. Sundaram Pillai, M.A., and others among whom I distinctly remember a late Brahmin Dewan Peshkar and my friend Narayana Menon — who, I believe, is one of the Dewan Peshkars today in Travancore — owing to an incident which, however trifling in itself, brought out a prominent characteristic of the Swami, how he was all eyes and noted closely all that was passing around him and could use them effectively, how he combined with his rare gentleness and sweetness of temper, the presence of mind and the power of retort which could quickly silence an opponent. Mr. Narayana Menon had, while leaving the Club earlier in the evening, saluted the Brahmin Dewan Peshkar and the latter had returned it in the time-honoured fashion in which Brahmins who maintain old forms of etiquette return the salute of Shudras, i.e., by raising the left hand a little higher than the right. Many members of the Club had come and gone, and at last five of us were left, the Swami, the Dewan Peshkar, his brother, Prof. Rangacharya, and myself. As we were dispersing, the Dewan Peshkar made his obeisance to the Swami which the latter returned in the manner usual with Hindu monks by simply uttering the name of Narayana. This roused the Peshkar’s ire, for he wanted the Swami’s obeisance, too, in the fashion in which he had made his own. The Swami then turned on him and said, “If you could exercise your customary form of etiquette in returning Narayana Menon’s greeting, why should you resent my own adoption of the Sannyasin’s customary mode of acknowledging your obeisance to me?” This reply had the desired effect, and next day the gentleman’s brother came to us and conveyed some kind of apology for the awkward incident of the night previous.

During the evening, short as his stay had been at the Club premises, the Swami’s personality had made an impression on all. Hindu society in Trivandrum town presents a strikingly motley appearance, as all the race and caste varieties peculiar to Southern India commingle within its narrow limits. The Trivandrum Club of which all the leading educated men are members presents, too, every evening a similarly motley gathering representative of all those varieties, or almost all. The Swami entered freely into conversation with all, but in Professor Rangacharya he found the man most near to himself in all that he most valued in life — an almost encyclopaedic learning, a rare command of eloquent expression, the power to call up readily all his vast intellectual resources to point a moral or prick the bubble of a plausible argument, an emotional temperament which unerringly pointed to the love of whatever is good and noble in man and beautiful in nature and art. One remark of Professor Sundaram Pillai — that, as a Dravidian, he considered himself entirely outside the Hindu polity — put him somewhat out of court with the Swami, who, later on, remarked of him that eminent as he was as a scholar, he had thoughtlessly given himself away to the sway of race prejudice, which already during his travels the Swami had noted as an unpleasant characteristic of certain South Indian minds of the unbalanced or mediocre type.

The Swami paid a visit the next day to Prince Martanda Varma, who, as already stated, was then under my tuition and studying for the M.A. Degree, and who, when informed by me of the remarkable intellectual and imposing presence of my visitor, communicated to the Swami his desire for an interview. Of course I accompanied the Swami and was present at the conversation between him and the Prince. The Swami happened to mention his visits to various native princes and courts during his travels. This greatly interested the Prince who interrogated him regarding his impressions. The Swami then told him that, of all the Hindu ruling princes he had met, he had been most impressed with the capacity, patriotism, energy and foresight of H.H. the Gaekwar of Baroda, that he had also known and greatly admired the high qualities of the small Rajput Chief of Khetri, and that, as he came more and more south, he had found a growing deterioration in the character and capacity of Indian princes and chiefs. The Prince then asked him if he had seen his uncle, the ruler of Travancore. The Swami had not yet had time to arrange for a visit to His Highness. I may here mention at once that a visit was arranged two days later through the good offices of the then Dewan, Mr. Sankara Subbier. The Maharaja received the Swami, inquired of his welfare, and told him that the Dewan would provide him with every convenience during his stay both in Trivandrum and elsewhere within the State. The visit lasted only for two or three minutes, and so the Swami returned a little disappointed, though impressed with H.H.’s gracious and dignified deportment.

To return to the Swami’s conversation with the Prince. The Prince inquired regarding his impression of the late Maharaja of the Mysore State, whose guest the Swami had been for several days. The gist of the Swami’s view was that the Maharaja, like many other Indian rulers, was a good deal under leading strings, that he could not or would not assert himself, and that had produced some undesirable results. One incident he mentioned may be of some interest. I cannot give names. The Swami ventured to advise the Maharaja to remove from his neighbourhood a man of some reputation, who was supposed to be a favourite of his and of whom there had prevailed, rightly or wrongly, possibly wrongly, an unfavourable impression in the public mind. To this request, the Maharaja made the strange reply that, as the Swami was one of the greatest men he had seen and destined to fulfil a great mission in the land, he should not expose his life to the risk there certainly existed in the Indian Prince’s palace for one who openly ventured to disparage, or to endeavour to secure the dismissal of, one of his favourites. This throws light on the way in which the Swami and the Maharaja understood themselves and understood each other. The Swami then made earnest inquiry regarding Prince Martanda Varma’s studies, and his aims in life. The Prince replied that he had already taken some interest in the doings of the people of Travancore and that he had resolved to do what he could, as a leading and loyal subject of the Maharaja and as a member of the ruling family, to advance their welfare. The Prince was struck, like all others who had come into contact with him, with the Swami’s striking figure and attractive features; and, being an amateur photographer, asked the Swami for a sitting and took a fine photograph which he skilfully developed into an impressive picture and later on sent as an interesting exhibit to the next Fine Arts Exhibition held in the Madras Museum. On leaving the Prince’s presence, the Swami remarked to me that he thought there was plenty of promise in him, but that he trusted that the University education which he was receiving would not spoil him, evidently meaning that he might be left more to himself, the graduate that he was already, than he seemed to be by being kept under my further care and instruction. But, in fact, the Prince was only being helped to think for himself and no longer kept under control and, after another year or so, discontinued his studies.

Throughout the second day and even during the greater part of the third, we were left a good deal to ourselves, except for a brief visit in the evening from Prof. Rangacharya. The Swami found me much inclined to orthodox Hindu modes of life and beliefs. Perhaps that was why he spoke a good deal in the vein suited to my tastes and views, though occasionally he burst out into spirited denunciation of the observance of mere deshachara or local usage. As I keep no-diary and write only from the tattered remains of an impression left on the mind by events which took place fully twenty years back, I cannot vouch for the exact order of topics as they arose on this and other days. I had occasional and deeply interesting conversations with the Swami, sometimes when we were left to ourselves, at other times when visitors, to whom the news had been taken that a highly learned and gifted Sannyasin from the North was staying with me, called to see him and earn the spiritual merit of rendering him homage in due form.

The Swami once made a spirited attack on the extravagant claims put forth by science on men’s allegiance. “If religion has its superstitions,” the Swami remarked, “science has its superstitions too.” Both the mechanical and evolutionary theories are, on examination, found inadequate and unsatisfying and still there are large numbers of men who speak of the entire universe as an open secret. Agnosticism has also bulked large in men’s esteem, but has only betrayed its ignorance and arrogance by ignoring the laws and truths of the Indian science of thought-control. Western psychology has miserably failed to cope with the superconscious aspects and laws of human nature. Where European science has stopped short, Indian psychology comes in and explains, illustrates and teaches how to render real and practical laws appertaining to higher states of existence and experience. Religion alone — and especially the religion of the Indian sages — can understand the subtle and secret working of the human mind and conquer its unspiritual cravings so as to realize the one Existence and comprehend all else as its limitation and manifestation when under the bondage of matter. Another subject on which the Swami spoke was the distinction between the world of gross matter (laukika) and the world of fine matter (alaukika). The Swami explained how both kept man within the bondage of the senses, and only he who rose superior to both could attain to the freedom which is the aim of all life and raise himself above the petty vanities of the world, whether of men or gods. The Swami spoke to me of the institution of caste, and held that the Brahmin would continue to live as long as he found unselfish work to do and freely gave of his knowledge and all to the rest of the population. In the actual words of the Swami which are still ringing in my ears, “The Brahmin has done great things for India; he is doing great things for India, and he is destined to do still greater things for India in the future.” The Swami also declared himself sternly against all interference against the shastric (scriptural) usages and injunctions in regard to the status and marriage of women. Women as well as the lower classes and castes must receive Sanskrit education, imbibe the ancient spiritual culture, and realize in practice all the spiritual ideals of the rishis, and then they would take into their own hands all questions affecting their own status and solve them in the light thrown on them by their own knowledge of the truths of religion and the enlightened perception of their own needs and requirements. I also asked the Swami for his views on the question of sea-voyage. He replied that the social environment in Western countries must be better prepared than it was and is by the preaching of the Vedanta before Brahmins and other caste Hindus could find it suitable for their accustomed life of ceremonial purity and those time-worn and time-honoured restrictions as regards food, drink, etc.,which have made them for ages almost the sole champions of, and channels for, the gospel of mercy. There was not the least objection, however, in the case of Hindus who were already free from, or were prepared to throw aside, all such restrictions.

On the third and fourth day of the Swami’s stay with me, I sent information to a valued friend of mine in Trivandrum. who is my senior in years and still living, a man for whom, on account of his character, culture, purity of life, and sincere devotion to the Lord. I felt then, and have continued to feel, attached by the ties of genuine regard and friendship. Mr. S. Rama Rao, the then Director of Vernacular Instruction in Travancore. Mr. Rama Rao felt infinitely attracted to the Swami by the power of his spirituality and devotional fervour and asked him for the favour of having bhiksha (alms) in his house, which the Swami graciously consented to do. After the bhiksha was over, they returned together, and the Swami continued his instructive and fervid discourses to us. I remember vividly how once Mr. Rama Rao wished the Swami to explain indriya-nigraha, the restraint of the senses. The Swami then launched forth into a vivid narration of a story very much like what is usually told of Lila-Shukha, the famous composer of Krishna-Karnamrita. The vivid picture he gave of the last stage in which the hero is taken to Vrindaban and puts out his own eyes when he gets severely handled for his amorous pursuit of a Sett’s daughter there, and then proclaims his repentance and his resolve to end his days in unswerving meditation on the divine Shri Krishna at the scene of the Lord’s sportive deeds in the days of His childhood on earth, bursts on my mind, even at this distance of twenty-one years, with somewhat of the effect of those irresistibly charming and undying notes on the flute by the late miraculous musician Sarabha Shastriar of Kumbakonam. The Swami’s concluding words after mentioning the closing incident of putting out the eyes were: “Even this extreme step must, if necessary, be taken as a preliminary to the restraint of the wandering and unsubjugated senses and the consequent turning of the mind towards the Lord.”

On the third or fourth day of his stay, I made inquiries, at the Swami’s request, regarding the whereabouts of Mr. Manmatha Nath Bhattacharya — now deceased — who was then Assistant to the Accountant-General, Madras, and who had come down to Trivandrum on official duty in connection with some defalcations alleged to have taken place at the Resident’s Treasury. From that time the Swami used daily to spend his mornings with Mr. Bhattacharya and stay for dinner. One day, however. I complained, and unfortunately there was a visitor too, to detain him, as I shall presently have to state. The Swami made a characteristic reply on seeing how unwilling I was to part with him, “We, Bengalis, are a clannish people.” He said also that Mr. Bhattacharya had been his school or college mate, and that he had an additional claim for consideration as he was the son of the late world-renowned scholar, Pandit Mahesh Chandra Nyayaratna, formerly the Principal of the Calcutta Sanskrit College. The Swami also told me that he had long taken no fish food, as the South Indian Brahmins whose guest he had been throughout his South Indian tour were forbidden both fish and flesh, and would fain avail himself of this opportunity to have his accustomed fare. I at once expressed my loathing for the taking of fish or flesh as food. The Swami said in reply that the ancient Brahmins of India were accustomed to take meal and even beef and were called upon to kill cows and other animals in yajnas or for giving madhuparka to guests. He also held that the introduction and spread of Buddhism led to the gradual discontinuance of flesh as food, though the Hindu shastras (scriptures) had always expressed a theoretical preference for those who avoided the use of flesh-foods, and that the disfavour into which flesh had fallen was one of the chief causes of the gradual decline of the national strength, and the final overthrow of the national independence of the united ancient Hindu races and states of India. He informed me, at the same time, that in recent years Bengalis had, as a community, begun to use freely animal food of several kinds and that they generally got a Brahmin to sprinkle a little water consecrated by the utterance of a few mantras over a whole flock of sheep and then, without any further qualms of religious conscience, proceeded to hand, draw, and quarter them. The Swami’s opinion, at least as expressed in conversation with me, was that the Hindus must freely take to the use of animal food if India was to at all cope with the rest of the world in the present race for power and predominance among the world’s communities, whether within the British empire, or beyond its limits. I, as a Brahmin of strong orthodox leanings, expressed my entire dissent from his views and held that the Vedic religion had alone taught to man his kinship and unity with nature, that man should not yield to the play of sensuous cravings or the narrow passion for political dominance. The ennobling gospel of universal mercy which had been the unique possession of the Hindus, especially of the Brahmins of South India, should never be abandoned as mistaken, out of date, or uncivilized, and that the world can and ought to make a great ethical advance by adopting a humane diet, and also that no petty considerations of national strength or revival should prevail against the adoption of a policy of justice and humanity cowards our dumb brother-jivas of the brute creation. Knowing, as I fully did, the Swami’s views on this question, I was not surprised to learn that, while in America he had been in the habit of taking animal food, and I think he treated with silent contempt the denunciations and calumnies directed against him on this account.

The Swami visited the Dewan by appointment one evening, when this same subject somehow cropped up, and the Dewan held views identical with mine and even went on to express his views that animals had never been killed, or flesh used in yajnas in ancient times. This led to some little controversy in which the Dewan’s son-in-law, the late Mr. A. Rainier, who was then his secretary, took sides with the Swami, so far as the use of flesh in yajnas was concerned. The Swami had also some little talk with the Dewan on the subject of bhakti. How the subject came in or what were the details of the Swami’s conversation has clean dropped out of my memory. Mr. Sankara Subbier, the Dewan, was one of the most learned men of his time and even at his advanced age — for he was then 58 — was a voracious reader of books of all sorts, and daily adding to the vast stores of his knowledge. The Swami, however, was not much impressed, nor could the Dewan spare time for a prolonged meeting. So we took our leave. As the Swami parted, the Dewan assured him that every want to wish of his would be attended to, and every attention paid to him throughout the State, wherever he might go. The Swami, however, wanted nothing and asked for nothing.

I have above referred to a visitor detaining the Swami one morning from his usual visit to his Bengali countryman, Mr. Bhattacharya. This visitor was the Assistant Dewan or Peshkar in the Huzoor office, Trivandrum, one Mr. Piravi Perumal Pillay. He seemed to have come on purpose to ascertain what the Swami knew of various cults and religions in India and elsewhere, and began by putting forward various objections to the Advaita Vedanta. He soon found out that the Swami was a master from whose stores it was more important to draw what one could for inspiration without toss of time than to examine what were the depths and heights in which his mind could range. I have seen the Swami exhibit on this occasion (as on another during his famous sojourn of nine days at Castle Kernan on the Madras Marina in March 1897) his rare power of gauging in a moment what is the menial reach of a self-confident visitor, and then turning him unconsciously away to ground suitable to him and then giving him the benefit of his guidance and inspiration. On the present occasion, the Swami happened to quote from Lalita Vistara some verses descriptive or Buddha’s vairagya (dispassion), and in such an entrancingly melodious voice that the visitor’s heart quite melted, and he speedily fell into a passive listening mood, which the Swami skilfully utilized to carry home to his mind a lasting impression of Buddha’s great renunciation, his unflinching search after truth, his final discovery of it and his unwearied ministry of forty-five years among men and women of all castes, ranks, and conditions of life. The discourse occupied nearly an hour, and at its close the Swami’s visitor was so visibly affected and acknowledged himself as feeling so much raised for the time being above the sordid realities and vanities of life, that he made many devout prostrations at the Swami’s feet and declared when leaving, that he had never seen his like and would never forget the discourse which had impressed him greatly.

During this and the following days various topics came up, upon which I had the pleasure of knowing the Swami’s views. Many of these have passed out of my recollection. but two of them come home to me with more or less vividness just at present. Once I happened to ask him to deliver a public lecture. The Swami said that he had never before spoken in public and would surely prove a lamentable and ludicrous failure. Upon this I inquired how, if this were true, he could face the august assembly of the Parliament of Religions at Chicago at which he told me he had been asked by the Maharaja of Mysore to be present as the representative of Hinduism. The Swami gave me a reply which at the time seemed to me decidedly evasive, namely, that if it was the will of the Supreme that he should be made His mouthpiece and do a great service to the cause of truth and holy living, He surely would endow him with the gifts and qualities needed for it. I said I was incredulous as to the probability or possibility of a, special intervention of this kind, as, even though I had at this time much faith in the central and fundamental verities of Hinduism, I had not studied its source-books and had not obtained an insight into their rationale, nor even had so much of a practical realization of those verities as would enable me to perceive the truth underlying a statement like the one made by the Swami. He at once came down on me with a sledge-hammer stroke, denouncing me as one who, inspite of my apparent Hindu orthodoxy so far as my daily observances and verbal professions went, was at heart somewhat of a sceptic, because I seemed to him prepared to set limits of my own to the extent of the Lord’s power of beneficent interposition in the affairs of the universe.

On another occasion, too, some difference of opinion existed in regard to a question of much importance in Indian ethnology. The Swami held that wherever a Brahmin was found with a dark skin, it was clearly a case of atavism, demonstrating the descent of a characteristic due to Dravidian admixture. To this I replied that colour was essentially a changeable feature in man and largely dependent on such conditions as climate, food. the nature of the occupation as entailing an outdoor or indoor life, and so on. The Swami combated my view and maintained mat the Brahmins were as much a mixed race as the rest of mankind, and that their belief in their racial purity was largely founded on fiction. I quoted high authority — C.L. Brace and others — against him in regard to the purity of Indian races, but the Swami was obdurate and maintained his own view.

I must get on rapidly to the close. But I must not fail to mention the fact that during all the time he stayed, he took captive every heart within the home. To every one of us he was all sweetness, all tenderness, all grace. My sons were frequently in his company, and one of them still swears by him and has the most vivid and endearing recollections of his visit and of his striking personality. The Swami learnt a number of Tamil words and took delight in conversing in Tamil with the Brahmin cook in our home. It hardly seemed as if there was a stranger moving in our midst. When he left, it seemed for a time as if the light had gone out of our home.

Just as he was about to leave, accompanied by his Bengali companion, Mr. Bhattacharya — it was on the 22nd December 1892 — an incident happened which is worth recording. Pandit Vanchisvara Shastri — a master of that most difficult branch of learning, Sanskrit grammar, and highly honoured by all who knew him for his piety, learning, and modesty — was a dependent of the first Prince ofTravancore, who, at my request, had secured his services as teacher of Sanskrit to my son. During all these days of the Swami’s stay he never once came to my house. As the Swami was leaving, he made his appearance and implored me to arrange for an interview, however short, even if it be of a few minutes’s duration. He had heard of the arrival and stay with me of a highly learned Sannyasin from the North, but had been ill and could not come. He was anxious to have some conversation. The Swami and Mr. Bhattacharya I were just then descending the stairs to get into their carriage and drive away, The Pandit entreated me in the most pressing manner to ask the Swami for at least a few minutes’s delay. On being informed of this, the Swami entered into a brief conversation with him in Sanskrit, which lasted seven or eight minutes only. At that time I knew no Sanskrit, and so I could not understand what they talked about. But the Pandit told me that it related to some knotty and controverted point in vyakarana (grammar) and that, even during that brief conversation, the Swami showed that he could display his accurate knowledge of Sanskrit grammar and his perfect mastery of the Sanskrit language.

With this the Swami’s stay of nine days had come to a close. In my recollection of today, it seems to be somewhat of a nine days’ wonder; the impression is one which never can be effaced. The Swami’s towering personality and marvellous career must be said to mark an epoch in history whose full significance can become discernible only in some distant future time. But to those who have had the privilege of knowing him intimately, he seems to be only comparable to some of those immortal spiritual personages who have shed an undying lustre on this Holy Land. It is very pleasant to have recorded these personal reminiscences, meagre as they are, and even though they can add little or nothing to our knowledge of the Master, who enchanted and enchained the heart of human society in the East and in the West in his time and generation.

(The Life of Swami Vivekananda, first edition,
Volume IV, Appendix I)

REMINISCENCES OF SWAMI VIVEKANANDA
K. SUNDARAMA IYER

I MUST first mention the name of Mr. M.C. Alasinga Perumal, late headmaster of the High School attached to Pacheyappa’s College. From the time when the Swami first came to Madras in December 1892 after his visit to Kanyakumari and Rameswaram, he attached himself with adoring love and never-failing enthusiasm to the Swami’s person and to his ministry in the world in all its phases and details — an adhesion and service to the Great Master which, to me at least, has always seemed a thing of beauty and brought to me a consolation and joy in many a dark hour of my heart’s sinkings. That our degenerate Hindu society could still produce one who had in his nature so pure and perfect a passion of reverence and tender affection towards the Swami’s prophetic soul was to me a discovery, and I have seen nothing like it in this southern peninsula at least of the Indian continent. He was the life and soul of the work of all kinds done in South India in support of the Swami’s ministry, or by his direction and suggestion. “Achinga” — as we familiarly used to call him — was hard at work and ever vigilant and got everything needed to be done in order to make the Swami’s reception at Madras a success. He first got up some sort of a reception committee — one not of a formal character, but which was of use to him. Dr. Subrahmanya Aiyar was its chief, and it included Messrs V. Krishnaswami Aiyar. P.R. Sundara Aiyar, C. Nanjunda Rao. V.C. Seshachari, Col. Olcott, Dr. Barrows of Chicago (who had come over to deliver a course of lectures on Christianity) and others. The committee got ready two or three leaflets for distribution everywhere in the town; the object was to give our people some account of the Swami’s memorable work of preaching in the West, and contained chiefly extracts from the opinions formed of him by leaders of thought and the leading journals in the United States and Great Britain. They also arranged for the putting up of a number of triumphal arches from the Egmore railway station to Castle Kernan and for sticking placards regarding the Swami’s arrival in all parts of the city. Everywhere a wide interest had already been created in consequence of the reports, daily received and published in the papers, of the hearty welcome accorded to the Swami in his progress from Colombo, through Rameswaram, Ramnad, and Siva-ganga to Madura, Trichinopoly, and Kumbakonam. Even in the small and insignificant intermediate rural railway stations men flocked to catch a glimpse of the great man. Men came from the mofussils in large numbers to Madras to meet the Swami, or even to have the inestimable privilege of looking at this new and world-moving messenger of the Indian sages of yore. Lots of young men who had come to Madras for the university examinations remained to have a glimpse of him and to hear his voice and to learn his message to his countrymen. Everyone — in fact men of all ages, classes, and sects — felt that the Swami had done an everlasting service to the cause of the motherland and its immortal prophets and acharyas (teachers) and gurus (religious leaders), past and present, such as no one had ever done before — and that he was not only a true saint and religious messenger from India to the civilization of the West, but a patriot who had raised his country and his compatriots in the estimation of the civilized world. Everywhere the Swami’s personality, mission, and achievements became the one topic of absorbing interest, and all awaited his arrival with eager interest and intense expectation. The Hindu published a leader extolling the Swami’s work in the West in terms of the highest enthusiasm leading up towards its close to a white heat of passionate outburst, indeed, one still remembers vividly how among its educated readers many here and there quoted its concluding sentences, asking who there could be who would not associate himself with the Swami’s great work for humanity and advance it in all possible ways.

The morning previous to the Swami’s arrival Mr. and Mrs. Sevier, two of his zealous Western disciples, accompanied by one Mr. Harrison — a Ceylonese Buddhist and an admirer and friend of the Swami — arrived at Madras and were met at the railway station and taken to Castle Kernan. That same evening a public reception was arranged for them, and it was attended, among others, by Col. Olcott. I thought, from what Col. Olcott said to me, that he was a warm friend and sincere admirer of the Swami. I had also once read in the Theosophist a paragraph that the Swami had, during his previous visit to Madras in December 1892, gone to the Adyar headquarters and received a hearty welcome there from the Colonel and his associates. Hence what we heard from the Swami on his arrival the next day and his outburst against the Theosophical Society at his first Madras lecture in a manner altogether unusual with him came on me as a surprise; but more of this later in its due place. We were all squatting on the floor in the temporary platform at one end of the shamiana (canopy) put up for the Swami’s interviews and question meetings at the Castle Kernan. Mrs. Sevier was saying something about the Swami’s stay in London, and about one of his meetings or lectures at Mr. Sturdy’s house. Colonel Olcott at once quoted the example of Mrs. Besant, and asked Mrs. Sevier to take a chair while we remained squatting, and tell us all she knew about the Swami and how she became his disciple. At once Mrs. Sevier replied that she was not Mrs. Besant — that, while Mrs. Besant was a speaker and scholar and could command every one’s attention on any and every occasion to what fell from her lips, she (Mrs. Sevier) was only a plain woman and could say nothing which was of much interest or importance to them. Col. Olcott was nonplussed and became silent. After making their acquaintance with the visitors, all who had assembled lingered on for a while and then dispersed.

The next morning was the long and eagerly expected day of the Swami’s arrival. Enormous crowds wended their way to the railway station and also gathered together and kept waiting for him to have a glance while he passed through the streets in order to reach Castle Kernan. The station, inside and outside, was a veritable sea of heads and faces. The previous night my neighbour Mr. R.V. Srinivasa Iyer came to me and asked me to accompany him in his carriage to the Egmore railway station. I had known him for several years as a colleague of mine in the Kumbakonam College and had also frequently met him after his transfer to the revenue department. He had never felt much interest in religious problems or personalities, though he had been a diligent student of European philosophy. His offer to join in the welcome which the city of Madras was offering to the Swami was to me a pleasant surprise. On our way he said he too was eager to see what the Swami was like after all the glory he had gained in his career as an Indian teacher and promulgator of our ancient philosophic religion. At last the train steamed into the station to the great delight of all who had gathered there and been kept waiting owing to the lateness of its arrival. The Swami alighted in company with two of his fellow-disciples of Shri Ramakrishna and another who was his own disciple and had been attracted to him while he was formerly a station-master in some railway line in North India. They had gone to Colombo to meet him and to give him new kashaya (ochre) clothing for his wear as an Indian Sannyasin in lieu of his European costume. The Swami was also accompanied by Mr. Goodwin, the Englishman who had been engaged to take down in shorthand his lectures in America and who had become his disciple and refused to accept any wages for his work and now had got himself attached to the Swami for the rest of his life. He was clothed in purely Indian and Brahmin costume to the surprise of us all. A few introductions were made to the Swami at the station. As I had known the Swami at Trivandrum in December 1892 even before he paid his first visit to Madras, and as we had moved and conversed freely and intimately with each other, I was very eager to meet the Swami at once but owing to the enormous crowds, it was a pure chance, except in the case of a few big men, whether one got an opportunity or not to see the Swami at the station. I managed, however, to elbow my way through the crowd to where the Swami stood and to see and exchange a few words with him before he entered his carriage and the procession started. I made a sashtanga namaskara at the Swami’s feet, and asked whether he still remembered me. He replied that he never forgot a face and referred to his slaying in my house at Trivandrum. It was then that my name was mentioned to him by Dr. Subrahmanya Aiyar. Professor M. Rangacharya, my old friend and colleague at the Kumbakonam College had also accompanied the Swami from Kumbakonam, and both of us went together to Castle Kernan, following the procession. As we went on, we found that at the beach some students had insisted on having the horses unharnessed, and dragged the carriage themselves for some distance. This idea of displacing the horses and of young men dragging the carriage was rather disgusting to our Indian ideas and tastes. Later in the day I mentioned the matter to the Swami himself, and he too seemed not to quite relish the idea. He told me that he had already himself mentioned it to the students who had made and carried out the proposal.

On the route from Kumbakonam, the Swami had been joined at the Chingleput railway station by the representative of the Madras Mail who sought an interview. The interview, in the form of questions and answers, appeared that evening in that paper and gave a most interesting account of the Swami’s observations and activities in America and of his future aims during his stay in India. Later on Mr. Rangacharya told me that the questions put were all his own and had elicited from the Swami his short, pithy, and ready replies. The Madras Mail’s representative had only to take them down in short-hand. At this distance of time, however, I only remember that the Swami said that the American…, men were absorbed in business and money-making and so the women were the masters of the situation and availed themselves of every opportunity to improve their minds and culture, and that it was the women who largely attended his lectures and classes. The Swami expected that his labours would bear better fruit in England than in America; for though the English people were rather “thick-skulled” and therefore were slow to take in new ideas, they never flinched from carrying out their convictions into practice when once their minds had been influenced. The Swami arrived al Kernan Castle and met several gurubhais or brother-disciples of Shri Ramakrishna, and entered into close and familiar intercourse with them. Their simple ways and hearty greetings, their easy manners and frank unconventional behaviour towards each other, were very attractive to all who had the privilege of getting into the interior of Castle Kernan. The Swami and they soon sat at dinner and when it was over, the Swami came up into the hall in the upper storey for rest and slumber after his hard labours during his journey in receiving deputations and replying to addresses and almost always in giving more or less formal discourses when the demands and importunities for them could not be put off.

The Swami’s health had largely given way in the course of his unwearied labours in the West during three years of lecturing, teaching, and training of disciples in various courses of Vedic discipline and methods of meditation. Much anxiety was evinced by his associates and felt even by himself in regard to this matter. It was a wonder how he responded under these conditions to the demands made on his almost exhausted stock of energy, while on this return visit of his to the motherland and in the course of his energetic attempts to start his mission of India’s spiritual renovation under his Great Master’s banner and the influence of his own unique personality and enlightened guidance.

Professor Rangacharya and myself were invited by “Achinga” to interview the Swami and arrived at an arrangement with regard to his lecture programme during his Madras sojourn to satisfy the public expectations and also to reveal to his countrymen his plans and hopes for the future. The Professor was returning to Kumbakonam the next day, and so the matter must be settled at once. The Swami had taken some rest, and we found him seated on a carpet in a room upstairs. When we broached the topics, the Swami replied that we might settle between ourselves the topics of his discourses and simply inform him and leave them in his hands. His first public appearance was to be made in order to receive and reply to the address to be presented to him on behalf of the people of Madras, then there were to be four public addresses, devoted to a comprehensive and detailed exposition of his ideas regarding India’s mission to the world and the mission of her sages to their own children in the motherland. The Swami had also to reveal his means and methods for renovating the national and spiritual life of India in accordance with its altered conditions. We fixed the Swami’s topics (1) My plan of campaign, (2) The Sages of India, (3) Vedanta in its relation to practical life, and (4) the Future of India. The Swami also had, at “Achinga’s” special request, to deliver an address to the Triplicane Literary Society on “Some aspects of his work in India”. This programme was actually carried out, and all the topics mentioned were fully treated by the Swami according to his own method and manner. The Swami also consented to have two morning sittings at the Castle to meet people who desired to put him questions and elicit answers on any topic they liked.

The same evening, or the next day’s forenoon (I do not remember which, very likely the latter) Rangacharya and myself wished to listen to a little music of the Swami of which we had heard a great deal. We suggested the Ashatapadi. The Swami had no public engagements, and having had necessary rest, was in one of his sweetest and most serene moods and at once responded. He sang one of Jayadeva’s song in most entrancing voice and in the appropriate raga (tune) which we never heard before in this part of the country. The impression then received is one never to be effaced, and the Swami revealed himself to us in one of the lighter veins or aspects of his composite nature and his weird and soaring personality — I may also here say that from the first day on which he reached the Castle Kernan, and up to the last, his residence was at all times crowded with visitors from all classes of the population and by the people of both sexes. Many delicate and retiring women of high and respectable families approached the Castle Kernan as if they were visiting a temple. Their devotional feeling reached its climax when they gained admission inside and prostrated themselves before the Swami as if he were one of our avataras or acharyas revisiting the scene of their labours. Crowds kept constantly waiting in front of the Castle at all hours of the day and even for some time after it was dark. It had gone forth that he was an avatara of Sambandhaswami (a Shaiva saint) and the idea was taken up everywhere and with absolute trustfulness among the common people. Whenever the people who kept watching and wailing caught a glimpse of him while passing to and fro within the Castle grounds or when he passed by them to get into his coach on the way to one of his meetings, they prostrated en masse before him. The scene on such occasions was as impressive as it was unusual to see. Even when our heads of maths (monasteries) appeared in public on the rare occasions in which they went on a visitation tour among their enrolled or avowed disciples, or paid a visit to a temple deity, or passed in procession (vishwa-yatra) through the streets of the place in which they had their permanent residence (math) — I had never witnessed this kind of collective worship and homage giving conspicuous vent to the popular emotions or love and reverence, and revealing to the world where the heart of the nation still lay. The renunciation of the world’s pompous vanities, and its unsubstantial fleeting attachments was the sole means to the attainment of the lotus feet of the Supreme and the resulting liberation from the miseries of the samsarika (transmigrating) wanderings in the material universe.

When the appointed day, the third after his arrival, came for the Swami to receive the Madras address, he left the Castle Kernan at about 4 p.m. It was a day of universal and high-wrought expectations. The interest felt and evinced by the entire educated community and the student population of Madras had reached heights and summits not easily imaginable. The scene in front of the Victoria Hall and along the roads and by-ways leading to it defies adequate definition or accurate description. The Swami’s carriage, as it passed, could not easily find the space it needed for reaching its destination. Professor Rangacharya and myself, at the Swami’s gracious request, took our seats in his carriage. I enjoyed the infinite pleasure and privilege of once more looking at his wonderful eyes direct, recalling to my recollection all he had achieved and mentally running over what his future career might be as the future minister of the Vedic religion. I could not but indulge in high hopes and aspirations regarding the future of this great land of Bharata (India) after it had yielded itself in faith and hope to this new heaven-sent messenger of our holy rishis (seers). I must avow that so far a gaping width or chasm separates the expectations of that moment and the actualities of the quarter of a century that has since passed. There is, however, no need at all for despondency. I fully believe that the propaganda then started by the Swami will sooner or later attain developments which will command our confidence in the efficacy of the working constitution framed by him, even though its rate of progress towards the ultimate goal, namely, the spiritualization of all human nature and human institutions, must necessarily be slow.

As we alighted from the carriage, there were loud cries of “Open air meeting” from all the vast crowds assembled in front of the Hall. It had been arranged that the address to the Swami should be presented inside the Hall. The Hall was filled to its utmost capacity. Sir V.Bhashyam Ayyangar had already occupied the chair. The Swami took his seat on the dais by his side, and Mr. M.O. Parthasarathy Ayyangar read the address. All eyes were fixed on Swamiji, and expectation was at its highest pitch. Every heart was receptive and ready to imbibe the sweet flow of melody from the voice and wisdom of the Great Master on whose every word his Western hearers had so long hung with delight and which had charmed all ranks and conditions of people of both sexes in the very life centres of the material civilization of the West. Meanwhile loud and continuous shouts of “Open air meeting” breaking into the Hall. interrupted the proceedings within. They issued from every part of the immense gathering of students and young people outside, so that the Swami’s heart was touched and it became impossible for him to speak from the dais where he was standing. He said also that he could not disappoint the countless masses of the young men, eager and enthusiastic, assembled beyond the doors. The Swami and his crowded audience outside issued out to meet and mingle with the vast and seething mass of human faces and figures visible as far as the eye could reach and which rejoiced and broke into thundering shouts of joy when the Swami appeared before them. Soon, however, he found that the sounds and shouts from vast crowds made it impossible that his voice could be heard everywhere or even beyond the few who stood in his neighbourhood. The Swami’s voice, too, inspite of its attractive sweetness and the even flow of its thrilling cadence, wanted those qualities of sonorousness and strength which, mounting to the swell of a trumpet blast, made a Gladstone, Bright, or O’Connel heard to the utmost limits of a vast concourse of fifty thousand people or more. The Swami spoke from the top of a Madras coach — “in the Gita fashion” as he called it, to the mirth of all who heard him — meaning that there was some sort of distant analogy between himself speaking from a coach and in parting his counsel and inspiration to his people at the dawn of the new epoch he was inaugurating, and Shri Krishna re-delivering his lost message of yoga to a world which had allowed it to sink into oblivion owing to the steady decline of national spirituality during the “great efflux of time” (Gita, IV). The huge crowd became so unmanageable, and their loud shouts and cheers so swelled as to make the Swami’s voice inaudible. So he spoke briefly, though he did not fail to clearly enunciate the central truths of Hinduism, how renunciation, love, and fearlessness were India’s offer to humanity in order to help souls cross the ocean of samsara and the “Mystery of Life” into the Joy of Truth and the ever-present realization and illumination of the Self, the One only without a second….

But the Swami found it impossible to proceed further and concluded by thanking all who had heard him asking them to “keep up” their enthusiasm and to give all the help he “required” from them, “to do great things for India” and carry out all his plans for the revival of this “big gigantic race”….

The subject of the First lecture was “My plan of campaign”. The Swami told me and others in the course of his conversation that he intended “to be out once for all” with the truth regarding what the Theosophical Society had done for him in America and elsewhere. Some friends had told the Swami that Colonel Olcott had been claiming that the Theosophical Society had paved the way for the Swami in America, that had it not been for the spade work done by the Society in its mission of spreading “occultism” or “ancient wisdom” everywhere, the Swami would not have been able to accomplish even the little he had been able to do in propagating the truths and ideals of the Vedantic religion and philosophy. The Swami had heard, too, on his arrival in Madras, from one of his gurubhais that a well-known Buddhistic friend of his at Calcutta had received a letter from a prominent Madras Theosophist in which that gentleman, on hearing that the Swami had from America once wired to his friends in Madras that he had only a trifling sum left of the funds he had received when starting for the Parliament of Religions and would soon be nearing starvation-point and without the warm clothing required for the approaching cold season, had written as follows of the Swami, “they would soon be rid of the devil”. This letter had been handed over for safe custody to the Belur Math. The Swami also told us that, wherever he had been invited to lecture in America, the Theosophists had tried to hinder his own Vedantic propaganda in various ways. Moreover, the prejudice which many leading Americans had everywhere contracted against the Mahatmic cranks of Theosophy and its puerile trumperies and monstrous fictions had made them imagine that the Swami’s mission, too, was a kindred movement of obscurantism appealing similarly to the credulity imbedded in the innermost recesses of the minds of the common masses of men and must be similarly ostracized by all enlightened leaders and by all who care to base their beliefs and convictions regarding religion on sound methods of investigation and proof and on the experiences resulting from established and authoritative processes of meditation. The Swami had to remove mountains of unreasoning dislike and unfounded opposition which had been engendered everywhere owing to this circumstance. Moreover, the Christian missionaries, too, tried to prevent people everywhere from receiving him or even countenancing his endeavours to enlist support and sympathy for the doctrines and spiritual methods of the Vedas and the Vedanta. The Swami told me that even (Mr.) Mazoomdar, a leader of the Brahmo Samaj, who was attending the Parliament of Religions — a man whom he had known and esteemed almost from his boyhood and student days — joined the missionaries in the work of spreading false reports against him and discrediting his endeavours on behalf of the Vedic religion and went about saying that that religion was receding and losing its hold on the Indian mind — on the cultured intellects of India as well as on the mass mind — and that therefore Christ had come to stay in India. The Swami also showed me two issues of a Christian weekly journal published in America — whose name I do not distinctly recollect at this distance of time, but perhaps its name was The Witness — in which the missionaries had published an appeal for funds in aid of Mazoomdar’s propagandist work in India, pointing out how he too would preach Jesus Christ and help forward the ultimate triumph of the Christian religion. The Swami condemned in unmeasured terms this transaction as opposed to all recognized canons of honourable public life and the relations between leaders of opposing creeds or churches. It was Mazoomdar that the Swami had in view, when he referred in this first Madras lecture of his to “one of my own countrymen”, “the leader of a reform party in India” (and so on)…. Some of the Swami’s friends and supporters in Madras tried to dissuade him from making these references to his enemies and detractors in America, and especially his attack on the Theosophical Society and its founder. They told him that several members of that Society entertained unlimited regard and reverence towards him and had gathered in large numbers from the mofussil to greet and honour him on his return from the West. The Swami was inexorable, and gave forcible expression to the facts as he knew them and the feelings evoked in him by the troubles he had had to encounter from those who had ever been proclaiming from the housetops that they formed “the nucleus of universal brotherhood”….

The first of the four lectures arranged for him was delivered on the evening of Tuesday, the ninth, the fourth day after his arrival (sixth). That same day he lectured in the morning at the Triplicane Literary Society. As I could not be present at that lecture, I can say nothing about it from my own impressions. Nor was I present at his visit to the Social Reform Association on Wednesday, the l0th. I however asked the Swami about what happened, and he replied that he said nothing of special interest, but gave little or no encouragement to the revolutionary views entertained by its chief members, though he “admitted the need for social reforms”, such as the removal of untouchability, the restoration and redistribution of the caste system so as to recover its ancient basis, etc.

Before I pass on, I must go back and narrate some incidents of the 8th February. I have the dates, and will try to preserve the chronological order of the facts, so far as I can rely on my memory of them. At about noon. Prof. P. Lakshmi Narasu — whom I have always esteemed as a gentleman of great learning and high character — came to the Castle, accompanied by the late Mr. N.K. Ramaswami Iyer. Mr. Lakshmi Narasu was a student of science and an avowed Buddhist, but I did not know who his companion was. The latter gentleman I learnt was the publisher, and the former the editor and the leading (or even the sole) contributor to a journal which was appearing somewhat irregularly and abandoned after a few issues had been published, called The Awakener of India. It was so named in order to deny (or dispute) the impression or implication conveyed by the title of another journal, a monthly, which had been started at Madras some time previously with the support or at the suggestion of the Swami, viz The Awakened India (or Prabuddha Bharata which was later on transferred to the Advaita Ashrama established by the Swami at Almora and is still published from there. These two visitors of the Swami were evidently of opinion that his mission and labours in America and the propaganda work started in Madras at his instance by the publication of the Brahmavadin and Prabuddha Bharata had yet had no effect in imparting a new impulse of activity, and India still remained sunk as deep as ever in her lethargic slumber of ages. Their own Awakener of India, however, was, on the whole, a bright and rousing performance while it lasted. I still remember some vitriolic contributions on what it called “Blavatskosophy”, containing uncompromising attacks on the creed of Theosophy as formulated by M. Blavatsky in her writings. On entering the side-room upstairs, I saw the Swami’s two visitors and others seated, and the Swami in front of them but close to one of the walls, though not leaning against it and sitting in his usual vyakhyasana, posture appropriate to an expounder of the shastras (scriptures). Mr. Lakshmi Narasu sat calm and silent like one confident of his own invincible position of strength. As I entered the room, his companion, whom we all knew well during his subsequent career, was saying, “We want, Swami, to have a free talk on various problems of philosophy and religion, especially on the Vedanta to which we have strong objections. When will you be able to find the time for us?” I look my seat, when the Swami called me to his side. Soon he said, with his usual smile lightening up his face. “Here is my friend, Sundararaman; he has been a Vedantist all his life, and he will meet all your arguments. You can refer to him.” This greatly enraged N.K. Ramaswami Iyer who turned at me with eyes betokening scorn, if not contempt, and then turned once more to the Swami, “We have come here to meet you, and not any other person.”The Swami did not reply, of course. Meanwhile, other persons and topics turned up. The Swami remained where he was for some time longer. I left the room, and do not know what passed afterwards there.

In the afternoon of the same day, the Swami, after a short nap-was seated in the back room upstairs in the Castle Kernan and I found him in one of those moods of sweet serenity when his face assumed the air both of a child and an angel from heaven, an appearance with which I had become familiar at Trivandrum and whose fascination was irresistible to all who had the fortune to meet and converse with him on such occasions or moments. I have just mentioned the Swami’s afternoon nap, and I will now say what used to happen on such occasions. He was always having visitors about him and sat listening or speaking to them. Suddenly his eyes became still, though remaining open, and he seemed not to listen or even to be conscious of what was passing about him. When once more he became aware of the scene, he seemed as if he had been utterly insensible to it. He had been neither asleep nor awake. On one of such occasions during these nine days at the Castle, I asked the Swami what sort of mood it was. He only answered, “I can’t say what.” I did not wish to press the matter. I do not know if it was not a case of voluntary retirement for the nonce into his inner self as a sort of escape from the weariness of the busy scene and life about him. Some may think that it was simply a state of drowsiness preliminary to the regular slumber which the Swami fell into later. But I who have seen him both while getting into, and getting out of, this condition, and remember, too, how long he remained in a sitting posture and how peculiar his eyes appeared while they remained fixed and without the least sign of movement, cannot help saying that he seemed to me like one who for a while had left his physical tenement and fleeted away to another state of existence, something like what is described in one of the many strange episodes narrated in the Vasishtha-Maharamayana.

Later in the same afternoon, at about 4 p.m., there came a deputation to the Swami from Tiruppattur in the Salem District, a place now transferred lo the North Arcot District. The Swami was, I think, seated in the same room as before. The deputation consisted of five or six persons, all Shaivites. There was no Brahmin among them. This would be easily understood when one knows that they seemed — at least to me — to have been prepared and sent on to meet the Swami by the then District Munsiff of the place, who was later on in the same year to become the founder and editor of the Siddhanta-Deepika, now for some years defunct, and also the founder and organizer of the movement known as the “Shaiva-Siddhanta-Mahasabha”, which continues still to hold a peripatetic annual gathering and has also given the Inspiration for many local Shaiva Sabhas and their activities and annual festive gatherings. Mr. Nallaswami Piliai was well known to me and even very friendly. Though he was a strong advocate of the Shaiva cult and siddhanta, he wanted to liberalize it and propagate its tenets so as to make it acceptable to all, not only in India, but all over the world. He seemed to me — and I still think so — to have been fired by the example of the Swami and his activities and triumphal progress in America, England, India, and elsewhere. He was anxious to maintain the traditions of Shaivism, and to include the Brahmins, too, among the believers and brethren of the Shaiva faith. As the Swami was an Advaitin, the deputation from Tiruppatur was, perhaps, expressly prepared and sent to beard the lion in his den and to tackle him on some fundamental points of Advaita doctrine. The head of the deputation had a whole sheet filled with questions, and he told the Swami that he wanted answers. The Swami nodded assent, and wanted him to begin. The first question was, “How does the Unmanifested become the manifested?” The Swami’s reply came on at once without a moment’s hesitation, but it fell, too, like thunder from the blue vault of heaven, paralyzing its victims and stultifying their nervous system and its workings. The same question was put later at one of the Swami’s question meetings (in the shamiana put up for the purpose at Castle Kernan) by a young Madhva Brahmin who was then, I think, a college student and is now an active member of the Madras Corporation. He, too, got the same answer, couched in the same or similar terms, and with the same stunning and electrifying effect. The Swami’s reply was, “Questions of how, why, or wherefore relate to the manifested world, and not to the Unmanifested which is above all change and causation and therefore above all relation to the changing universe and our samsarika (transmigrating) life in it. The question, therefore, is not one which can be reasonably put. Put a proper question — a more rational question — and I will answer. “The reply brought about an impasse, and his interlocutors felt that they were face to face with one who could meet and solve philosophic puzzles and queries of all kinds, a master before whom they must need bow in humility and meekness rather than launch forth in a game of dialectics. They seemed at once to have forgotten their carefully prepared and transcribed scheme and synopsis of questions in the manuscript they had brought, and suddenly, felt the wand of the magician in their front, and his enchantment was stealing over their minds and hearts with its occult power and overpowering grasp. The Swami at once realized the situation. Then followed a scene which it is not possible adequately to depict. This past master of the arts and weapons of Indian dialectics, this lion of the Vedanta with his conquering air and roar, the impetuous and rolling thunder of his voice, and his lower jaw symbolizing, as he once told me himself, his “combative temperament”, all on a sudden became transformed into what seemed a long-lost comrade of one’s youth or a tenderly-loved brother restored after a long separation and whole-heartedly interested in all that concerned one’s welfare. The Swami began to address them in a strain and in tones captivating all his listeners and all who were present. He spoke somewhat as follows: The best way to serve and seek God is to serve the needy, to feed the hungry, to console the stricken, to help the fallen and friendless, to attend upon and serve those who are ill and require service, and so on and on. The deputation kept listening while the Swami’s heart went out to them in a fervour of passionate exhortation to serve their fellow-men. It seemed as if after all they had met the one messenger of joy and peace from heaven for whom they had been searching in vain, one in whom there was no doubt or equivocation, a master who had searched their hearts and finding the void in them, had supplied the pabulum they needed, had taught them the central truth of life and of deliverance from its troubles. The shades of evening fell, they offered their homage at the feet of the saint; and as they took their departure, their countenances showed traces of a new light having touched their hearts and given them a new impulse to life and work.

We now come on to the day of his second Madras lecture. That morning I met the Swami at the house of Dr. Subrahmanya Iyer in the Luz Church Road at the latter’s special invitation. We met in the room upstairs, and the Swami explained to us his plans for a vast religious reformation and revival in India which would serve to bring Hindus, Christians, Mohammedans, Buddhists, and all under a common flag of brotherly union and serve as a star of hope and harmony, and a ceaseless incentive to the striving by men of all creeds and colours after a common goal of national aspiration. He wanted a new sort and style of temple with a hall in the front containing statues of the sages and prophets of all great religions, and behind it an inner precinct containing a pillar with the letter (or letters) Om inscribed on it and underneath the open sky. Nothing else worth chronicling occurred here, except that the kind host had got ready for the Swami a lot of sweet laddus and other sweet and well-spiced preparations of which he partook but in name. There was also the inevitable coffee which the Swami barely tasted. The Swami was, perhaps, never a good eater, at least was not one such, to my knowledge. When he stayed with me at Trivandrum, he used to take but one light meal in the daytime, and only a little milk at night. At the Castle itself, in course of the day, I saw nothing noteworthy. There was the usual stream of visitors steadily flowing, and among them also the usual flow of lady-visitors of high family status come to worship at the Swami’s feet and receive his blessing. There was one young man from Coimbatore who had read the Swami’s lectures on raja-yoga, published by Longmans, and had tried to practise yoga according to the instructions conveyed therein. He related his experiences, and among them he mentioned that he felt that his body was growing lighter and lighter. He also informed the Swami that some of his friends, and especially Pandits, had warned him of the danger and even certainty of becoming insane, if he persisted in his yogic practices without seeking a practical instructor to correct or enlighten him wherever he went wrong or had a doubt as to the next step in his course of yoga. The Swami told him not to give ear to these men, but to persist in his resolve to reach the goal of samadhi. Each step he won would lead him onward and enable him to overcome obstacles. There was no danger at all anywhere and he was always ready to help him whenever he needed help. The young man was quite satisfied and left for his native place. He did not seem in the least interested by the Swami’s career as a prophet of Vedantism in the West or in India at the time he met him in the Castle.

In the evening the Swami delivered his second lecture on “The Sages of India”. The Victoria Hall was crowded to its utmost capacity. The one exceptional feature of this day’s gathering was that the editor of the Madras Mail, the late Mr. H. Beauchamp, was present on the platform. No other European in Madras was present at any of the Swami’s lectures or meetings. But he rose and left in the middle of the Swami’s address. I noticed, but it might have been a mere accident, that, just as Mr. Beauchamp was leaving the Swami was saying of Shri Krishna the following, after quoting a well-known verse of the Gopika-Gita: “One kiss of those divine lips, and all sorrow vanishes and the thirst for Thee increases for ever,” etc. This was a free rendering of the verse quoted. I trust that Mr. Beauchamp’s British sense of social propriety was not wounded, and the Swami’s utterances regarding Shri Krishna was not the direct cause of his leaving the meeting….

On Friday, the 12th of February, I met the Swami twice. In the morning, the shamiana at the Castle was full to overflowing and bubbling with enthusiasm when the Swami arrived and took his seat on the platform. We had read glowing accounts of the manner in which he had replied to questions put to him in America, how his replies came like “flashes of lightning” and revealed to his audiences the extraordinary force of his intellect and his grasp of the varieties of life and the universe, how his retorts to those who attempted to land him in a deadlock or discomfiture carried confusion into the ranks of his opponents or detractors! Here was the opportunity for all to witness his dialectical sword-play and his sympathetic response to honest inquiry, and he had a large and admiring audience before him. He rose to the occasion, but I regret that my memory avails me not, and most or all of what happened is obliterated and gone out of my mind altogether. There was a young European lady of high intelligence and attractive appearance and demeanour who put various questions on topics of Vedanta: What is realization of the atman? What is maya What is the relation of the one existence to the universe? and so on. The Swami’s resources of knowledge and argument were all brought out in full to the delight and enlightenment of the lady and the entire audience. She expressed her intense gratification and gratitude to the Swami. and told him that she would be leaving for London in a few days to resume her social work among the dwellers in its slums and how great a privilege it would be to her if she could ever meet him again, but doubted much whether it would be vouchsafed to her. The Swami replied that she might rest assured as to that, as he intended to go back to London after taking some rest and starting the Shri Ramakrishna Mission here. The Swami rose from his seat and advanced a few steps to see that way was made for her to leave the meeting, and remained standing till she bowed and retired. In the afternoon, she came back, I was told, with her father who was engaged in Christian missionary work in Madras, and sought and obtained for him an interview which lasted nearly an hour. When I saw the Swami after his visitors had departed, I asked him how he found the strength and stamina needed for this incessant activity, and he gave me the following reply full of significance to those who can appreciate it: “Spiritual work never tires in India.” I have already referred above to the young Madhva student who put a question, the same as stood first in the long array with which the members of the deputation from Tiruppattur had hoped to confound and baffle the Swami. The whilom young questioner of the Swami has now, I believe, developed into an ardent and public-spirited citizen of Madras and is active among its city-fathers who form the Corporation Assembly. I hope he will not misunderstand me if ever these pages or lines happen to attract his notice. The Swami’s answer was given in the very words already quoted by me, of course so far as I remember them at this distance of time. The terms of the reply confounded him somewhat, as they did almost every one to whom I had seen them addressed or have myself addressed them sometimes since after these meetings and interviews of mine with the Swami. The point raised is one Fundamental to the Vedanta and is perhaps met somewhat differently therein; but the Swami’s manner of meeting it is quite his own, though implied in the language of the great bhashyakara (commentator), Shri Shankaracharya. As I have earlier given the exact terms of the Swami’s reply, I shall not repeat. But the young man as he then was, who put the question felt somewhat stunned and confused for the nonce, and replied, “What, Sir?” The audience murmured somewhat when he used the term, “Sir”, in addressing the Swami. But the incident closed at that point, so far as I can recollect it now. Another interesting event then occurred. A Vaishnava Pandit spoke to the Swami in Sanskrit and raised some knotty point in the Vedanta for discussion. As at that time, I had not studied Sanskrit, I was not in a position to know what it exactly was, and I can now say nothing of it. The Swami patiently heard the Pandit, but then began addressing the audience in English. He said he did not care to waste his time in mere fruitless wranglings on doctrinal details which had no practical value in life. The Pandit then asked the Swami to tell him in precise language whether he was an Advaitin or a Dvaitin. The Swami replied again, in English and in a tone and voice still ringing in my ears.”Tell the Pandit that, so long as I have this body, I am a Dvaitin, but not afterwards. This incarnation of mine is to help to put an end to these useless and mischievous squabbles and puzzles which only serve to distract the mind and make men weary of life and even turn them into sceptics and atheists.” The Pandit then said in Tamil. “The Swami’s statement is really an avowal that he is an Advaitin.” The Swami rejoined, “Let it be so”. The matter then dropped.

Yet another incident at this meeting, and it has a personal interest for me. I have mentioned the name of the late Mr. R.V. Srinivasa Iyer, secretary to the Board of Revenue, whom I accompanied to the Egmore railway station on the day the Swami arrived. Once we were conversing about the Swami and his career and ministry among men in the West and here in India after his return from America. Mr. Srinivasa Iyer said that, so long as no one remembered what occured in previous births, no relation of cause and effect could be discovered between what then occurred and one’s present experiences of life. What then was the profit to be gained by the teachings of the Vedanta regarding liberation and the means to it? So long as there is no proof of karma (result of past works) and of reincarnation as its fruit, one can rest content with learning or endeavouring how to get on here, and there the matter ends. The Vedanta has no practical value, and has only a speculative interest for students of philosophy and metaphysics. He wanted me to put a question or two to the Swami and obtain his reply. The questions were as follows, and I give also the Swami’s replies.

Q. 1. So long as we have no memory of previous births, how can the doctrines of karma, and reincarnation command assent or have a practical bearing and significance in life? How can they be effective as an impulse to purification in thought and act and thereby lead to the attempt to realize the atman and gain liberation from samsara (worldly existence)?

A. Even in this life we have no continuous memory of events, and still we act as if they are related as cause and effect and influence our life and fortunes. Why not we act similarly in regard to the relation between the events of the past and present lives, and follow the injunctions of the Veda and of our guru in regard to the means of liberation from samsara and its troubles past and present?

Q. 2. In this life, we have the continuing consciousness of our personal identity as we pass through the various stages and events of our life. We have no such consciousness of personal identity, persisting in relation to our past and present births.

A. We can, by going through certain well-recognized processes, gain such a consciousness of the persistence of our personality in different births. Why don’t you try?

This was in substance what I had myself told Mr. Srinivasa Iyer from my study of the Swami’s lectures and writings in the West and of translations of Indian works in English. So, I was quite satisfied. Some of the people whom I met after the meeting was over expressed the opinion that the Swami had not attempted to meet the question raised in a serious manner and he only fenced about and parried what was a home-thrust. I replied that I got exactly the answers I had expected. The Vedanta was a practical religion, and no mere dialectics. When I met Mr. Srinivasa Iyer later, and told him all, he told me that he was sure that he had raised the one question which needed an answer, and that no real reply had been given. It was no answer to say that our course of life must be changed so long as no attempt was made to carry conviction by argument and instruction. The practical Vedantin knows better, and there we let the matter rest.

I again met the Swami in the central hall upstairs, at about . 1 p.m. Visitors were coming in as usual. But nothing of interest occurred. At last, there turned up late Mr. K.P. Shankara Menon, the then High Court Vakil, Madras, and who later became a Judge of the Travancore High Court. He seemed to have known the Swami before. He and the Swami were seated together on a sofa. I look a seat in front and kept watching what was going on. The Swami said something about the absurd lengths to which the Malabar people carried their ideas of pollution and purification and especially their cries and groans to wain or scare away untouchables while passing on the roads and lanes. Suddenly, the Swami turned to the question of castes and marriages in Malabar, and said that the Nairs had every right to claim the status of Brahmins as for several centuries or even yugas, the Nambudiri Brahmins had lived in sambandham (relation) with their women. Manu-Smriti insisted on seven successive generations marrying Brahmins in order that non-Brahmins may secure Brahminical status by birth. The spirit of Manu’s ruling was fulfilled among the Nairs, for, even though there might be interruptions in the middle, there was a certainty that, on the whole, there must be at least seven times seven sambandhams, if the whole period of Malabar history and Malabar society were taken in consideration. Mr. Shankara Menon seemed to be much interested in the Swami’s proposal or suggestion, and even seemed to think the attempt feasible and that an effort might be made to see if it could be materialized. Just at this moment, Mr. (now Sir) C. Shankaran Nair — even then famous as a Madras lawyer and political leader — entered the hall, approached the Swami, and received a hearty welcome. He was led to a seat on the sofa, Mr. Shankara Menon having, like myself, taken a chair. Mr. Shankaran Nair told the Swami that he had called at his residence in London when he was last there, but left on learning that he was not at home. The Swami was about to say something when Mr. Shankara Menon, looking at Mr. Shankaran Nair, broke forth suddenly as follows: “The Swami thinks that we, Nairs, must all claim to be Brahmins, and gives a reason based on the Manu-Smriti where the status of a Brahmin is said to have been earned by a Shudra who had been born to seven generations of Brahmin fathers in succession.” Mr. Shankaran Nair understood the situation in the twinkling of an eye. but was clearly in no mood for entering into a discussion on so delicate a matter, especially when, as it seemed to me, he found a stranger and Brahmin like myself was present and the whole discussion might generate mixed feelings and would certainly be long remembered and even recorded at some future time, even as it is being done so far as it had proceeded before Mr. Shankaran Nair appeared on the scene. Mr. Shankaran Nair dropped the topic altogether, being too sober and shrewd a man not to know that that was neither the place nor the occasion for setting a programme, or even raising a discussion regarding a social revolution of far-reaching import and involving momentous and delicate issues, and cutting at the root of existing relations, social and marital, between men and women belonging to various strata of Malabar Hindu society. Mr. Shankaran Nair stayed but a few minutes longer, and then left accompanied by Mr. Shankara Menon….

The next day. Saturday the 13th of February, the Swami delivered his lecture on “Vedanta in Indian life” at the Pacheyappa’s Hall. The Hall was packed to its utmost capacity. I was on the platform, and just by my side sat Mr. G. Subrahmanya Iyer, the later editor of The Hindu. At one point of his address the Swami, addressing the students assembled before him, said something to the following effect: Don’t be constantly crying out, Gita, Gita, Gita. The Gita teachings cannot be truly understood or put into practice by those who. like you, are weak in frame and whose vigour is decaying prematurely by the cramming of text-books for examinations. Go and play football, and develop your biceps muscles, and get strong, and you will then be fit to understand the Gita teachings. Here was the opportunity for Mr. G. Subrahmanya Iyer, and he exclaimed in Tamil to those who were near him, even while the Swami was on his legs, “I have said the same thing often, but none would give ear. The Swami says it now, and you all cheer.”

Mr. G. Subrahmanya Iyer had once been a very orthodox Hindu, and rigidly addicted to Vedic rituals and sadacharas (observances). He changed to the opposite extreme of a social revolutionary after the virgin-widowhood of his young daughter had given him a rude and painful shock and made him realize the penalties and pains inevitably associated with Hindu orthodoxy which men had long borne and still do bear with invincible strength and serenity of heart, simply because they believe that the shruti and smriti impose them on the faithful in order to qualify them for and raise them ultimately to the spiritual blessing and innermost joy of supreme liberation from samsara. Mr. Subrahmanya Iyer was in a mood of ecstasy as the Swami went on with his deliverances in this occasion on the topics of “strength” and “fearlessness”, and said that without them no spiritual perfection was possible. His words came on the audience with telling effect. “Believe”, he said, “that you are not the body or mind, but the soul. the atman; and that is the first step to the gaining of strength and to uphold and realize the teaching of the Upanishads,” He also dwelt at length on the organismal basis and value of caste. Caste was a natural order, the only natural way of solving the problem of life…. .Mr. G. Subrahmanya Iyer’s enthusiasm and ecstasies had somewhat cooled when the Swami spoke on caste and said, too, that caste was not only found in India, but, everywhere, and in every country he had seen.

On Sunday, 14th of February, the Swami delivered his fourth and last lecture on the “Future of India”. I never saw a more crowded scene or a more enthusiastic audience. The Swami’s oratory was at its best. He seemed like a lion, traversing the platform to and fro. The roar of his voice reverberated everywhere, and with telling effect. One remarkable utterance I can never forget, and it showed the Swami’s powers of foresight and omniscience. Peace, religion, language, government — all together make a nation; but some one of these is the basis and the rest we build on that one. Religion is the keynote of Indian life and Indian nationality can be built on that basis….

The next day, Monday the 15th of February, the Swami left for Calcutta by steamer. Several of his admirers and followers and personal friends accompanied him in order to lake leave when the steamer sailed. Mr. Tilak had invited the Swami to Poona, and he first thought of going there. But he wanted rest, and was ever pining for the Himalayan atmosphere. At the beach, several merchants of the caste of Arya-Vaishyas (known as Komattis) met him and presented a formal address of thanksgiving to him for his services to the holy motherland. The Hon. Mr. Subba Rao of Rajahmundry, presented the address to the Swami on their behalf. The Swami simply bowed his acknowledgement, and made kind inquiries of them. Several boarded the steamer, and remained with the Swami to the last. I was one of them. and the pain of having to part from this heaven-sent mahapurusha (great soul) was felt by each and all of us, who kept crowding about him. I begged of the Swami the favour of a moment’s interview apart, and he came. We walked a few steps, and then I asked and obtained permission to put two questions. First, “Swamiji, tell me, if indeed, you have done lasting good by your mission to so materialistic a people as the Americans and others in the West.” He replied. “Not much, I hope that here and there I have sown a seed which in time might grow and benefit some at least.” The second query was, “When shall we see you again, and on your mission work in South India?” He replied, “Have no doubt about that, I shall take some rest in the Himalayan region, and then burst on the country everywhere like an avalanche.” This was not to be, and I never saw the Swami again. I had looked for the last time on his fathomless and compelling eyes, and at the prophetic fire and glow in the face of him whom I consider the greatest man and teacher of the age, a true mahapurusha and messenger from the heaven to the people of India and to all mankind. Glory to Swami Vivekananda for ever and ever!

(Vedanta Kesari, January-February 1923)

REMINISCENCES OF SWAMI VIVEKANANDA
K. S. RAMASWAMI SASTRI

IT was given to me to meet Swami Vivekananda and spend many days with him at Trivandrum towards the close of 1892 before he went to Chicago to represent Hinduism at the Parliament of Religions there in September 1893 and also at Madras after he returned from Chicago and landed at Colombo on 15th January 1897 and reached Madras a few days later. My entire life was transformed by those memorable and holy contacts. I shall briefly record my impressions here to the best of my memory….

From Cochin he came to Trivandrum where my father (Prof. K. Sundararama Iyer) and I were at that time. He brought with him a letter of introduction from Cochin to my father at Trivandrum. My father was then the tutor to Prince Martanda Varma of Travancore at Trivandrum. My father’s services had been lent by the Madras Government to the Travancore Government. I passed my Matriculation in 1892 and joined the Maharaja’s College, Trivandrum, for the Intermediate class. It was at this juncture, towards the end of 1892, that fate threw me into Swamiji’s holy company.

Swamiji was then unknown to fame but felt a great urge to spread Hinduism and spirituality all over the world, One morning while I was in my house he came unexpectedly. I found a person with a beaming face and a tall, commanding figure. He had an orange-coloured turban on his head and wore a flowing orange-coloured coat which reached down to his feet and round which he wore a girdle at the waist.

Swamiji asked me, “Is Professor Sundararaman here? I have brought a letter to be delivered to him.” His voice was rich and full and sounded like a bell. Well does Romaini Rolland say about the voice, “He had a beautiful voice like a violoncello, grave without violent contrasts, but with deep vibrations that filled both hall and hearts. Once his audience was held he could make it sink to an intense piano piercing his hearers to the soul.” I looked up and saw him and somehow in my boyishness and innocence (I was only fourteen years old at that time) I felt that he was a Maharaja. I took the letter which he gave and ran up to my father who was upstairs and told him, “A Maharaja has come and is waiting below. He gave this letter to be given to you.” My father laughed and said, “Ramaswami! What a naive simple soul you are! Maharajas will not come to houses like ours.” I replied, “Please come. I have no doubt that he is a Maharaja.” My father came down, saluted Swamiji, and took him upstairs. After a pretty long conversation with Swamiji, my father came down and said to me, “He is no doubt a Maharaja, but not a king over a small extent or area of territory. He is a king of the boundless and supreme domain of the soul.”

Swamiji stayed in our house for nine days at that time. My father has described his impressions of that period in an article entitled “My first Navaratri with Swami Vivekananda”. I shall set down here briefly the indelible impression left on my mind by Swamiji’s words to me during that memorable visit of his to our house at Trivandrum.

One morning as I was reading Kalidasa’s Kumarasambhavam, which was one of my text-books in Sanskrit. Swamiji came in. He asked, “What is that book you are studying?” I replied, “It is Kumarasambhavam, Canto I.” He asked, “Can you repeat the great poet’s description of the Himalayas?” I repeated, in the usual musical mode current in South India, the beautiful and sonorous verses which constitute Kalidasa’s description of the Himalayas. Swamiji smiled and looked pleased. He said. “Do you know that I am coming after a long stay amidst the sublimity of the Himalayan scenes and sights?” I felt elated and interested. He asked me to repeat again the opening stanza. I did so. He asked, “Do you know its meaning? Tell me.” I did so. He said, “That is good, but not enough.” He then repeated the stanza in his marvellous, musical, measured tones:

He said, “The important words in this verse are devatatma (ensouled by Divinity) and manadanda (measuring-rod). The poet implies and suggests that the Himalaya is not a mere wall accidentally constructed by nature. It is ensouled by Divinity and is the protector of India and her civilization not only from the chill icy blasts blowing from the arctic region but also from the deadly and destructive incursions of invaders. The Himalaya further protects India by sending the great rivers Sindhu, Ganga, and Brahmaputra perennially fed by melted ice irrespective of the monsoon rains. Manadanda implies that the poet affirms that the Indian civilization is the best of all human civilizations and forms the standard by which all the other human civilizations, past, present, and future, must be tested. Such was the poet’s lofty conception of patriotism.” I felt thrilled by his words. I treasure them even to this day, and they shine in my heart even now with an undimmed and undiminished splendour.

On another of the nine days, he said to me and my father, “Practical patriotism means not a mere sentiment or even emotion of love of the motherland but a passion to serve our fellow-countrymen. I have gone all over India on foot and have seen with my own eyes the ignorance, misery, and squalor of our people. My whole soul is afire and I am burning with a fierce desire to change such evil conditions. Let no one talk of karma. If it was their karma to suffer; it is our karma to relieve the suffering. If you want to find God, serve Man. To reach Narayana you must serve the daridranarayanas — the starving millions of India.” That was the root from which came the great tree of the Ramakrishna Mission later on. His words melted our hearts and kindled in our souls the flame of social service. Thus service was as dear to him as spirituality. In his later life, in a memorable letter (to Mary Hale, July 9th 1897.) he exclaimed, “May I be born again and again and suffer thousands of miseries so that I may worship the only God that exists, the only God I believe in, the sum total of all souls: and, above all, my God the wicked, my God the miserable, my God the poor of all races, of all species, is the special object of my worship.” We seem to hear in these passionate words the voice of Rantideva himself.

On yet another day Swamiji told me, “You are still a voung boy. I hope and wish that some day you will reverentially study the Upanishads, the Brahma-Sutras, and the Bhagavad-Gita which are known as the prasthana-traya (the three supreme sources of Truth), as also the itihasas, the puranas, and the agamas. You will not find the like of all these anywhere else in the world. Man alone, out of all living beings, has a hunger in his heart to know the whence and whither, the whys and wherefores of things. There are four key words which you must remember, viz abhaya (fearlessness), ahimsa (non-injury), asanga (non-attachment), and ananda (bliss). These words really sum up the essence of all our sacred books. Remember them. Their implication will become clear to you later on,” I was too young then to grasp all these ideas in full. But I gladly laid those lessons to my heart and have tried all my life since then to learn them in their fullness.

During the nine days (in 1892) when Swamiji was in our house, I was near him often as he was gracious to me and also because something in him, like a magnet, drew me towards him. My father had many a discussion with Swamiji on recondite questions of philosophy and religion which were above and beyond my comprehension. But Swamiji’s eyes were so magnetic — though full of kindness and love, his voice had such an unusual combination of sweetness and strength, and his gait was so majestic, that it was a great joy to me to be in his presence and bask in the sunshine of his smiles. He told me many other things, briefly, now and then. But at this distance of time — over sixty years since that event — the memorable utterances narrated above are the ones which stand out most prominently from among the memory-pictures of the past….

…Swamiji reached Madras in the beginning of February 1897. Remain Rolland’s description of the grand public reception accorded to Swamiji at Madras is perfectly accurate and I can vouch for it as I myself was an eyewitness. He says, “Madras had been expecting him for weeks in a kind of passionate delirium. She erected for him seventeen triumphal arches, presented him with twenty-four Addresses in various languages of Hindusthan, and suspended her whole public life at his coming — nine days of roaring fetes.

“He replied to the frenzied expectancy of the people by his Message to India, a conch sounding the resurrection of the land of Rama, of Shiva, of Krishna, and calling the heroic Spirit, the immortal atman, to march to war. He was a general, explaining his ‘Plan of Campaign’ and calling his people to rise en masse.”

I was one of the delirious hearers and admirers of Swamiji. I had by that time passed the B.A. Degree examination from the Kumbakonam College and had joined the Law College at Madras. At that time studies in the Law College were not heavy, the classes being held for two hours every evening, between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m., in the premises of the Presidency College, Madras. The Law students and the Medicos have always been a keen and valiant group. I and my friends went to the railway station at Egmore on the day Swami Vivekananda was expected to reach Madras. A carriage, to which two horses had been yoked, was kept waiting for the Swami. He was to be taken in procession to the Castle Kernan on the beach, where Swamiji stayed for nine days. We saw at the station a sea of human faces. Shouts of “Jai” rent the air when the train carrying Swamiji was sighted. He got down from the train and made his way slowly to the carriage. When the procession had wended its way for some time, I and some others insisted on unyoking the horses and dragging the carriage ourselves. The horses were unharnessed, and many of us started pulling Swamiji’s carriage, and, walking slowly, we covered a long distance before reaching the destination. We were perfectly happy as we had achieved our hearts’ desire. To us Swami Vivekananda was “India incarnate” and God’s holy messenger.

During all the nine days of his stay at Madras I was with Swamiji for most of the time. Throughout all the days there was a never-ending stream of visitors. Many silently sat near him and listened to his words. Some discussed momentous matters with him. A few intimate persons, among whom were some of Swamiji’s friends and admirers, discussed with him his plans for future Vedanta work in South India. I was constantly with Swamiji, who had recognized me and recalled his visit to our house at Trivandrum in 1892. I can never forget his eyes which brightened up with a new light and his mobile lips which shone with a divine smile whenever he saw me sitting just in from of him. My father, Professor K. Sundararama Iyer, was also in Madras at that time and met Swamiji several times. He has left on record his memories of Swamiji, during the latter’s stay for nine days at Madras, in a lengthy article entitled “My second Navaratri with Swamiji”.

The difference that I noticed between Vivekananda of 1892 and Vivekananda of 1897 was what struck me most. In 1892 he looked like one who had a tryst with destiny and was not quite sure when or where or how he was to keep that tryst. But in 1897 he looked like one who had kept that tryst with destiny, who clearly knew his mission, and who was confident about its fulfilment. He walked with steady and unfaltering steps and went along his predestined path, issuing commands and being sure of loyal obedience.

One other experience which I had in 1897 was my hearing the songs sung by Swami Vivekananda. That he had a musical voice was already experienced by me in 1892. That his songs had the power of transporting Shri Rarnakrishna Paramahamsa into ecstasy became known to me much later only. During the nine days of his stay at Castle Kernan we heard him sing a few of the Ashtapadi songs of Jayadeva, from the famous devotional lyric poem Gita-Govinda. The mode of singing these lyrics in Bengal was evidently different from that adopted in South India. Vivekananda’s melodious voice left a lasting impression on my mind.

One evening a somewhat curious and unusual incident took place. An orthodox Pandit, who was one among the visitors, suddenly got up and asked Swamiji a direct and unexpected question in Sanskrit, “I learn that you are not a Brahmin and that according to the shastras (scriptures) you have no right to take to sannyasa. How then does it happen that you have donned ochre-coloured robes and entered into the holy order of sannyasins?” Not wishing to discuss at length with such a person, Swami Vivekananda cut short the Pandit’s argument by pointedly saying, “I belong to the line of Chitragupta to whom every Brahmin prays during his sandhya worship. So, if Brahmins are entitled to sannyasa, much more so am I entitled.” Swamiji then turned the tables on the questioner by telling him, “In your Sanskrit question there was an unpardonable mispronunciation. Panini denounces such mispronunciation — (one should not degrade or mispronounce words). So you have no right to carry on ihis debate.” The Pandit was nonplussed and went away, especially when he understood that the audience revered Swamiji and resented the irrelevant question ….

Swami Vivekananda’s first public lecture in Madras was on “My plan of campaign” and made a profound and indelible impression on me …. I felt thrilled to the innermost core of my being by his words and my eyes were wet with tears. Many others who heard the speech were in the aame predicament. Then and there some of us look a vow to do what we could to relieve the ignorance, poverty, and misery of the masses of India to the extent possible for each one of us.

I attended also Swamiji’s lecture (at Madras) on “Vedanta in its application to Indian life”….

Yet another lecture by Swamiji was on “The Sages of India”. It also made a deep impression on my mind.

In conclusion, I wish to refer to the unique experience which I had in May 1952. I was then on a pilgrimage to holy places in North India. It was my privilege and happiness to spend some hours in the Ramakrishna Math at Belur, near Calcutta. The kind Swami who took me round the Belur Math led me eventually into the room where Swami Vivekananda spent his last days. Ordinarily no visitors are allowed inside the room. But the Swami who took me there said: “In your case we gladly made an exception as you contacted Swamiji early in your life and have been like your honoured father, an admirer and follower of the Ramakrishna Mission all your life.” I entered the holy room with deep devotion and bated breath. It overlooks the river Ganga (Hooghly). The room throbs with an atmosphere that is sacred, solemn, and serene. I drank with brimming eyes the beauty of the grand view from the room and deeply felt the holiness of the place. I sat there in meditation for a while, thinking of Swami Vivekananda and of his peerless services to India, to Hinduism, and to the cause of spirituality all over the world. While inside that room where Swami Vivekananda once lived, I felt that the divine flame of spiritual knowledge (jnana-dipa, as referred to by Shri Krishna in the Gita), was lighted in my heart.

(Prabuddha Bharata, September & October 1953)

REMINISCENCES OF SWAMI VIVEKANANDA
A. SRINIVASA PAI

IN the year 1893 while I was a student reading in the Presidency College, Madras, I had the good fortune of coming into personal contact with Swami Vivekananda.1 It was shortly before he left for America to attend the Parliament of Religions at Chicago. He was then unknown to fame but his unique personality attracted a considerable number of people — a good proportion among them being students — to his informal talks. I do not recollect seeing at these meetings any of the leaders of Hindu society in Madras then, but there were students, teachers, second grade officials and vakils. It was after the Swami returned from America in 1897 with a name and a world-wide fame that the leaders and high grade officials and people used to flock in hundreds to listen to his talks and lectures. He was residing then (1893) with Mr. Bhattacharya (a Bengali gentleman, then Deputy Accountant General at Madras) in a house situated at a short distance from the southern end of the Marina. I used to go to this house in the evenings with some fellow students to listen to the Swami. We used to squat in the orthodox fashion very near the Swami on carpets spread on the floor. Vivekananda would smoke while talking. His talk touched on a large variety of subjects. And it was delightful to listen to him.

In those days a knowledge of the ancient Hindu philosophy and doctrines was far less spread among the English-educated Hindus in Madras than now; and there were also far fewer popular writings on the subject. Our great gods in those days were Mill, Herbert Spencer, Huxley, Leslie Stephen, and Haekel. To us theirs was the last word in philosophy, politics, and sociology. And so, Vivekananda’s expositions — logical and trenchant as they were — came as wonderful surprises. We had however, no proper grounding to appreciate his expositions at their true worth. And the prejudices of some of us students in favour of the above-named European writers were hard to break through.

Once Vivekananda explained to us how the modern doctrine of evolution had been anticipated by our sage Kapila. On another occasion speaking of a Personal God and Impersonal God, he tried to show how the position of an agnostic or even atheist was really not one of negation, as they had to believe in continuity — a continuous Principle running through all eternity. The position of the orthodox Christians, he said, was illogical and untenable. An arbitrary and sudden creation of a soul and then its eternal damnation or salvation — it was like “a stick with only one end.”

There was plenty of talk on lighter subjects. His own college days and the pranks that he and his fellow students played on some of their professors; how once they struck work and “went away and smoked”. The stories of “the marvellous” which he told us I distinctly remember. One of these was of a blind man whose memory and sense of hearing were exceptionally acute. When the Swami was quite a young boy, this blind man had once heard him talk and sing. Years afterwards he came one night to a house where Vivekananda was staying. On hearing the Swami sing he at once recognized the voice and asked whether he was not the boy whom he had heard in such and such a year at such and such a place. This blind man while walking in the streets would clap his hands and listening to the sound would say, “Here on my right is a vacant space”, or “There on my left is tall building”, and so on. The other story was of a “magician”, a man (a Mussulman, if I recollect correctly) who had acquired certain siddhis or (so-called) supernatural powers. A European wanted to test his powers, and one evening they drove together in an open carriage of the European to a street in Calcutta. While they were driving the “magician” said to the European, “Now ask for anything you want and I shall give you”. The European thought for a moment and then said, “Give me a bottle of champagne”, knowing that no such thing was in the carriage or anywhere near at hand. The “magician” stretched out his arm clutched at something in the air and brought in a bottle of champagne. Then saying “Now look”, he waved his hand towards the right row of shops in the street and all the lights in that row were put out; while the lights in the opposite row were burning as before. Before the people in the street and shops could quite recover from their surprise, he waved his hand again and the lights in the right row were relit.

I am reminded of another story he told us while on the subject of the rude and at times insulting behaviour of Europeans in India to “Natives”. Naturally, he spoke with much feeling on the subject as every self-respecting Indian would. Once, it seems, a solicitor in Calcutta was rude and insulting to an Indian barrister. The leading Indian clients and lawyers held a meeting and resolved to boycott that particular solicitor. “And from the next day”, said Vivekananda, with an expressive gesture tilting his thumb towards his lips, “the solicitor had to suck his thumb.”

The bare-headed photographs in the book “Swami Vivekananda’s Speeches and Writings”, published by Messrs G. A. Natesan & Co. give a good idea of the appearance of the Swami. But no photograph or description can give a correct idea of the power of his eyes. They were wonderful. Like the “Ancient Mariner” in Coleridge’s famous poem he “held you by the eye”. The voice too had an indefinable attraction. Though not ringing and silvery like Mrs. Beasant’s in her prime, more soft and pleasant like Mr, Norton’s it attracted you and held you. He could sing beautifully. One evening as we were sitting listening to him, a pretty little child — a daughter of Mr. Bhattacharya, I believe — toddled in. He took the child on his lap and sang a Punjabi song. He observed that the song was attributed to Guru Nanak and told us of its origin. One evening, at the time of arati, Nanak went to a temple. The Brahmin priests would not allow him to enter. So, he turned aside and sang this song in which he compares the sky to a silver plate, the stars to little lights — nirajans — in that plate used for arati, the perfumed evening breeze to incense, and so on, reminding us, students, of Moore’s poem which we had read in one of the School Text Books of the time, beginning with the lines:

“The Turf shall be my fragrant shrine,
My Temple, Lord, that arch of Thine.”

In person Vivekananda was not flabby like many of the Bengalis whom we see, but was sturdy and somewhat thick-set. The complexion was brown with a slight coppery hue.

In manners Vivekananda was natural, unaffected and unconventional. There was none of that solemn gravity, measured utterance, and even temper that we usually associate with a sage. At times his manners were somewhat Johnsonian and brusque when he wanted to put down one who had asked a silly question or a question intended to show off one’s knowledge. One hot morning (this was after he returned from America to Madras) at the end of a long sitting when many questions had been asked and answered, a somewhat conceited young man asked pompously, “What is the cause of misery in this world, Swami?” “Ignorance is the cause of misery”, blurted out Vivekananda and rose and closed the interview. On another occasion one in the audience pointed out to the Swami that the view expressed by the Swami on some point of philosophy differed from that of Shri Shankaracharya. “Well”, said the Swami, “Shankaracharya was a man, you are a man, and you can think for yourself.” An orthodox Pandit appears to have had an interview with the Swami and attempted to show off his learning. Speaking of that interview the Swami said. “The fellow who cannot pronounce jnana properly has the cheek to criticize my pronunciation of Sanskrit.”

On Vivekananda’s return to Madras from America in 1897, the public reception given to him was magnificent and the crowds which came to greet him were some of the largest. His first public lecture in Madras cannot be called a success as a lecture. But that was due to the overenthusiasm of the crowds, It was arranged for, I believe, in a big circus-tent, but even that was found insufficient to hold the crowds, and the Swami had to come outside and mount a carriage to address the huge concourse in the “Gita fashion” as he said. He strained his voice to the utmost, gesticulated, but it was all no good. The noise and disorder were great and the lecture had to be given up after a short time. The subsequent lecture in the Victoria Hall on “The Sages of India” was a grand success. It was a very impressive lecture marked by a flowing eloquence. When he came to that portion of the lecture which deals with rasa-krida or the love of Gopis to Shri Krishna and explained the true significance of that sublime love, the expression of his face and especially of his eyes was beatific and soul-stirring.

Informal talks in the mornings and answering of questions were arranged for in a pandal put up on the Marina, near the old Capper-House Hotel, somewhere near the site of the present premises of Queen Mary’s College. Now, the leaders of Hindu society in Madras, big officials and vakils and people in hundreds came, and we students found it hard to get near to the Swami. One morning a European lady (a Protestant missionary, I believe) came and spoke somewhat disparagingly of the enforced celibacy of a sannyasin’s life and of the harmful results of the starving of a noble instinct (noble, when rightly regulated). After a short psychological and philosophical explanation of the necessity of celibacy in a sannyasin (which perhaps was not quite appreciated or understood by the lady), he turned to her and said half-humorously. “In your country, madam, a bachelor is feared. But here you see they are worshipping me, a bachelor.”

Here I may mention that once the Swami in a communicative mood made a personal confession. “I am thirty years old now and have never known a woman,”

Once he said to a number of young students in the audience that it was their first duty to cultivate physical strength and health, “You may have the Gita in your left hand but have a football in your right.” He expressed on one occasion the view that it was the men who were physically weak that yielded to temptations easily, and that those with plenty of physical vigour and strength were far better able to resist temptations and exercise self-control than the former.

Once referring to himself he said. “There is an ustad under these robes” (ustad an expert gymnast or a teacher of gymnastics).

At this time (1897, after his return from America) Vivekananda was residing in Castle Kernan, the well-known house on the Marina. When I first went to Madras it was known as the Ice-House; then the late Mr. Biligiri Iyangar bought it as his house; and he named it Castle Kernan after Mr. Justice Kernan. There was a “Kernan-maze” in its compound which some of us students used to take pleasure in entering and getting lost.

In Castle Kernan during these memorable days some of us students were invited, and we ate with Vivekananda, The Swami’s appetite was great and he ate heartily. Once pointing humorously to a dish of ice-cream before him he said. “I can renounce everything excepting this. “At times baskets of fruits sent to him by friends from Bangalore used to arrive. As soon as they would arrive, they would be opened and the contents distributed among those present and the Swami also ate.

Sometimes in the early mornings Vivekananda would bathe in the sea opposite to Castle Kernan along with a number of students.

Informal talks were at times held in the rooms of the Triplicane Literary Society. The late Dewan Bahadur R. Raghunatha Rao and a number of other social reformers including my old Assistant Professor of history, the late Mr. A. Subba Rao (a sturdy social reformer and agnostic) used to attend. Some of the social reformers were snubbed by the Swami and their views and methods criticized. Once when Mr. A. Subba Rao spoke rather disparagingly of the thinking power and views of our old rishis, the Swami remarked that Mr. Subba Rao could have no idea of the power of intense meditation which the rishi had acquired through long self discipline, and added. “You will be burnt to ashes if you think for half a minute like them.”

When one evening the Swami was discoursing on “Faith in God” in the Triplicane Literary Society. Dewan Bahadur Raghunatha Rao broke in a solemn manner. “I have always preached that no nation, no race, no individual who did not believe in God ever became great.” At this some of the irreverent young students smiled in an amused manner.

He spoke of his guru Shri Ramakrishna and some of Shri Ramakrishna’s apparently mad actions undertaken with a view to killing the “self” in him, the significance of which many — especially in Europe and America — could not understand. With reference to ordinary American audiences he said. “If I had spoken of these acts to them, they would have thrown me and my guru into the nearest ditch.”

When the effect of religious beliefs (Hindu and Christian) on the masses came up for discussion. Vivekananda said. “If, like me, you had visited the slums of Europe and America and seen how near to brutes the inhabitants of those slums are, and then compared them with our masses in India, your doubts as to the effect of Hindu religious belief on the masses would have vanished.”

(Vedanta Kesari, May 1927)

REMINISCENCES OF SWAMI VIVEKANANDA
S. E. WALDO

WHEN Swami Vivekananda’s Madras disciples decided to raise a sum of money sufficient to send him to represent Hinduism at the World’s Fair at Chicago in 1893, they were in ignorance of the exact date of the opening of the Parliament of Religions. Consequently the Swami reached Chicago in the spring, several months before the time set for the delegates to meet. At first, he was much disturbed when he learnt how long he would have to wait, because his funds, none too extensive to start with, were running low. They had been greatly depleted by the bad management of his travelling companions to whom he had entrusted them. It became a problem to him how to maintain himself in a strange land until the time should come for him to fulfil his mission in America. He found his way to Boston and nearly resolved to return at once to India; but his charming personality soon won him friends, and his confidence returned.

He was most hospitably entertained in the family of a Professor of Harvard College, who persuaded him to adhere to his original plan to speak at the approaching Religious Congress.1 By the advice of this kind friend Swami Vivekananda returned to Chicago, and his brilliant success at the Parliament of Religions is still fresh in the minds of all who heard him there. His very first words in his melodious voice aroused a perfect storm of applause. It is doubtful if any one of the thousands who listened to those first eloquent utterances had the least idea that never before in his life had he stood before an audience. So ready was his speech, so excellent his mastery of English, so finished his language, so flashing his wit and repartee that every one supposed he was an experienced public speaker. Surely the spirit and power of his Master spoke through him that day!

After the close of the Parliament of Religions, Swami Vivekananda received many flattering offers to lecture in various parts of the United States. He was so desirous to send help to his fellow Sannyasins in India that he accepted an engagement with a Lecture Bureau and delivered many lectures in the Western States. He soon found, however, that he was utterly unsuited for such a career. Naturally, he could not speak to promiscuous audiences on the topics nearest to his heart, and the life of ceaseless change was too strenuous for a contemplative nature like his own. He was at this time a far different being from what he afterward developed into. He was dreamy and meditative, often so wrapped in his own thoughts as to be hardly conscious of his surroundings. The constant friction of alien thoughts, the endless questioning, the frequent sharp conflict of wits in this Western world awoke a different spirit, and he became as alert and wide awake as the world in which he found himself.

At great pecuniary sacrifice, the Swami severed his connection with the Lecture Bureau; but once more his own master. he turned his steps towards New York. A Chicago friend was instrumental in bringing him to this metropolis of the U.S., and he reached New York in the early part of 1894. His Western experiences had convinced him that there were many in America who would gladly learn of the ancient philosophy of India, and he hoped that in this city he would be able to come in contact with such inquiring minds.

He gave a few public lectures, but was not yet in a position to begin regular work, as he was a guest in the homes of his friends. In the summer of that year he went to New England, still as a visitor, and spent a week or two at Greenacre where Miss Farmer was inaugurating the “Greenacre Conferences”, which in later years became so widely known through the school of Comparative Religions conducted there by the late Dr. Lewis G. Janes, who was long the gifted and liberal-minded President of the Brooklyn Ethical Association.

From New England, Swami Vivekananda returned to New York in the autumn, and at a lecture he gave in the parlour of a friend he met Dr. Janes, who at once recognized the unusual character and attainments of the Swami and invited him to lecture before the Association in Brooklyn. The two men became warmly attached to each other and formed a friendship that lasted as long as they lived.

Swami Vivekananda lectured in Brooklyn for the first time on 30th December, 1894 and his success was immediate. A large and enthusiastic audience greeted his appearance at the Pouch Mansion, and a course of lectures there and at other places in Brooklyn soon followed. From this time his public work in America really began. He established himself in quarters of his own, where he held several classes a week and came into more intimate relations with his students. Earnest people flocked to hear him and to learn the ancient teachings of India on the all-embracing character of her philosophy that every soul must be saved, that all religions were true, being steps in the progress of man toward a higher and ever higher spiritual realization — and above all to hear the constant lessons of the Swami on a world-wide, universal religious toleration.

At this time the Swami was living very simply in New York; and his earliest classes were held in the small room he occupied, and in the beginning were attended by only three or four persons. They grew with astonishing rapidity, and, as the little room filled to overflowing, became very picturesque. The Swami himself always sat on the floor, and most of his audience likewise. The marble-topped dresser, the arms of the sofa, and even the corner washstand helped to furnish seats for the constantly increasing numbers. The door was left open, and the overflow filled the hall and sat on the stairs. And those first classes! How intensely interesting they were! Who that was privileged to attend them can ever forget them? The Swami so dignified yet so simple, so gravely earnest, so eloquent, and the close ranks of students, forgetting all inconveniences, hanging breathless on his every word!

It was a fit beginning for a movement that has since grown to such grand proportions. In this unpretentious way did Swami Vivekananda inaugurate the work of teaching Vedanta philosophy in New York. The Swami gave his services free as air. The rent was paid by voluntary subscriptions, and when these were found insufficient, Swami hired a hall and gave secular lectures on India and devoted the proceeds to the maintenance of the classes. He said that Hindu teachers, of religion felt it to be their duty to support their classes and the students too, if they were unable to care for themselves; and the teachers would willingly make any sacrifice they possibly could to assist a needy disciple.

The classes began in February 1895, and lasted until June. But long before that time, they had outgrown their small beginnings and had removed downstairs to occupy an entire parlour floor and extension. The classes were held nearly every morning and on several evenings in each week. Some Sunday lectures were also given, and there were “question” classes to help those to whom the teaching was so new and strange that they were desirous to have an opportunity for more extended explanation.

In June, after four months of constant lecturing and teaching, Swami Vivekananda accepted the invitation of one of his friends and went to Percy, N.H., for a period of rest in the silence of the pine woods. Before he left New York, he promised to meet at Thousand Island Park any students who were sufficiently interested in Vedanta to follow him so far, and there give them more special instruction. One of the class members had a cottage there and had invited the Swami to be her guest for as long a period as he fell inclined to remain. Swami said that those students who were willing to put aside all other interests and devote themselves to studying Vedanta, travelling more than three hundred miles to a suitable spot, were the ones really in earnest, and he should recognize them as disciples. He did not expect many would lake so much trouble; but if any responded, he would do his share of helping them on the path.

About the middle of June, six or eight students gathered in the little house at Thousand Island Park; and true to his promise, Swami Vivekananda came there on the 20th of the month and remained for seven blessed weeks. A few more students joined us. until we numbered twelve, including our hostess. To those who were fortunate enough to be there with the Swami, those are weeks of ever hallowed memory, so fraught were they with unusual opportunity for spiritual growth. No words can describe what that blissful period meant (and still means) to the devoted little band who followed the Swami from New York to the Island in the St. Lawrence, who daily served him with joy and listened to him with heartfelt thankfulness. His whole heart was in his work, and he taught like one inspired. Every morning he could hardly wait for the household duties to be attended to, so eager was he to begin his work of teaching. As early as it could be managed, we gathered around him, and for two and sometimes three hours he would steadily expound the teachings of his Master Shri Ramakrishna. These ideas were new and strange to us, and we were slow in assimilating them; but the Swami’s patience never flagged, his enthusiasm never waned. In the afternoons, he talked to us more informally, and we took usually a long walk. Every evening we adjourned to an upstairs piazza that commanded a glorious view over the waters and islands of the broad river, it was an enchanting picture that our eyes rested upon. At our left stretched a thick wood, the tops of its waving trees like a lake of vivid green, gradually lost themselves in the dancing blue waters of the St. Lawrence. Not one building of any kind was in sight, save a hotel on a distant island whose many gleaming lights were reflected on the shimmering waves. We were alone with nature, and it was a fitting scene in which to listen to the utterances of such a Teacher. The Swami did not appear to address us directly, but rather seemed to be speaking to himself in words of fire, as it were, so intense were they, so eloquent and convincing, burning into the very hearts of his listeners never to be forgotten. We listened in utter silence, almost holding our breath for fear of disturbing the current of his thoughts, or losing one of those inspired words.

As the days and weeks passed by, we began to really understand and grasp the meaning of what we heard, and we gladly accepted the teaching. Every one of the students there, received initiation at the hands of the Swami, thus becoming disciples, the Swami assuming towards them the position of guru, or spiritual father, as is done in India, where the tie uniting guru and disciple is the closest one known, outranking that of parent and child, or even husband and wife. It was purely a coincidence that there were just twelve of us!

The ceremony of initiation was impressive from its extreme simplicity. A small altar fire, beautiful flowers, and the earnest words of the Teacher alone marked it as different from our daily lessons. It took place at sunrise of a beautiful summer day, and the scene still lives fresh in our memories. Of those who became Brahmacharinis at Thousand Island Park, two are dead, and one is now in India helping to carry on the work nearest to Swami Vivekananda’s heart, the uplifting of his fellow-countrymen. Most of the others have rendered faithful service in the cause of Vedanta during the ten years that have passed since then. (A more detailed description of the events at Thousand Island Park is available in the Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda as Inspired Talks.)

In August the Swami went to France and later to England to start there a centre for Vedanta work. At the earnest solicitation of his many friends and students in New York Swamiji returned to us in December of 1895 and opened classes once more. There were nine in each week and all were attended by large numbers, to the full capacity of the rooms. This time we were fortunate enough to secure the services of a good stenographer, who, to unusual abilities, later added the service of a devoted adherent. He became strongly attached to the Swami and his teaching and never spared himself in his work for the cause. He subsequently accompanied the Swami to England and to India, and it is entirely due to his efforts that the Swami’s utterances in those countries have been preserved. The fruits of his labours in New York are known to us in the books, Raja-Yoga, Bhakti-Yoga, Karma-Yoga, besides several pamphlets of the Sunday lectures. The New York lectures jnana-yoga have never been published, although they are among the finest the Swami ever gave. Those in book form that bear the name Jnana-Yoga were delivered in England and India. (This refers to the book published in New York in 1902. The Jnana-Yoga issued by Advaita Ashrama contains the lectures delivered in New York as well. — Publisher.)

A few more students became disciples in New York. some of them being initiated on the occasion of the celebration of the birthday of Shri Ramakrishna in 1896. In March of this year Swami Vivekananda went to Boston, Detroit, and Chicago to lecture. He delivered several addresses in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and one of these, known as the “Harvard Address” has been preserved in pamphlet form and became widely known, both in the United States and in India.

In the middle of April, the Swami sailed for England where he lectured for many months, being joined there first by Swami Saradananda and later by Swami Abhedananda, who is now the head of the Vedanta Society in New York. From London Swami Vivekananda returned to India at the close of 1896 accompanied by his everfaithful stenographer and several of his English disciples. He did much public work there and many of his lectures delivered in India are now in print, both in book and in pamphlet form. After more than two years of most arduous labour, the Swami’s health broke down, and he was forced to retire to the Math at Belur for a much needed rest. In the autumn of 1899 he sailed for England, accompanied by Swami Turiyananda, He did not remain long in London, but came once more to the United Stales. He made only a brief stay in New York and then went to California. The climate there proved very beneficial to his health, and he was able to deliver many lectures, from Los Angeles to San Francisco. He thus made a successful beginning of Vedanta work on the Pacific Coast; and later, Swami Turiyananda went to California to carry on the work thus inaugurated. A friend of the cause presented a large tract of land in the California mountains to Swami Vivekananda. It is situated about twelve miles from the far-famed Lick Observatory on Mt. Hamilton. The Shanti Ashrama has been established there, and for a couple of months each year the Swami in charge of the Vedanta work in San Francisco establishes a retreat there, accompanied by those members of his classes who wish to enjoy a period of meditation. They mostly live in tents, although a few wooden cabins have been erected under the fine old trees.

In the summer of 1900, Swami Vivekananda returned to New York. making short stops en route at Chicago and Detroit to visit his old friends there. When he reached New York, he was much pleased to find that the Vedanta Society had at last succeeded in securing a home. This was in East 58th Street, and the Swami spent seven weeks there. He gave a few public lectures, but he did not care to do much work of this kind. He was chiefly desirous to meet his old friends and disciples; and as in the days at Thousand Island Park, he spent most of his time in teaching them and in conversation with them. It was a happy time apparently for both Teacher and disciples. All too soon, it came to an end. The Swami had received an invitation to address the Religious Congress held that year at the Paris Exposition. So he sailed from New York in August, never to revisit the city where he had done so much work in teaching and lecturing. He might have returned had his life been prolonged, but it was not to be.

In Paris, Swamiji met many prominent people and made many warm friends. He mastered the French language sufficiently to converse with those who could not speak English. From France he started with a party of friends for Egypt to visit the Cataracts of the Nile. But at Alexandria he received news of the death of a friend in India, which necessitated his immediate return to that country. His many Western friends saw him no more, but his memory will never die in our hearts and our gratitude for his loving service lo us can never fail. It is a priceless privilege to have known such a man. He was truly a mahatman and did a great work, work that will long be an influence in the lives of his own countrymen as well as in those of his European and American friends. May he be for ever blessed!

(Prabuddha Bharata, January 1906)

REMINISCENCES OF SWAMI VIVEKANANDA
SISTER DEVAMATA

MY first contact with the Ramakrishna movement was through Swami Vivekananda. It occurred before the Mission had taken definite form, when all there was to tell of the far-spread work to be done later was a band of wandering sannyasins, waiting for the call, yet half unaware that they were waiting. One of the band said to me years after: “If we had dreamed of the labours that day before us, we would not have spent our strength in severe austerities or taxed our bodies by privations and long wanderings. All that was asked of us, we thought, was a simple life of renunciation, obeying in humble spirit what our Master had taught us.”

The first hint of anything beyond this, I learnt from the same source, was a quiet voice heard only by Swami Vivekananda as he lay at the point of death in a Himalayan glade under a rude thatch of dry branches. It said: “You will not die. You have a great work to do in the world.” He told it to two fellow disciples with him, and one of them told it to me. But the voice came without a form to give it substance. How could they know that the words spoken were prophecy?

Time proved them to be such. Their fulfilment had just begun, when all unexpectedly I touched the Swami’s orbit, now circling a world. My mother, sister, and I had spent the month of June at the Great Fair of 1893 in Chicago, and we were planning lo return for the Congress of Religions in the autumn on our way to Japan and the Orient. A death in the family brought our journey to a halt in a little town in Ohio. Soon after our arrival there the Swedenborgian minister, as a courtesy to strangers, invited us to dine with him. We went. The minister himself met us at the door, his face aglow with enthusiasm. He had just returned from the Congress of Religions and he could talk of nothing else.

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

I was prepared to be keenly interested, for the spiritual teachings of India were not unfamiliar to me, Edwin Arnold’s Light of Asia had acquainted me with the exalted beauty of Lord Buddha’s life and doctrine; I had read and reread Mohini Chatterji’s translation of the Bhagavad-Gita, looking up all his references to parallel passages in the Bible; and long hours had been devoted through the previous winter to the study of Max Muller’s English version of the Upanishads. I still have the copy, worn and marked, that I used at that time. Thus a gradual orientation had taken place in my mind.

Autumn brought our return to New York. Winter set in with its busy routine, but the memory of the conversation with the Swedenborgian minister still remained vivid. One day, as I was walking up Madison Avenue, I saw in the window of the Hall of the Universal Brotherhood a modest sign saying: “Next Sunday at 3 p.m. Swami Vivekananda will speak here on ‘What is Vedanta?’ and the following Sunday on ‘What is yoga?”. I reached the hall twenty minutes before the hour. It was already over half full. It was not large, however — a long, narrow room with a single aisle and benches reaching from it to the wall; a low platform holding reading-desk and chair at the far end; and a flight of stairs at the back. The hall was on the second storey and these stairs gave the only way of access to it — audience and speaker both had to make use of them. By the time three o’clock had arrived, hall, stairs, window-sills, and railings, all were crowded to their utmost capacity. Many even were standing below, hoping to catch a faint echo of the words spoken in the hall above.

A sudden hush, a quiet step on the stairs, and Swami Vivekananda passed in stately erectness up the aisle to the platform. He began to speak; and memory, time, place, people, all melted away. Nothing was left but a voice ringing through the void. It was as if a gate had swung open and I had passed out on a road leading to limitless attainment. The end of it was not visible; but the promise of what it would be shone through the thought and flashed through the personality of the one who gave it. He stood there — prophet of infinitude.

The silence of an empty hall recalled me to myself. Everyone was gone except the Swami and two others standing near the platform. I learnt later that they were Mr. and Mrs. Goodyear, ardent disciples of the Swami. Mr. Goodyear made the announcements at the meetings. After that I attended all the classes and lectures during the Swami’s two seasons in New York, but I never came in close personal touch with him. There seemed to be an intangible barrier. Was it created by shyness or a sense of strangeness, or by my elder sister’s prejudice? She had no sympathy with my Oriental studies and often said she wished I “could get salvation nearer home”.

The meetings began in an upper room; then because of their increasing size they were transferred to the floor below. Later they moved to another house — one in a long monotonous row of dingy boarding houses. It was a heterogeneous gathering at the classes in those shabby lodgings — old and young, rich and poor, wise and foolish; stingy ones who dropped a button in the collection basket, and more generous ones who gave a dollar bill or even two. We all met day after day and became friends without words or association. Some of us never missed a meeting. We followed the course on bhakti-yoga and the course on jnana-yoga. We walked simultaneously along the paths of raja-yoga and karma-yoga. We were almost sorry that there were only four yogas. We would have liked to have six or eight, that the number of classes might be multiplied.

We were insatiable knowledge-seekers. We did not limit ourselves to any one doctrine or scripture. We went to one lecture in the morning, a second one in the afternoon, and sometimes to a third in the evening. Philosophy, metaphysics, astrology, each had its turn. Yet although we seemed to scatter our interest, our real loyalty belonged to the Swami. We recognized in him a power that no other teacher possessed. It was he alone who was shaping our thought and conviction. Even my dog — an Irish setter — felt this. He would stand perfectly still and a quiver would run through his body whenever Swamiji would lay his hand on his head and tell him he was a true yogi.

The faithful group that followed the Swami wherever he spoke were as relentless as they were earnest. If he suggested tentatively omitting a class because of a holiday or for some other reason, there was a loud protest always. This one had come to New York specially for the teaching and wished to get all she could; another was leaving town soon and was unwilling to lose a single opportunity of hearing the Swami. They gave him no respite. He taught early and late. Among the most eager were a number of teachers, each with a blank book in hand; and the Swami’s words were punctuated by the tap of their pencils taking rapid notes. Not a sentence went unrecorded; and I am sure that if later any one had made the circuit Of the New York Centres of New Thought, Metaphysics, or Divine Science, they would have heard everywhere Vedanta and yoga in more or less diluted form.

Through the late winter and spring of 1895 the work — carried on without the intermittence of the earlier teaching — gained tremendous momentum and fervour. We divided our interest no longer. It was wholly focussed on the message the Swami had to give. That had become the foundation of our daily living, the stimulus that urged us onward. For several consecutive months class followed class, lecture followed lecture. Now there remained only a final class and a final lecture. Then the last class was over and in a hush of sadness we filed out from the shabby lodging-house, dropping our farewell offering in the basket at the door.

There was still a final Sunday lecture. It look place in the Madison Square Concert Hall — a fairly large hall on the second floor behind the Madison Square Garden, a vast arena used for automobile exhibitions, bicycle races, horse shows, for anything that required space. The building seemed huge at that time, but later New York outgrew it. and it was torn down. The Concert Hall was much used by Glee Clubs, siring quartets, and lectures. I do not know how many it held, but it was full to the uttermost at that closing lecture — every seat, every foot of standing room was occupied.

I believe that was the day on which Swami Vivekananda delivered the lecture on My Master. As he entered the hall from a door at the side of the platform, one sensed a different mood in him. He seemed less confident, as if he approached his task reluctantly. Years after in Madras I understood. He hesitated at all times to speak of his guru. During his early wanderings through South India he refused to reveal his name even, believing he represented him so poorly. Only in Madras, when he came unaware upon his Master’s picture, did the words burst from his lips: “That is my guru, Shri Ramakrishna,” and tears streamed down his face. So now was he reluctant. He began his lecture with a long preamble; but once in his subject, it swept him. The force of it drove him from one end of the platform to the other. It overflowed in a swift-running stream of eloquence and feeling. The large audience listened in awed stillness and at the close many left the hall without speaking. As for myself, I was transfixed. The transcendent picture drawn overwhelmed me. The call had come, and I answered.

It was on this Sunday that Swami’s first volume appeared. For some time the lectures of one Sunday had been for sale on the book table, the next Sunday in pamphlet form. Now a whole collection of lectures on karma-yoga was brought out in a large, thin, closely-printed volume — very different from the edition published later. It was not very beautiful, but the workers were extremely proud of it.

A supplementary meeting in a private house marked the close of the Swami’s New York work. In June he went with a group of students to Thousand Island Park and in August he sailed for Europe. The time of hearing was over, the time of pondering and practising had come. As we dwelt in memory on the Swami’s teachings and tried from day to day to put them into our life, we came to feet more and more that a mighty comet had swung into our hemisphere, shone for a season in our heavens, and swung out again, leaving a line of light behind it. Its radiance still lingers.

Those who attended Swami Vivekananda’s classes and lectures in New York soon grew familiar with a tall, very portly figure who moved about doing everything. We learnt before long that it was Miss Ellen Waldo, a distant connection of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and a person of wide philosophic and general culture. The Swami had given her the Sanskrit name “Haridasi”. and it was well chosen. She was truly a “Servant of the Lord” — her service was continuous and untiring. She cooked, edited, cleaned and took dictation, taught and managed, read proof and saw visitors.

When Swami Vivekananda came to New York, he encountered a strong racial prejudice, which created many hardships for him both in his public and in his private life. Among other things it was extremely difficult for him to secure a proper lodging. Landladies invariably assured him that they had no feeling themselves, but they were afraid they would lose their boarders or lodgers if they took an Asiatic into the house. This forced the Swami to accept inferior living quarters. Neither environment nor association was what he should have had. One day, after he had been overnight in one of these dingy lodgings, he said to Miss Waldo: “The food here seems so unclean, would it be possible for you to cook for me?” She went at once to the landlady and obtained permission to use the kitchen. Then from her own store she gathered together cooking utensils and groceries. These she carried with her on the following morning.

She lived at the far end of Brooklyn. The only means of transportation was a jogging horse-car, and it required two hours to reach the Swami’s lodging at 38th Street in New York. Undaunted, every morning found her on her way at eight o’clock or earlier; and at nine or ten at night she was on her way home again. When there came a free day, the Journey was reversed. It was Swamiji who took the jogging horse-car, travelled the two hours and cooked the meals. He found genuine rest and relaxation in the freedom and quiet of Miss Waldo’s simple home. The kitchen was on the top floor of the house, in front of it the dining-room full of sunshine and potted plants. As the Swami invented new dishes or tried experiments with Western provisions, he ran back and forth from one room to the other tike a child at play.

“In all this close association with Swamiji,” Miss Waldo said to me later, “it seems strange that the idea of renunciation never once occurred to me. Nor did I ever think seriously of following him to India. I seemed to belong in America. Yet there-was nothing I would not have done for him. When he first came to New York, he insisted on wearing his orange robe everywhere. It required no little courage to walk up Broadway beside that flaming coat. As the Swami strode along in lordly indifference, with me just behind, half out of breath trying to keep up with him, every eye was turned upon us, and on every lip was the question: “What are they?’ Later I persuaded him to adopt more subdued clothing for the street.”

One morning the Swami found Miss Waldo in tears, “What is the matter, Ellen?” he asked anxiously. “Has anything happened?” “I seem unable to please you”, she replied. “Even when others annoy you, you scold me for it,” The Swami said quickly. “I do not know those people well enough to scold them. I cannot rebuke them, so I come to you. Whom can I scold if I cannot scold my own?” Her tears dried at once, and after that she sought scoldings; they were a proof of nearness.

Miss Waldo herself told me of this experience as her own. Romain Rolland tells it of another disciple. Both can be true. The incident could easily repeat itself.

Miss Waldo had had wide experience in teachers. She had sat at the feet of many during her long pursuit of truth, but sooner or later they had all fallen short in some way. Now the fear was in her heart that this new Hindu Swami might prove wanting. She was always watching for a sign of weakness. It came. She and the Swami were together in a New York drawing-room. The New York Swami Vivekananda knew was very different from the New York of today. The streets then were lined with monotonous blocks of brown stone houses, one so completely like very other that a visiting artist of note once asked: “How do you know when you are at home? You could as well be in the house next door.”

Each of these narrow, but deep houses held on the first floor a long narrow drawing-room, with high folding-doors at one end, two large windows at the other, and between them a mirror reaching from floor to ceiling. This mirror seemed to fascinate the Swami. He stood before it again and again, gazing at himself intently. In between he walked up and down the room, lost in thought. Miss Waldo’s eyes followed him anxiously. “Now the bubble is going to burst”, she thought. “He is full of personal vanity.” Suddenly he turned to her and said: “Ellen, it is the strangest thing, I cannot remember how I look. I look and look at myself in the glass, but the moment I ‘ turn away I forget completely what I look like.”

It was during this first visit to America that the Swami’s Raja-Yoga took form. The greater part was dictated to Miss Waldo. She look it down in long hand. Those cherished hours of work on it were specially happy ones for her. She often spoke of them. Each day when the Swami’s meal had been prepared and her tasks in the kitchen were done, she would come up to the back parlour where Swamiji lodged; take her seat at a table, on which stood an open ink-well; and dip her pen in the ink. From that moment until the work was laid aside for the day, her pen was kept wet, to catch the first rush of words that fell periodically from the Swami’s lips. Sometimes in seeking for an English equivalent for the Sanskrit word in an aphorism, he would sit in concentrated silence for fifteen or twenty minutes — but the pen was not allowed to dry. The burst of dictation might come at any instant.

When the manuscript was completed, it was entrusted to Miss Waldo to put into print, but many distresses and heartaches lay in wait for her before publication was accomplished. Another devoted follower of the Swami borrowed the manuscript, carried it to London, and brought it out there, believing it was to the Swami’s advantage to have it appear in England. For the time this blocked the American edition, and it was only possible to have an American edition by adding the glossary and other matter.

(Prabuddha Bharata, April & May 1932)