Author: admin

39 VICTORIA ST., LONDON S.W.,
28th Nov., 1896.
DEAR SISTERS,
. . . I feel impelled to write a few lines to you before my departure for India. The work in London has been a roaring success. The English are not so bright as the Americans, but once you touch their heart, it is yours for ever. Slowly have I gained, and it is strange that in six months’ work altogether I would have a steady class of 120 persons apart from public lectures. Here every one means work — the practical Englishman. Capt. and Mrs. Sevier and Mr. Goodwin are going to India with me to work and spend their own money on it! There are scores here ready to do the same: men and women of position, ready to give up everything for the idea, once they feel convinced! And last though not the least, the help in the shape of money to start my “work” in India has come and more will follow. My ideas about the English have been revolutionized. I now understand why the Lord has blessed them above all other races. They are steady, sincere to the backbone, with great depths of feeling — only with a crust of stoicism on the surface; if that is broken, you have your man.
Now I am going to start a centre in Calcutta and another in the Himalayas. The Himalayan one will be an entire hill about 7,000 ft. high — cool in summer, cold in winter. Capt. and Mrs. Sevier will live there, and it will be the centre for European workers, as I do not want to kill them by forcing on them the Indian mode of living and the fiery plains. My plan is to send out numbers of Hindu boys to every civilised country to preach — get men and women from foreign countries to work in India. This would be a good exchange. After having established the centres, I go about up and down like the gentleman in the book of Job.
Here I must end to catch the mail. Things are opening for me. I am glad, and I know so you are. Now all blessings be yours and all happiness.

With eternal love,

VIVEKANANDA,

PS. What about Dharmapala? What is he doing? Give him my love if you meet him.

To Miss Josephine MacLeod

GREY COAT GARDENS,
WESTMINSTER, S.W.,
LONDON,
3rd December, 1896.
DEAR JOE,
Many, many thanks, dear Joe Joe, for your kind invitation; but the Dear God has disposed it this way, viz I am to start for India on the 16th with Captain and Mrs. Sevier and Mr. Goodwin. The Seviers and myself take steamer at Naples. And as there will be four days at Rome, I will look in to say good-bye to Alberta.
Things are in a “hum” here just now; the big hall for the class, 39 Victoria, is full and yet more are coming.
Well, the good old country now calls me; I must go. So good-bye to all projects of visiting Russia this April.
I just set things a-going a little in India and am off again for the ever beautiful U.S. and England etc.
So very kind of you to send Mabel’s letter — good news indeed. Only I am a little sorry for poor Fox. However, Mabel escaped him; that is better.
You did not write anything about how things are going on in New York. I hope it is all well there. Poor Cola! is he able now to make a living?
The coming of Goodwin was very opportune, as it captured the lectures here which are being published in a periodical form. Already there have been subscribers enough to cover the expenses.
Three lectures next week, and my London work is finished for this season. Of course, everybody here thinks it foolish to give it up just now the “boom” is on, but the Dear Lord says, “Start for Old India”. I obey.
To Frankincense, to Mother, to Holister and everyone else my eternal love and blessings, and with the same for you,

Yours ever sincerely,

VIVEKANANDA

To Alberta Sturges

14 GREYCOAT GARDENS,
WESTMINSTER, LONDON S.W.,
3rd Dec., 1896.
DEAR ALBERTA,
Herewith I enclose a letter of Mabel to Joe Joe to you. I have enjoyed the news* in it very much and so I am sure you will.
I am to start from here for India on the 16th and to take the steamer at Naples. I will, therefore, be in Italy for some days and in Rome for three or four days. I will be very happy to look in to say good-bye to you.
Capt. and Mrs. Sevier from England are going to India with me, and they will be with me in Italy of course. You saw them last summer.
I intend to return to the U.S. and to Europe thence in about a year.

With all love and blessings,

VIVEKANANDA.

* The news was that Mabel MacLeod, her mother’s cousin, was going to be married

– Alberta Sturges was in Rome at the time.

14, GREYCOAT GARDENS
WESTMINSTER, S.W.
5 December 1896
DEAR MISS NOBLE —

Many thanks for sending the kind present from Mr. Beatty. I have written to him acknowledging his beautiful gift.

As for you, my dear, noble, kind friend, I only would say this — we Indians lack in many things, but there is none on earth to beat us in gratefulness. I remain,

Ever yours gratefully,

VIVEKANANDA

39 Victoria Street, London,
9th Dec., 1896.

Dear Mrs. Bull,
It is needless to express my gratitude at your most generous offer. I don’t want to encumber myself with a large amount of money at the first start, but as things progress on I will be very glad to find employment for that sum. My idea is to start on a very small scale. I do not know anything yet. I will know my bearings when on the spot in India. From India I will write to you more details about my plans and the practical way to realise them. I start on the 16th and after a few days in Italy take the steamer at Naples.
Kindly convey my love to Mrs. Vaughan and Saradananda and to the rest of my friends there. As for you, I have always regarded you as the best friend I have, and it will be the same all my life.
With love and blessings.
Yours,
Vivekananda

To an American lady

London,
13th December, 1896
Dear Madam,

We have only to grasp the idea of gradation of morality and everything becomes clear.
Renunciation–non-resistance–non-destructiveness–are the ideals to be attained through less and less worldliness, less and less resistance, less and less destructiveness. Keep the ideal in view and work towards it. None can live in the world without resistance, without destruction, without desire. The world has not come to that state yet when the ideal can be realised in society.The progress of the world through all its evils is making it fit for the ideals, slowly but surely. The majority will have to go on with this slow growth–the exceptional ones will have to get out to realise the idea in the present state of things.Doing the duty of the time is the best way, and if it is done only as a duty, it does not make us attached.Music is the highest art and, to those who understand, is the highest worship.We must try our best to destroy ignorance and evil. Only we have to learn that evil is destroyed by the growth of good.
Yours faithfully,
Vivekananda

To Francis Leggett

13th Dec., 1896.
DEAR FRANKINCENSE,
So Gopâla has taken the female form! It is fit that it should be so — the time and the place considering. May all blessings follow her through life. She was keenly desired, prayed for, and she comes as a blessing to you and to your wife for life. I have not the least doubt.
I wish I could have come to America now if only to fulfil the form “the sages of the East bringing presents to the Western baby”. But the heart is there with all prayers and blessings, and the mind is more powerful than the body.
I am starting on the 16th of this month and take the steamer at Naples. Will see Alberta in Rome surely. With all love to the holy family,
Yours ever in the Lord,
VIVEKANANDA.

14 Grey Coat Gardens
Westminster, London
1896
Dear Alasinga,

I have returned about three weeks from Switzerland but could not write you further before. I have sent you by last mail a paper of Paul Deussen of Kiel. Sturdy’s plan about the magazine is still hanging fire. As you see, I have left the St. George’s Road place. We have a lecture hall at 39 Victoria Street. C/o E. T. Sturdy will always reach me for a year to come. The rooms at Grey Coat Gardens are only lodgings for self and the other Swami taken for three months only. The work in London is growing apace, the classes are becoming bigger as they go on. I have no doubt this will go on increasing at this rate and the English people are steady and loyal. Of course, as soon as I leave, most of this fabric will tumble down. Something will happen. Some strong man will arise to take it up. The Lord knows what is good. In America there is room for twenty preachers on the Vedanta and Yoga. Where to get these preachers and where also the money to bring them? Half the United States can be conquered in ten years, given a number of strong and genuine men. Where are they? We are all boobies over there! Selfish cowards, with our nonsense of lip-patriotism, orthodoxy, and boasted religious feeling! The Madrasis have more of go and steadiness, but every fool is married. Marriage! Marriage! Marriage! . . . Then the way our boys are married nowadays! . . . It is very good to aspire to be a non-attached householder; but what we want in Madras is not that just now–but non-marriage. . . .My child, what I want is muscles of iron and nerves of steel, inside which dwells a mind of the same material as that of which the thunderbolt is made. Strength, manhood, Kshatra-Virya + Brahma-Teja. Our beautiful hopeful boys–they have everything, only if they are not slaughtered by the millions at the altar of this brutality they call marriage. O Lord, hear my wails! Madras will then awake when at least one hundred of its very heart’s blood, in the form of its educated young men, will stand aside from the world, gird their loins, and be ready to fight the battle of truth, marching on from country to country. One blow struck outside of India is equal to a hundred thousand struck within. Well, all will come if the Lord wills it.
Miss Muller was the person who offered that money I promised. I have told her about your new proposal. She is thinking about it. In the meanwhile I think it is better to give her some work. She has consented to be the agent for the Brahmavadin and Awakened India. Will you write to her about it? Her address is Airlie Lodge, Ridgeway Gardens, Wimbledon, England. I was living with her over there for the last few weeks. But the London work cannot go on without my living in London. As such I have changed quarters. I am sorry it has chagrined Miss Muller a bit. Cannot help. Her full name is Miss Henrietta Muller. Max Muller is getting very friendly. I am soon going to deliver two lectures at Oxford.I am busy writing something big on the Vedanta philosophy. I am busy collecting passages from the various Vedas bearing on the Vedanta in its threefold aspect. You can help me by getting someone to collect passages bearing on, first the Advaitic idea, then the Vishishtadvaitic, and the Dvaitic from the Samhitas, the Brahmanas, the Upanishads, and the Puranas. They should be classified and very legibly written with the name and chapter of the book, in each case. It would be a pity to leave the West without leaving something of the philosophy in book form.
There was a book published in Mysore in Tamil characters, comprising all the one hundred and eight Upanishads; I saw it in Professor Deussen’s library. Is there a reprint of the same in Devanagari? If so, send me a copy. If not, send me the Tamil edition, and also write on a sheet the Tamil letters and compounds, and all juxtaposed with its Nagari equivalents, so that I may learn the Tamil letters.
Mr. Satyanathan, whom I met in London the other day, said that there has been a friendly review of my Raja-Yoga book in the Madras Mail, the chief Anglo-Indian paper in Madras. The leading physiologist in America, I hear, has been charmed with my speculations. At the same time, there have been some in England, who ridiculed my ideas. Good! My speculations of course are awfully bold; a good deal of them will ever remain meaningless; but there are hints in it which the physiologists had better taken up earlier. Nevertheless, I am quite satisfied with the result. “Let them talk badly of me if they please, but let them talk”, is my motto.In England, of course, they are gentlemen and never talk the rot I had in America. Then again the English missionaries you see over there are nearly all of them from the dissenters. They are not from the gentleman class in England. The gentlemen here, who are religious, all belong to the English Church. The dissenters have very little voice in England and no education. I never hear of those people here against whom you time to time warn me. They are unknown here and dare not talk nonsense. I hope Ram K. Naidu is already in Madras, and you are enjoying good health.Persevere on, my brave lads. We have only just begun. Never despond! Never say enough! . . . As soon as a man comes over to the West and sees different nations, his eyes open. This way I get strong workers–not by talking, but by practically showing what we have in India and what we have not. I wish at least that a million Hindus had travelled all over the world!
Yours ever with love,
Vivekananda

(Translated from Bengali)

C/O E. T STURDY, ESQ.,
HIGH VIEW, CAVERSHAM, READING
1896.
DEAR—

… Can anything be done unless everybody exerts himself to his utmost? “” etc.— “It is the man of action, the lion-heart, that the Goddess of Wealth resorts to.” No need of looking behind. FORWARD! We want infinite energy, infinite zeal, infinite courage, and infinite patience, then only will great things be achieved. . . .

Yours affectionately,

VIVEKANANDA

To Alberta Sturges

Hotel Minerva, Florence,
20th Dec., 1896.
Dear Alberta,
Tomorrow we reach Rome. I will most possibly come to see you day after tomorrow as it will be late in the night when we reach Rome. We stop at the Hotel Continental.

With all love and blessings,
Vivekananda.

 

To Swami Brahmananda

HOTEL MINERVA, FLORENCE,
20th December, 1896.
DEAR RAKHAL,
As you see, by this time I am on my way. Before leaving London, I got your letter and the pamphlet. Take no heed of Mazoomdar’s madness. He surely has gone crazy with jealousy. Such foul language as he has used would only make people laugh at him in a civilised country. He has defeated his purpose by the use of such vulgar words.
All the same, we ought not to allow Hara Mohan or any one else to go and fight Brahmos and others in our name. The public must know that we have no quarrel with any sect, and if anybody provokes a quarrel, he is doing it on his own responsibility. Quarrelling and abusing each other are our national traits. Lazy, useless, vulgar, jealous, cowardly, and quarrelsome, that is what we are, Bengalis. Anyone who wants to be my friend must give up these. Neither do you allow Hara Mohan to print any book, because such printing as he does is only cheating the public.
If there are oranges in Calcutta, send a hundred to Madras care of Alasinga, so that I may have them when I reach Madras.
Mazoomdar writes that the Sayings of Shri Ramakrishna published in The Brahmavadin are not genuine and are lies! In that case ask Suresh Dutt and Ram Babu to give him the lie in The Indian Mirror. As I did not do anything about the collection of the Uktis (Sayings), I cannot say anything.

Yours affectionately,

VIVEKANANDA.

PS. Don’t mind these fools; “No fool like an old fool” is the proverb. Let them bark a little. Their occupation is gone. Poor souls! Let them have a little satisfaction in barking.

DEAR SIR,

Many thanks for your kindly sending me several copies of the Light of the East. I wish the paper all success.

As you have asked for my suggestion [that] I can make towards improving the paper — I must frankly state that in my life-long experience in the work, I have always found “Occultism” injurious and weakening to humanity. What we want is strength. We Indians, more than any other race, want strong and vigorous thought. We have enough of the superfine in all concerns. For centuries we have been stuffed with the mysterious; the result is that our intellectual and spiritual digestion is almost hopelessly impaired, and the race has been dragged down to the depths of hopeless imbecility — never before or since experienced by any other civilised community. There must be freshness and vigour of thought behind to make a virile race. More than enough to strengthen the whole world exists in the Upanishads. The Advaita is the eternal mine of strength. But it requires to be applied. It must first be cleared of the incrustation of scholasticism, and then in all its simplicity, beauty and sublimity be taught over the length and breadth of the land, as applied even to the minutest detail of daily life. “This is a very large order”; but we must work towards it, nevertheless, as if it would be accomplished to-morrow. Of one thing I am sure — that whoever wants to help his fellow beings through genuine love and unselfishness will work wonders.
Yours truly,
VIVEKANANDA