CHAPTER EIGHT

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA: A NEW GOSPEL-II

In none of the various reminiscences available to us did anyone

mention the date on which Swamiji started holding classes in his flat
at 1719 Turk Street in San Francisco; nor in his known letters, did he.
We can guess, however, that shortly after he had a place of his own
the requests for practical instruction became many and insistent. As
we have noted earlier, he probably moved into the flat on March 8,
1900. Since this was a Thursday, it is not likely that classes were
started that week. It is more than likely, however, that they were
started the next, particularly since Swamiji was by then (as will be
seen later) giving a series of three evening lectures, entitled
collectively "Applied Psychology," in downtown San Francisco at the
Red Men's Building. Although we have a record only of the last of
these lectures, there can be very little doubt that all three dealt in
general with the science of raja yoga, a subject that must have at once
increased the "imperative demand for personal instruction," which
demand, Mr. Frank Rhodehamel has told us "gave rise to class
work."1 But however that may be, Swamiji's classes, once started,
were held regularly through March and the first week of April.
According to Mrs. Hansbrough, the classes were held three times
a week, but it is possible that she was referring only to the morning
classes. That Swamiji held at least a few afternoon classes as well is
almost certain. Many years later Miss Ansell, consulting her diary for
1900, told Mr. Allan that she began the morning class on March 26
and that on March 29 she "was invited to join the first class."2 One
may gather from this that
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Swamiji held two sets of classes-one for beginners and one for more
advanced students. As will be seen later on, there is evidence that the
advanced class was held in the afternoon.
In regard to the morning class, Mrs. Hansbrough tells us that it
began, or was scheduled to begin, at ten-thirty. (How long the class
might last on any given day no one knew. "There was no set time for
their close," Mrs. Allan once recalled. "They lasted from one hour to
two and a half hours. But there was no time in his presence-the hours
fled.")3 Between thirty and forty people attended, climbing the stairs
to the third floor, backtracking along the narrow passage, and
crowding into the front parlor. There were, of course, not enough
chairs to accommodate everyone, and several people-men and women
alike-sat on the carpeted floor.4 Swamiji would enter from his
bedroom, sometimes at ten-thirty, sometimes later; for more often
than not he had been giving a private interview in the dining room,
oblivious of time.
Mr. Frank Rhodehamel, whose first interview took place one
morning before a class, has given us a vivid picture of Swamiji's
swift passage from dining room to front parlor. "His personal
appearance on my first interview," he wrote, "was a pleasurable
shock from which I have never fully recovered. He had on a long
grey dressing gown [perhaps the same worn black and white
herringbone tweed of Pasadena days] and was sitting cross-legged on
a chair, smoking a pipe, his long hair falling in wild disarray over his
features. . . . This interview was continued fifteen minutes beyond the
time set for a class on Raja Yoga to be held in the front room of the
house. We were interrupted by the lady in charge of affairs
[undoubtedly Mrs. Hansbrough] rushing into the room and
exclaiming, `Why, Swami! You have forgotten all about the Yoga
class. It is fifteen minutes past time now, and the room is full of
people.' The Swami arose hastily to his feet, exclaiming to me, `Oh,
excuse me! We will now go to the front room.' I walked through the
hall to the front room. He went through his bedroom, which was
between the room we had been sitting in and the front room. Before I
was seated#

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he emerged from his room with his hair . . . neatly combed, and
attired in his Sannyasin robe! Not more than one minute had elapsed
from the time he started from his room with dishevelled hair and in
lounging attire, till he came leisurely out into the front room ready to
lecture. Speed and precision of action were evidently at his
command."5
If the front parlor became too crowded, the sliding doors leading
to Swamiji's bedroom would be opened and further adjustments made
in the seating arrangements. Then Swamiji would take his place on
the sofa, and the class would begin. And here again, we can turn to
Frank Rhodehamel for a picture.
(Mr. Rhodehamel's memoirs are, incidentally, the longest and
perhaps the most important among those that pertain to Swamiji's life
and work in northern California. They first appeared anonymously in
an appendix to the 1913 edition of the Life and in later editions were
incorporated into the body of the text, where they form several pages
of the chapter "Second Visit to America." Mr. Rhodehamel and his
wife were living in Oakland at the time of Swamiji's visit and had
first heard him lecture at the Unitarian Church. Thenceforth, like
many others, they attended every talk of his they could, no matter on
which side of the Bay it was given. Both husband and wife-and Mrs.
Rhodehamel's sister, Charlotte Brown, as well-remained students of
Vedanta throughout the remainder of their lives, studying under
Swami Turiyananda during his stay in California and, as we have
seen in chapter seven, becoming members of the small, informal
group in Oakland of which Gurudasa was the leader. Later on, Mr.
Rhodehamel added to his memoirs with two articles "Vedanta in
California: Memories" and "Shanti Ashrama Days",---published,
again anonymously, in Prabuddha Bharata of, respectively,
February-March 1916 and 1918. It is through the first of these that
we see the half awe-inspiring, half informal beginning of one of
Swamiji's classes.)
"Again we are seated in the class about him," Rhode-#

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 hamel recalled, seeing the scene in his mind's eye as he wrote:

He is the orange-robed, the illuminated one, seated on the

divan. His great dark eyes searching the faces about him reveal
no clew as to his findings. A few words of instruction as to
posture, breathing, relaxation, etc. follow, though without rigid
conformity to the traditional teachings. His idea is apparently to
make everyone feel at ease as if he would have the spirit of
contemplation steal upon us unawares.
Two students, a man and a woman, squat on the floor in
painful imitation of the Swami's posture. He looks at them a
moment then looks at the rest and laughs. "You can't sit that
way," he says. "Your legs are not trained to sit that way. In India
we are trained to sit that way from babyhood, but you can't do
it." Neither move. The woman replies, pressing her knees down,
"Oh, this is easy for me. I am used to it. I always sit this way."
The man laughs and hangs his head. Swami looks from one to
the other and laughs again. "Come," he says, speaking to the
man, "sit here beside me and let your feet rest on the floor." He
is stubborn. "Come, come," he pleads, patting the divan beside
him, "come sit here by me. You can't meditate that way." But it
is useless. Both remain on the floor. Swami laughs and
abandons his efforts. Everyone laughs. "All that is necessary,"
he continues, "is to sit comfortably with the body erect-that is
all. Try to think of the body as luminous, full of light." 6

Concerning the Western difficulty with cross-legged sitting, Mrs.

Hansbrough told a similar story, which could have been another
version of the same incident or, more probably, an account of a
different one. "There was a Mr. Wiseman who came to the classes,"
she related. "He was a devoted follower of Miss Lydia Bell. He came
late once to the class, when all the seats were taken and he had to sit
on the floor. In those days#

4
the style of men's trousers did not provide the generous legroom they
do nowadays [1941], and Mr. Wiseman's trousers were so tight he
could not sit cross-legged. Swamiji noticed him sitting with his knees
up under his chin and suddenly exclaimed, `Don't look like a fool;
come and sit by me!' Mr. Wiseman was a quiet, unassuming sort of
man or he would have felt it presumptuous to sit on the same couch
with Swamiji. But he accepted the invitation and took a seat on the
end of the couch."7
According to Mrs. Hansbrough, the classes began (once everyone
was settled) with a meditation period that lasted from fifteen minutes
to half an hour. Miss Ansell, too, recalled that meditation came first
and was followed by a period of instruction, which, in turn, was
followed by "questions and answers and practical suggestions as to
exercise, rest and diet.8 Mr. Rhodehamel, on the other hand, tells us
that the meditation period took place after the class for "such of the
audience as remained for that purpose." But whether the meditation
came at the beginning of the class or at its end, to meditate with
Swamiji was an experience never forgotten. The period began with
his chanting. "The rhythmic intonation of Sanskrit Mantras stirs
responsive chords," Mr. Rhodehamel recalled, still reliving those
wonderful days as he wrote:

The result is emotional rather than intellectual. An intangible

sweetness steals upon the senses, quieting them, and the mind
reflects somewhat of that placid depth which is the Swami's
habitual state. Now he pauses to translate, weaving through the
witchery of words an atmosphere of spiritual idealism. His
personality becomes a magnet drawing one away from [oneself],
and [one] feels as pleasurable those thought-flashes which,
under ordinary circumstances, would have been resisted as
inimical to personality. Something within leaps upward.
Consciousness breaks through the incrustation of personal
identity. One's life in the world fades into a mere tradition, un#

5
stable, unalluring. A transitional period of spiritual probation is
covered in a flash. The present consciousness becomes
contemporaneous with that wisdom which is ever unsullied by the
succession of events.9

Perhaps not everyone responded to Swamiji's influence so

sensitively or so consciously as did Frank Rhodehamel; yet few
seated before Swamiji in that classroom could have failed to receive
something of his peace, to taste something of the depths of true
meditation that ever afterward would beckon. "I throw my mind into
the state of bliss," he once said during the course of a lecture in San
Francisco, "and the tendency is to raise the same bliss in your
mind."10 Even one not seated near Swamiji could partake of his
meditation. One morning Mrs. Hansbrough was too occupied in the
kitchen to attend the class. "I used to prepare a lamb broth for
Swamiji every day," she related. "I would cook it for three or four
hours, and it was very nourishing because every bit of the food value
would be cooked out of the meat. One day for some reason I had not
been able to get the broth made by . . . ten-thirty. Swamiji looked into
the kitchen before going to the class. `Aren't you coming?' he asked. I
told him that because I had neglected to plan my work properly, now
I had to stay in the kitchen. `Well, that's all right,' he said, `I will
meditate for you.' All through the class I felt he really was meditating
for me. And do you know, I have always had the feeling that he still
does meditate for me."11
On another occasion, which can be told of here although it did not
occur at Turk Street, Mrs. Hansbrough felt the strong effect of
Swamiji's meditation. "In Alameda," she recalled, "I was upset or
depressed about something and he said to me, `Come, sit down and
we will meditate.' `Oh, I never meditate, Swamiji,' I told him. `Well,
come and sit by me, and I will meditate,' he replied. So I sat down
and closed my eyes. In a moment I felt as though I were going to
float away, and I quickly opened my eyes to look at Swamiji. He had
the appear-
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ance of a statue, as though there were not a spark of life in his body.
He must have meditated for fifteen or twenty minutes, and then
opened his eyes again."12 The sight of Swamiji meditating was in
itself a profoundly moving experience. "Seated cross-legged on the
divan [at Turk Street], clothed in his Sannyasin garb, with hands held
one within the other on his lap, and with his eyes apparently closed,
he might have been a statue in bronze, so immovable was he,"
Rhodehamel wrote years later in his memoirs. "A Yogi, indeed!
Awake only to transcendental thought, he was the ideal, compelling
veneration, love and devotion."13
Another account by one who attended a class of Swamiji's and
who felt the power of his meditation is to be found in Prabuddha
Bharata of March 1927. This reminiscence is in the form of a letter
written by an unnamed member of the San Francisco Vedanta Society
to the editor of the magazine and, as will be seen, gives evidence that
Swamiji held at least one afternoon class for advanced students at his
Turk Street flat. The letter reads:

It was my good fortune to be in Los Angeles at a time when

Swami Vivekananda was giving lectures there. Although the
subjects on which he spoke were new to me at that time, I was
fascinated by them, and when I returned to Oakland and Swami
came later and lectured in San Francisco, Oakland and Alameda,
I was irresistibly attracted and was almost invariably one of his
listeners.
On one occasion it was announced that on a certain afternoon
the Swami would give a lecture to advanced students at his
place of residence. As I was very desirous of attending, I applied
to Swami's secretary [Mrs. Hansbrough] for permission to do so,
at the same time telling her that I was not an advanced student.
In answer I was given to understand that such being the case I
would better not try to attend. Not satisfied, however, I applied
to the Swami himself for permission to attend.
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 He said most heartily, "Come, and welcome, welcome,
welcome!"
The Swami's lecture was an intellectual and spiritual feast;
we seemed to be transported to higher regions of thought and
feeling.
A part of the afternoon was given to answering questions
some of which were somewhat trivial, but the Swami always
answered with unfailing courtesy.
The subject of diet was being discussed when a student
asked, "Swami, what about eating onions?" "Well," answered
Swami, "onions are not the best diet for a spiritual student, but
how fond I was of them when I was a boy! I used to eat them
and then walk up and down in the open air to get them from my
breath."
The last half hour of the afternoon was devoted to meditation
and the Swami became completely lost to the external world.
His presence seemed to radiate a divine influence which
permeated our very being. We went home, our feet scarcely
touching the ground. It seemed as if the Swami had given us to
drink of the Divine Nectar.14

"After the period of meditation," Mrs. Hansbrough said, speaking

of the morning classes, "Swamiji would discourse on some sacred
book. Sometimes he would ask the class what they would like for a
subject."15 Unfortunately, she did not remember what sacred books
Swamiji discoursed upon, or what he said. We know, however, that
many of his classes were devoted to instruction in raja yoga. It was,
indeed, these that Mr. Rhodehamel remembered best and these alone
of which he spoke in his memoirs.
"The conditions, physical and mental, necessary to efficient
contemplation of the significance of spiritual teachings were patiently
dwelt upon in detail," he wrote in his 1916 Prabuddha Bharata
article, and continued: "The difference between mere#

8
intellectual appreciation of spiritual ideals and the desire to be
spiritual was sharply drawn. He taught that in the attainment of the
spiritual capacity, or the desire to be spiritual, nothing is arbitrary;
that the whole process is one of natural development. There was
nothing mystical about it. Practice, practice, practice, life-long
practice, and if necessary many lives of practice, was the one and
only method to acquire the all absorbing desire to be spiritual. And
practice? Intensive contemplation of the significance of spiritual
teachings and of the spiritual character. Hence the elimination of
obstacles to deep contemplation and the employment of any
accessories to that end was the scope of the Swami's efforts in his
class-work."16
While the above quotation summarizes the scope and purpose of
Swamiji's classes, more concrete is the glimpse Mr. Rhodehamel
gives in his earlier memoirs published in the Life. Here one is brought
closer, as it were, to Swamiji himself. "His talk was on Raja Yoga,"
Rhodehamel recalled, "and the practical instruction simple breathing
exercises. He said in part: You must learn to sit correctly; then to
breathe correctly. This develops concentration; then comes
meditation. . . . When practicing breathing, think of your body as
luminous. . . . Try to look down the spinal cord from the base of the
brain to the base of the spine. Imagine that you are looking through
the hollow Sushumna to the Kundalini rising upward to the brain. . . .
Have patience. Great patience is necessary.' Such as voiced doubts
and fears he reassured by his, `I am with you now. Try to have a little
faith in me.' One was moved by his persuasive power when he said,
`We learn to meditate that we may be able to think of the Lord. Raja
Yoga is only the means to that end. The great Patanjali, author of the
Raja Yoga, never missed an opportunity to impress that idea upon his
students. Now is the time for you who are young. Don't wait till you
are old before you think of the Lord, for then you will not be able to
think of Him. The power to think of the Lord is developed when you
are young."'17
In Frank Rhodehamel's notebook, found not long ago in#

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the archives of the Vedanta Society of Northern California, there is a
brief note with the heading "Class lessons in meditation by Swami
Vivekananda" and the date "Monday, March 26, 1900." Here one
finds what one can assume to be Swamiji's verbatim instructions on
that particular day:

The first point is the position. Sit with the spine perfectly
free, with the weight resting on the hips. The next step is
breathing. Breathe in the left nostril and out the right. Fill the
lungs full and eject all the breath. Clear the lungs of all impure
air. Breathe full and deep. The next thing is to think of the body
as luminous, filled with light. The next thing is to concentrate on
the base of the spine, not from the outside, but look down the
spinal column inside to the base of the spine. 18

It would seem that Swamiji held fairly detailed raja yoga classes
at his Turk Street flat; nor is it surprising that he would do so. As Mr.
Rhodehamel pointed out, he taught raja yoga as the best means of
acquiring the disciplines of Advaita Vedanta, all of which presuppose
great mastery of the mind and senses. Indeed, Swamiji taught raja
yoga, particularly during his second visit to the West, as an auxiliary
path to jnana yoga. As he was to explain during a lecture in Alameda,
"the central idea of all this training [in raja yoga] is to attain to [the]
power of concentration, the power' of meditation."19 And this power
of meditation was to be combined with the practice of discrimination
between the Real and the unreal, with the continual affirmation of the
Self. "By means of discrimination [jnana yoga] and meditation [raja
yoga], the goal, of Brahman, has to be reached," he said in India
shortly before coming to America the second time. "This, in my
opinion, is the easy path ensuring quick success." 20 We find him
stressing this combined path above all others during the last days of
his mission. To be sure, Swamiji presented raja yoga as a powerful
vehicle that could speed one along any path one#

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might choose, but he hitched it firmly to the star of Advaita Vedanta,
and he let no one forget that ultimate goal.
But while Swamiji may have taught a good deal of practical raja
yoga in San Francisco, he also taught far more than can be conveyed
in words. One cannot forget that his essential teaching took place
largely in silence. Indeed, the value of Swamiji's small classes lay
more in his direct, living contact with each person who sat near him
than in the details of his instruction. The power and radiance of his
personality, his ability to awaken love for God, to impart a glimpse of
transcendental reality, revealing the end even as he taught the means,
was here manifest to a still greater degree than in his lectures. "At
these Yoga classes one came closer to the man and teacher than was
possible in the lecture hall," Mr. Rhodehamel wrote. "The contact
was more personal and the influence more direct. The embodiment of
holiness, simplicity and wisdom, he seemed speaking with incisive
power, and drawing one's mind more to God and renunciation than to
proficiency in Raja Yoga practices."21 And again, "Here the teacher
of wisdom revealed himself as a power of love. The fiery
aggressiveness of that mind more than able to cope with all
opposition gave way to a gentle friendliness of demeanour which
mirrored beneath his winsome, capricious temperament a depth of
consciousness, remote and inaccessible. Here the undisguised
admiration of audiences for the lecturer was transformed into
devotion to the Guru. The second stage of spiritual culture was now
under way; the absorption of what had been heard into thought. . . .
Like babies learning to talk, that difficult task made delightful by the
loving attentions of the mother, the Swami's spiritual babies dallied
with his every word and drank in the sweetness of his badinage as he
tried to teach them how to think."22
But lest Mr. Rhodehamel mislead one into forming too soft a
picture of Swamiji in his classes, we should add here a memory of
Mrs. Hansbrough's. "He sometimes," she said, "could be very sharp.
Once when he was talking of renunciation, a woman asked him,
`Well Swami, what would become of the
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world if everyone renounced?' His answer was, `Madam, why do you
come to me with that lie on your lips? You have never considered
anything in this world but your own pleasure!' "23 Gentle, patient, and
loving though he was, he seldom hesitated to deliver a pointed rebuke
when it was called for. His purpose was always to open the mind to
light, never to bring comfort to its darkness. Yet as a rule Swamiji
softened his rebukes. On one occasion, recalled by Mrs. Allan, he had
been talking to his class in "a very learned way, when suddenly he
stopped and said with great feeling, `I am the disciple of a man who
could not write his own name, and I am not worthy to undo his shoes.
How often have I wished I could take my intellect and throw it into
the Ganges!' `But, Swami,' a lady remarked, `that is the part of you I
like best.' To which Swamiji replied, `That is because you are a fool,
Madam-like I am: ‘"24 It was this "like I am" spoken in all sincerity
that made his love so accessible, his friendship so secure.
When one considers Swamiji's classes at Turk Street, one marvels
at the picture that rises to mind. Here was this world teacher whom
one can place beside the greatest "Messengers" mankind has known,
sitting in a poor flat half a world away from his homeland, training a
small group of "spiritual babies" to take the first steps along the
Himalayan climb to liberation! He taught them with infinite care and
love, lavishing upon them the warmth of his heart, joking with them
to ease tension, rebuking them when necessary, assuring them of his
protection when they grew afraid, and in every mood, with every
word and in every silence pouring upon them his grace. He held back
nothing, except perhaps the full force of his power, lest it overwhelm
them.

There is little doubt that Swamiji held many private interviews at

his Turk Street flat, for many of the men and women who attended
his classes would surely have wanted to discuss#

12
their personal problems and experiences with him and to learn more
of how they could spiritualize their individual lives. But among those
who availed of the opportunity to talk to him privately only two
people wrote their memoirs. One, of course, was Frank Rhodehamel.
Mr. Rhodehamel evidently had several interviews with Swamiji
and found him "the ideal host, entering into conversation, argument
or story-telling, not only without restraint, but with apparent
enjoyment." To judge from the fragments of conversation that
Rhodehamel recalled in his memoirs (as published in the Life), he
could ask questions that poked, as it were, at the honeycomb and that
drew forth Swamiji's views on many subjects:
"Speaking of spiritual training for the mind," Rhodehamel wrote,
"he said, `The less you read the better. What are books but the
vomitings of other men's minds? Why fill your mind with a load of
stuff you will have to get rid of? Read the Gita and other good works
on Vedanta. That is all you need.' Then again: `The present system of
education is all wrong. The mind is crammed with facts before it
knows how to think. Control of the mind should be taught first. If I
had my education to get over again, and had any voice in the matter, I
would learn to master my mind first, and then gather facts, if I
wanted them. It takes people a long time to learn things because they
can't concentrate their minds at will. . . . People are always suffering
because they can't control their minds. To give an illustration, though
a rather crude one: A man has trouble with his wife. She leaves him
and goes with other men. She's a terror! But, poor fellow, he can't
take his mind away from her, and so he suffers.'
"I asked him to explain why the practice of begging, common
among religious mendicants, was not opposed to renunciation. He
replied, `It is a question of the mind. If the mind anticipates, and is
affected by the results-that is bad, no doubt. The giving and receiving
of alms should be free; otherwise it is not renunciation. If you should
put a hundred dollars on that
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table for me, and should expect me to thank you for it you could take
it away again. I would not touch it. My living was provided for
before I came here, before I was born. I have no concern about it.
Whatever belongs to a man he will get. It was ready for him before he
was born.'
"To the question, `What do you think about the Immaculate
Conception [Virgin Birth] of Jesus?' he replied: `That is an old claim.
There have been many in India who have claimed that. I don't know
anything about it. But for my part, I am glad that I had a natural
father and mother.' `But isn't such a theory opposed to the law of
nature?' I ventured. `What is nature to the Lord? It is all His play,' he
replied as he knocked the ash from his pipe against the heel of his
slipper, regardless of the carpeted floor. Then blowing through the
stem to clear it, he continued, `We are slaves of nature. The Lord is
the Master of nature. He can do as He pleases. He can take one or a
dozen bodies at a time, if He chooses, and in any way He chooses.
How can we limit Him?"'
But what made the most profound impression on Mr. Rhodehamel
was not so much Swamiji's conversation during those interviews as
Swamiji himself. "What remains vivid," he wrote more than ten years
later, "is the contact with the great Sannyasin-the impressions and
impetus received which refuses to be less than the greatest experience
in life."25
Edith Allan, the wife of Thomas Allan, was the other person who
we know talked privately with Swamiji. As the reader may
remember, we left Mrs. Allan on the eve of her first interview.
"Come tomorrow morning," he had said. "Much of the night was
spent thinking of all the questions I should ask him," Mrs. Allan
recalled in her memoirs, "as many questions had been troubling me
for months and no one to whom I had gone was able to help me." 26
She was then thirty-five years old, a slender, near beautiful woman,
who looked younger than her years. A photograph taken of her about
two years after she had met Swamiji shows her singing in the choir
of the Home of Truth in Alameda and looking like a half wistful, half
willful#

14
college girl with an untroubled oval face and a wealth of dark hair
drawn back loosely and simply. Possibly she looked even younger
and more immature when Swamiji first saw her, certainly more
fragile and less serene. At that time she had been ill, physically and
mentally, for a year or two and, as she said, had nowhere found relief
In the words of a rough draft of her memoirs, she "had played with
fire and got into a psychic condition,"27 or, as I have heard from a
reliable source, she had dabbled in occultism and had suffered a
nervous collapse. This was precisely the sort of trouble that Swamiji
had often warned against during his first visit to the West, and there
is no question that, as Mrs. Allan had sat in Washington Hall waiting
for her husband to count the ticket money, he had recognized at a
glance her difficulty and her need for help. Thus he had called her to
him.
Mrs. Allan arrived at the Turk Street flat at the appointed time
(nine o'clock, according to one account) on what must have been the
morning of March 10. When the door was opened by its upstairs
lever and she asked to see the Swami, she was told from the top of
the stairs (by either Mrs. Hansbrough or Mrs. Aspinall) that he was
on his way out and could 1ee no one. A person less in need would
have perhaps turned away, but Edith Allan stood her ground. "I know
he will see me," she said, "because he told me to come." The logic of
this being unassailable, she was asked to come upstairs, was shown
into the front parlor, given a chair by the bay window, and told to
wait. And to be sure, Swamiji soon entered. He was dressed for the
street in his long overcoat and round black turban, and he was
chanting softly. He sat on a chair on the opposite side of the room (or,
as another account has it, on the other side of the bay window) . "He
continued chanting softly," Mrs. Allan recalled, "in his incomparable
way." Presently he said, "Well, madam!"
"I could not speak," she related, "but began to weep and kept on
weeping as though the floodgates had been opened." He let her weep
on and on-"for about half an hour," she
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once recalled; and when the purging flood of tears had subsided a
little, he said, "Come tomorrow about the same time." That was all.
"As I went from his presence," she recalled years later in her
reminiscences, "my problems were solved and my questions were
answered, though he had not asked me anything. ["When I went out
onto the street, each cobblestone looked like an opal," she told a
friend. "Somehow, I got home."] 28 It is now over twenty-four years
since that interview with the Swami, yet it stands out in memory as
the greatest blessing of my life."29
She came the following morning and perhaps one or two mornings
after that. At these subsequent interviews Swamiji gave her some
spiritual instruction. "He told me how to meditate," she once said,
"and he also taught me some simple breathing exercises, although he
warned me never to practice them except in his presence." 30 But
shortly, as we have seen, other people discovered the Turk Street flat
(through her, Mrs. Allan used to say) ; others asked for interviews,
the morning class was started, and, to her great regret, her private
sessions with Swamiji came to an end.
Yet he continued to be extremely gracious to her. According to
Mrs. Ansell's account of Mrs. Allan's memories, he invited her to
stay to lunch only on the day of his last class, but according to Mrs.
Allan's own written account, which is clearer on this point in its
rough form than in the published version, she "had the advantage of
being with Swamiji every day for a month while he was in San
Francisco and after that in Alameda another month."31 Perhaps on
some of these days Swamiji spoke only briefly to her; but more than
once he would invite her to stay for lunch after the class and would
let her help him in the kitchen "peeling onions and potatoes" while he
engaged in his favorite task of cooking some spicy dish. (Potatoes
were not always an ingredient. "In the Turk Street apartment," Mrs.
Hansbrough once said, "he often cooked palao, that rich dish made
with rice and meat.")32 To be in the kitchen with Swamiji was a
privilege not afforded to everyone. The story
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16
goes that one day Mrs. Aspinall entered with the information that
Miss Lydia Bell, the heavyset, somewhat opinionated head of the
California Street Home of Truth, wanted to stay for lunch. "All
right," Swamiji said, "she can stay"-for he liked Miss Bell. "But keep
her out of the kitchen!"33 There was, actually, no reason for Miss Bell
to be in the kitchen with Swamiji; but for Mrs. Allan those relaxed
hours in his company were a deeply needed, deeply healing balm.
In one of the rough drafts of her memoirs, which are preserved in
the archives of the Vedanta Society of Northern California and some
portions, of which are not found elsewhere, one comes upon snatches
of Swamiji's talk during these happy times: "In the kitchen at Turk
Street while cooking," she wrote, "he talked Philosophy, chanted
verse 61, Chapter 18, of the Gita, `The Lord dwells in the hearts of
all beings, O Arjuna, by His illusive power causing all beings to
revolve at though mounted on a potter's wheel.' `This has all
happened before,' he said. `Like the throw of dice, so it is in life; the
wheel goes on and the same combination comes up; that pitcher and
glass have stood there before, so, too, that onion and potato. What
can we do, Madam, He has us on the wheel of Life.‘
"He longed to be free of the body. `I have to come back once '
more,' he said. `The Master said I am to come back once more with
him.' `You have to come back because Sri Ramakrishna says so?' I
asked. `Souls like that have great power, Madam,' he replied." (In
Pasadena, Swamiji had made a similar statement. "It was probably
during an after-lunch conversation when he was walking up and
down the living room," Mrs. Hansbrough recalled, "that Swamiji told
us, `The Master said he would come again in about two hundred
years-and I will come with him. When a Master comes, he brings his
own people‘‖)34
Once Mrs. Allan asked Swamiji about his triumphant reception
when he returned to India in 1897, which she had no doubt read about
in the newspapers. But he was always loath
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17
to speak of honor paid to himself. "Madam," he said, "I never felt
such a fool." Possessions distressed him as much as fame. "He had a
trunk with clothes, books, etc.," Mrs. Allan's draft continues. " `I am
ashamed to have a trunk,' he said. `I am a Sannyasin.' And he quoted
from his poem, The Song of the Sannyasin, `Have thou no home.
What home can hold thee, friend? The sky thy roof, the grass thy bed.
. . .' " (He was perhaps more burdened than ashamed to have a trunk.
"About his clothes," Mrs. Hansbrough recalled, "he used to say, `In
India I can exist on hips and haws and live in rags, but here I want to
meet your demands.' ")35
When Swamiji moved in April to the Alameda Home of Truth,
Mrs. Allan continued to see him every day-more easily now, as she
was living in Alameda at the time-and again she could be with him
in the kitchen when, on Sunday afternoons, he would cook for
himself (not for the whole household, as Miss Ansell has it in her
published memoirs). Here he set her again to various tasks and shared
with her his Hindu dishes.
"He was so many-sided," Mrs. Allan's draft continued, "wonderful
beyond description. All things to all men; he was all the four Yogas.
Sometimes the Vedanta lion, sometimes like a child; to me he was
always the patient and loving parent. Nothing was too small for his
notice and interest-such love as cannot be comprehended; he always
listened. He told me not to call him Swami, but to call him `Babaji,'
as the children did in India."
But there was a line between informality and familiarity that
Swamiji never crossed. He was ever the patient father, but to
behavior that carried overtones, however unconscious, of femininity
he simply did not respond. One Sunday when he was happily
preparing a dish in the Home of Truth kitchen, some butter splattered
from a frying pan onto Mrs. Allan's dress-a new green dress that she
was wearing proudly for the first time, its splendor uneclipsed by
anything like an apron. "I carried on at a great rate over this tragedy,"
she recalled, "but
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Swamiji continued chanting, going about his work without taking the
slightest notice. Later a friend sponged the spots with gasoline, and
they completely disappeared. I felt like a fool." 36
Once Swamiji and Mrs. Allan walked to an Alameda store for
pickles. These were kept in a big tub of brine and were ladled for
customers into dishes of paper-thin wood. On the way back some
brine spilled onto Swamiji's hand. Promptly and with delight he
licked his fingers. "Oh Swami!" Mrs. Allan cried, shocked at conduct
so undignified. "Madam," he retorted quickly, "you always want this
little outside to be so nice. That's the trouble with you here. It is not
the outside that matters, it is the inside." 37
One could not be long with Swamiji without absorbing one lesson
after another, but "he was fun all the time," Mrs. Allan said, and
certainly he was never "long-faced." "Should you see anyone with a
long, sad face," Mr. Allan quoted him, "you may know that he has
not got religion, but he may have the stomachache." In the kitchen his
counsel went on, vibrant with life. "If I consider myself greater than
the ant that crawls on the ground I am ignorant," he once said. 38 And
again, Madam, be broad-minded; always see two ways. When I am
on the heights I say `Shivoham, Shivoham; I am He, I am He!' And
when I have the stomachache I say, `Mother have mercy on me!' "39
Or he told her, "Learn to be the witness. If two dogs are fighting on
the street and I go out there, I get mixed up in the fight, but if I stay
quietly in my room I witness the fight from the window. So learn to
be the witness."40
"I don't think that way," Mrs. Allan would sometimes say Swamiji
gave her such jewels. Whereupon he would laugh. "Don't you,
madam? Well, that's fine."41 But many years later she was to
remember and cherish his words. "How we understood Swamiji!" she
wrote then. "We had no knowledge of what he really was-the
mouthpiece of the Lord Himself!‖ 42 Yet even if Mrs. Allan's
conscious mind did know who this was who at her first meeting with
him had
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19
answered all her unspoken questions in silence, who had restored her
to health, who told jokes in one breath and chanted the Gita in the
next, who walked like a king and licked his fingers like a child, a
deeper part of her mind knew. She who had barely been able to drag
herself to hear him the first time, attended all his subsequent lectures,
as well as his classes. There was no getting enough of him. "But it
was the close contact with the Swami that I most deeply cherish," 43
she wrote years later. And to a friend she once said, "He was
kindness itself to me. Most people emphasize his great power, the
side of him that was so awe-inspiring. But there was this other side to
him -his great love. He was like the most tender and loving
mother."44 "Before he left California," she said another time, "he told
me that if I ever got into psychic difficulty again, or any other kind of
trouble, to call on him and he would hear me wherever he was. I've
had occasion to take advantage of his promise many times." 45

But we were speaking of the interviews Swamiji gave at his Turk

Street flat. Although we know only of those he gave to Mr.
Rhodehamel and Mrs. Allan, he must have seen other people
privately and have given spiritual instruction to at least a Few. Yet, to
our knowledge, none of those who had known him and who
continued to study and practice Vedanta after he left considered
themselves to be his disciples. Many were to take initiation from
either Swami Turiyananda or Swami Trigunatita: Mr. Rhodehamel,
for instance, from the former; Mr. and Mrs. Allan from the latter. One
wonders why this was so. The thing that concerns us here is not, of
course, the spiritual lives of these people, but what constituted being
a disciple of Swamiji.
That he made thousands of disciples in the West is certain; for he
himself said so. "Well, Swamiji, how many disciples have you in the
West?" a man once asked him in Calcutta. "Two
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20
or three thousand?" "Maybe more than that," Swamiji replied. "Are
they all initiated by you with Mantras?" the questioner continued.
"Yes," Swamiji replied. "Did you give them permission to utter
Pranava (Om) ?" "Yes," Swamiji replied again.
(It is interesting to note in passing that the questioner, a high-caste
Hindu by the name of Priya Nath Sinha, was much alarmed to learn
this. "How did you, Maharaj?" he exclaimed. "They say that the
Shudras have no right to Pranava, and none has except the
Brahmanas. Moreover, the Westerners are Mlechchhas [barbarians],
not even Shudras!" During the remainder of this conversation, an
account of which is given in volume five of the Complete Works,
Swamiji explained to Mr. Sinha's satisfaction that true
Brahmanahood was not a matter of birth but of a sattvika, or spiritual,
quality of mind. "My disciples are all Brahmanas!" he declared.)46
When we consider how many thousands of people Swamiji came
in contact with throughout his tours in the Western world, the number
of men and women he initiated does not seem large. But when we
consider the number of Westerners known to have been his disciples,
then it seems large indeed, for we know of only a handful. The fact
seems to be that there was a certain distinction, which Swamiji
himself made, between hit disciples. In Sister Christine's memoirs
one reads: "Unless the desire for discipleship was definitely
expressed, and unless he was convinced that the aspirant was ready
for the step, he left the personal life of those around him untouched. .
. . When speaking of some of those whom we did not know, he was
careful to explain, `He is not a disciple; he is a friend.' It was an
altogether different relation. Friends might have obvious faults and
prejudices. Friends might have a narrow outlook, might be quite
conventional, but it was not for him to interfere. It seemed as if even
an opinion where it touched the lives of others, was an unpardonable
intrusion upon their privacy. But once having accepted him as their
guru, all that was changed. He felt responsible. He deliberately
attacked foibles,
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prejudices, valuations-in fact everything that went to make up the
personal self."47
It was clearly this kind of discipleship to which Swamiji was
referring when he was to say to a group who had gathered around
him one balmy moonlight evening in Alameda, "If you want to be my
disciples, you must face the cannon without a murmur."48 And one
remembers that in 1897 when he was about to give initiation to the
young man Saratchandra Chakravarty, he put to him a few pointed
questions which bore upon discipleship of this type: "Well, are you
ready to do my bidding to your utmost, whatever it be and whenever
it may come? If I ask you to plunge into the Ganges or to jump from
the roof of a house, meaning it all for your good, could you do even
that without any hesitation? Just think of it even now, otherwise don't
rush forward on the spur of the moment to accept me as your guru."49
That was one kind of discipleship; and we know of only a few
instances in which he bestowed it in the West. At Thousand Island
Park he gave the final monastic vows to a man and a woman (who
thereby became Swami Kripananda and Swami Abhayananda) and
the vows of brahmacharya-the first vows -to five others, one of whom
was Christina Greenstidel (Sister Christine). According to Miss Ellen
Waldo's memoirs, the remaining five students at Thousand Island
Park (there had been twelve in all) took initiation in New York City,
"together with several others of the Swami's disciples there."50 It was
in February of 1896 that he gave these further initiations. In a letter to
the Brahmavadin, Swami Kripananda reported that on Thursday,
February 13, Swamiji had given sannyasa to a Dr. Street "in the
presence of the other sannyasins and a number of brahmacharins,"
and that the following Thursday he gave diksha, or initiation with a
mantra, to several young men and women. 51 We know also that
sometime during this same month he gave brahmacharya to Josiah J.
Goodwin-"the shorthandist," as Swami Kripananda sometimes called
him.52 These are the only instances of formal initiation given in the
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22
West by Swamiji that we know of. They took place with a simple
ceremony in the presence of others; they were not all monastic
initiations, but they all seem to have been given to people whom he
expected to become dedicated workers, even teachers.
How many other people in the various places Swamiji visited,
such as Boston, Detroit, Chicago, London, received a formal
initiation from him, we do not know, but it would seem likely that
there were some. Captain and Mrs. Sevier, for instance, became his
disciples in London and gave themselves to his work. Sister Nivedita
was, of course, a disciple in the most rigorous sense of the word,
though her initiation took place not in the West but in India.
But it was not only disciples of this kind to whom Swamiji was
referring when he spoke of having initiated more than three thousand
Westerners-Brahmins all. There was the far larger group, or
multitude, of "friends," to some of whom he had surely given
informal initiation and whom he did indeed count among his
disciples. As examples, one could cite Miss MacLeod and her friend
Dora Roethlesberger, who both, according to Miss MacLeod's
reminiscences, received spiritual instruction from Swamiji. "Meditate
on the word `Om' for a week and come again and tell me," he
instructed them when they had asked him how to meditate. In a week
they returned to report. "I see a light," Mrs. Roethlesberger told him.
"Good," Swamiji said; "keep on." Miss MacLeod said her own
experience was "more like a glow at the heart." To this Swamiji also
said, "Good, keep on." "That is all he ever taught me," she wrote. 53
But whether she knew it or not-and she did not know it, declaring
always that she was not his disciple in any sense, but his friend-this
from Swamiji was initiation.*
To how many thousands of people Swamiji gave a similar
informal, undeclared, and apparently casual initiation, we have no
way of knowing. His "maybe more than [three thousand]" puts no
ceiling on the number. And then, this kind of initiation was, one
thinks, generally so lacking in any kind
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23
of ceremony or deliberation that often the recipient had not the
faintest idea that he had received from Swamiji a blessing that was
sufficient forever and that would eventually bear fruit as tangible as
the amalaka in the hand.
It would seem that in giving informal initiation Swamiji seldom
said anything about discipleship, its prerequisites and responsibilities.
He gave his blessings, gave, perhaps, some spiritual instructions, took
upon himself the burdens of those who had come to him, and went on
his way, demanding nothing, neither obedience, acceptance of his
teachings, nor loyalty. Not even an interview was necessary. With
one penetrating look he could know all that was essential to know
about any individual. Perhaps he did not even prescribe a mantra.
Could he not, with a glance or a touch, transmit the spiritual impetus
that would thenceforth work its miracle in the life of the recipient,
carrying him quickly to liberation? "The human teacher," Sri
Ramakrishna once said, "whispers the mantra in the ear of the
disciple; the World Teacher puts it in his heart"54 In speaking of
initiation with a mantra, Swamiji himself once said, "With great
teachers the use of words is not necessary-as with Jesus. But the
`small fry' transmit this current through words." 55 Needless to say,
Swamiji Has a world teacher, a jagadguru; his was the power to
transmit spiritual energy directly; this was, indeed, a vital part of his
mission. "The touch of the guru, the transmittal of spiritual energy,
will quicken your heart," he said during his lecture "Discipleship" in
San Francisco. "Then will begin the growth. That is the real baptism
by fire. No more stopping. You go on and go on."56 From Swamiji,
the baptism by fire was sometimes as silent, as imperceptible, but as
irreversible, as the first touch of spring.
One remembers those many people in the West whom he loved
and who had served him, but to whom he does not seem to have
given any formal initiation. To mention only a few, there were
Professor John Henry Wright, the Hale and McKindley sisters, Mrs.
John Bagley, the Guernseys, Mr. and
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24
Mrs. Francis Leggett, Dr. Lewis G. Janes, Mrs. Hansbrough, and her
sisters. None of these people had become his disciples in the cannon-
facing sense. But can we think that he did not take them into his
protection once and for all, that he did not baptize them by fire, that
he did not, in short, become their guru ?
There were, then, disciples and disciples-some who understood
their spiritual relationship with him, many more who did not; but all
were his own. Was there a greater blessing given to the one than to
the other? Who could know the answer to this? "There is no condition
in grace," Swamiji once said to his disciple Chakravarty. "It is as His
play or sport. All this creation of the universe is like His play. `It is
the pure delight of sport, as in the case of men.' Is it not possible for
Him who creates and destroys the universe as if in play to grant
salvation by grace to the greatest sinner? But then it is just His
pleasure, His play, to get somebody through the practice of spiritual
discipline and somebody else without it." "Sir," the disciple said, "I
can't understand this." "And you needn't," Swamiji replied. 57
So if we ask if Swamiji made disciples in California, the answer I
should think would be, in one sense, no; in another sense, yes. In the
latter sense one might say that all the members of his Turk Street
class-those with whom he meditated and to whom he gave a glimpse
of superconsciousness that would ever after be pursued-were his
disciples. That they may have been unaware of it made not the
slightest difference.

According to Mrs. Hansbrough, Swamiji's daily routine in San

Francisco was more or less the same as it had been in Pasadena. After
lunch, on days when there had been a morning : class and were to be
no engagements in the early afternoon, he would take a nap for about
two hours. (He always slept quietly, she said.) Later in the day he
would perhaps hold an advanced class or give an interview or two.
Or, if there were no
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25
afternoon class and no visitors, he would read, or study French, or
talk casually to Mrs. Hansbrough and Mrs. Aspinall. "He was a great
one to think out loud when he was at home," Mrs. Hansbrough said.
"At least, one had the feeling that this is what he was doing. He liked
a listener, however. He would ask us many questions about our
family lives, and then would tell us about family life in India. . . . He
always talked in a low tone of voice. Even in private conversation he
was always a calm man---except [as she well knew] when he was
giving someone a dressing down."58
Sometimes he spoke of Sri Ramakrishna. "He always spoke of his
Master as `Atmaram,' " she said. "Whenever there were difficulties he
would say, `Well, if things do not go well, we will wake up
Atmaram."' Or sometimes he would speak intimately of himself and
his mission. On a sheet of foolscap paper Mrs. Hansbrough later
wrote out for the Allans the following deeply personal words, which
surely Swamiji had spoken at a time when no strangers were present:
"The Mother dropped me in a strange world," he said, "among a
strange people who do not understand me and whom I do not
understand. But the longer I stay here I have come to feel that some
of the people in the West whom I have met belong to me, and they
also are here to serve with me in the work assigned to me.
"There is none with whom I can speak of the Beloved, not one.
You do not know, you cannot imagine the loneliness of it. This is
how I felt in Chicago.
"I am here to serve the Mother and to give the message which I
came into the world to give."
"He talked a great deal of the Divine Mother," Mrs. Hansbrough
wrote on the same sheet of paper. "He said that She was the
receptacle of every germ of religion, and that She was here as a form,
but was not tied to that form. She had Her desires, he said, but they
were related to people. She would reach for people, though they did
not know it, and gradually She would draw them to Her."
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26
 Again, " `This world is a huge sore,' he said, `and we are wounded
with that deceitful soreness, that untrueness of the world's disease.
We have that in ourselves and will not admit that we have it. We live
to gloss it over and throw flowers over the wound to hide it from our
eyes.' "59
In a somewhat disconnected and enigmatic passage of her
"Reminiscences," Mrs. Hansbrough recalled that Swamiji "said many
seemingly contradictory things." "For example, he said of his lectures
and work, `I have been saying these things before, over and over
again.' In the Turk Street flat one day he said, `There is no
Vivekananda,' and again, `Do not ask these questions while you have
this Maya mixed up with your understanding.' "
Swamiji's talks in the privacy of the flat were not all in the nature
of thinking out loud, nor were they always calm. Mrs. Hansbrough,
whom he still called Madam Moses, would sometimes argue with
him, would persistently question something about the way he was
handling the work, would perhaps handle it herself in a way not to his
liking, or would fail to attend to some detail. His work was not an
ordinary work to be done in an ordinary way; nor, to his mind, was
any work an ordinary work. Even in so small a matter as cleaning a
bathtub, he demanded a certain elegance, one might say a certain rev-
erence, of action.
"He often scolded me," Mrs. Hansbrough related. "He was
constantly finding fault and sometimes he could be very rough.
`Mother brings me fools to work with,' he would say; or, `I have to
associate with fools!' This was his favorite word in his vocabulary of
scolding."
Swamiji; however, varied his choice of words to suit the
circumstances. "Going up the steps of a hall in San Francisco before
one of his lectures," Mrs. Hansbrough recounted, "he asked me about
something I had told him I was going to do. I had neglected to take
care of it, and told him I had intended to do it, but had not. `Your
intentions are good,' he remarked, `but how like devils you act!' "#

27
 Mrs. Hansbrough stood up to Swamiji's vocabulary of scolding
with a staunchness and lack of complexity that he; must have liked.
"You have no reverence!" he once said to her but this, in respect to
himself, was as he wanted it. "Swamiji had such simplicity about
him," she later told Miss Ansell, "he put one right on a level with
himself."60 "Somehow," she recalled of his scoldings, "I never felt
hurt. I would get angry and sometimes would walk out of the room,
but usually I was able to hear him through. . . . Once in the Turk
Street flat I was dusting after breakfast in the dining room. As I
worked, Swamiji was talking about something. I don't remember now
what it was or what answer I gave. But suddenly he exclaimed, `You
are a silly, brainless fool, that's what you are!' He continued to scold
me heatedly until Mrs. Aspinall appeared, and he stopped. I said to
him, `Never mind Mrs. Aspinall, Swami; if you're not through, just
keep right on!'
"There was the other side, however," she continued. "Though he
himself said, `I never apologize,' he would nevertheless come after
the scolding was over to find me, and he would say in a voice so
gentle and with a manner so cool that butter and honey wouldn't melt
in his mouth, `What are you doing?' It was clear that he was seeking
to make amends for the scolding. He used to say, `The people I love
most, I scold most,' and I remember thinking he was making a poor
kind of apology!
"And he could give credit, too, when he chose," she added. "On
the evening we left the Turk Street flat to go to the Alameda Home of
Truth, he was helping me on with my overcoat and remarked, `Well,
you have worked like a demon!' " And this, of course, Swamiji had
appreciated all along. On March 17 he had written to Mrs. Leggett:
"Mrs. Hansbrough, the second of the three [Mead] sisters is here, and
she is working, working, working-to help me. Lord bless their hearts.
The three sisters are three angels, are they not? Seeing such souls
here and there repays for all the nonsense of this life."61
Mrs. Hansbrough, in turn, knew that however hard Swamiji
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28
may have scolded, he was grace itself. "He would not have held onto
me as he did if he had not been so gracious," she once said, recalling
how she had often felt she must return to Pasadena to be with her
small daughter Dorothy. "One day while we were in San Francisco,"
she related, "I finally decided that I was going back to Los Angeles. I
chose the day and had all my bags packed, ready to leave for the
train. All at once I heard a voice say, `You can't go. You might just as
well not try.' And for some reason I became completely exhausted-so
exhausted that I had to lie down on the floor. I thought of getting
some food, but I couldn't move. And I couldn't bear to look ac the
suitcases. So I had to make up my mind not to go. Swamiji had not
said anything to me," she added. "I don't know whose was the voice I
heard speaking to me."
In regard to Mrs. Hansbrough's attachment to her little daughter,
however, Swamiji did indeed say something to her. Years later she
wrote down his words for the Allans: "You think you love your child.
That is not love at all! It is the same as a hen has for her chicken; she
will scratch all day to get food for her chicks, but let a strange chick
come in and what will she do?"
Aside from being Swamiji's secretary and, with Mrs. Aspinall, his
housekeeper, Mrs. Hansbrough was his press agent, treasurer,
bookkeeper, and banker. From flat to lecture hall and back, and also,
it would seem, at various other times, she would carry a "black case"-
possibly a small suitcase-which held "my notebooks, advertising
matter, the collection or ticket money, and other things connected
with the work." Mrs. Hansbrough and her black case became a
familiar, and according to one report, not always a fond sight to the
members of Swamiji's audiences. "One woman," she said, "told
someone that she did not like Swami Vivekananda because of the
thin little woman who was always running along behind him with the
black case." That was a pity; but an even greater disaster once nearly
occurred in connection with the black case. "One day Swamiji and I
stopped in a market to do some shopping,"
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29
Mrs. Hansbrough recounted, "and when we had gone out I discovered
I had left the case. I said, `Just a minute, I forgot something,' and
rushed back. There was the case, sitting on the counter. It had three
hundred dollars in it!"
That three hundred dollars, which Mrs. Hansbrough was perhaps
taking to the bank to have changed, as was her wont, into twenty-
dollar gold pieces, would have represented more than the admission
to one lecture-series plus the collection from a Sunday lecture-more
than a long week's work possibly more than two weeks' work.
Swamiji charged nothing for his Turk Street classes, for there he gave
spiritual instruction directly. He put his pay lectures in a different
category. "Once after we had moved to the Turk Street flat," Mrs.
Hansbrough related, "a woman said something to Swamiji about his
teaching religion. He looked at her and replied, `Madam, I am not
teaching religion. I am selling my brain for money to help my people.
If you get some benefit from it, that is good; but I am not teaching
religion!"' Another time at the flat, Mrs. Hansbrough recalled, Mrs.
Aspinall told him that he really should not charge admission to his
lectures. "God will provide," she said. "Madam," Swamiji answered,
"God has made a mess of everything. I am trying to straighten it out."

Swamiji did not spend all his time in San Francisco in either his
flat or a lecture hall. "When he had no class in the morning we would
often go out during the day," Mrs. Hansbrough related. "He liked to
go to market with me, and sometimes we would go out for lunch or
go for a ride in Golden Gate Park, which he enjoyed." They went on
other excursions as well, and generally would travel by cable car, by
which one could reach almost any point in the city. "Swamiji would
always sit very straight on the streetcar," Mrs. Hansbrough recalled,
"with his hands one on top of the other on the walking stick he
carried. He would often sing on the car in a low tone of voice."62 To
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visualize Swamiji on a San Fransisco streetcar, one should remember
that more likely than not he would be wearing his black coat with its
frog fastenings, a clerical collar, and a round black hat. One should
also remember that in those days the streetcars had two long,
varnished wood benches that, facing each other, ran the length of the
enclosed part of the car. The cable cars were (and still are) also
equipped with outside benches that faced the street, providing an
unobstructed view of the passing scene. Sitting beside Swamiji would
be Mrs. Hansbrough wearing in the fashion of the day a ground-
sweeping skirt, fitted jacket, and a perky, perhaps feather adorned,
hat. At times she would have firmly in hand the black case.
Because of the ease with which Swamiji could get lost in a city or
lose all track of time, he seldom went out alone. Another reason he
liked company was that his dark skin and unusual dress were apt to
excite violent expressions of hostility. Swamiji's early experience in
America had taught him that the American was likely to attack
anyone different from himself, anyone obviously a stranger.
Particularly was this true of European immigrants of the lower
classes, those who not long before had themselves been strangers in
the land. But he had also found that no matter how rough and tough
an American might be in defending himself and his country against a
man in strange garb, he would never show disrespect to a woman.
"Swamiji spoke more than once of the indignities to which he had
been subjected in the West," Mrs. Hansbrough once recalled. "It was
because of the constant possibility of some unpleasant occurrence
that he always preferred to have a woman escort. He said that people
would respect the women where they would not respect him. Once in
San Francisco when I was taking him somewhere into a rather rough
part of the city on a call which escapes my memory now, some
rowdies made slighting remarks about him which he overheard. He
said nothing, but after we had gone he remarked, `If you had not been
along, they would have thrown things at me.'
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 "He mentioned that well-known incident in Chicago when a man
came up and pulled his robe and asked him why he wore his
nightgown in public. He was deeply offended by such rudeness on
the part of the American public. `A man could walk the length of
India in any kind of dress and such a thing would not happen to him,'
he said."
One of the places to which Swamiji may have sometimes gone
alone, however, was Chinatown. He particularly liked to visit this
quarter of the city, which in 1900 occupied some twelve square
blocks on the lower eastern slope of Nob Hill and which was in many
respects more genuinely Chinese than it is today. Architecturally, it is
true, Chinatown consisted for the most part of old two- and three-
story brick buildings, dismal, unlovely, and as Western as the Boston
traders who had built them earlier in the century. But the Chinese
who had taken them over had managed to put their own colorful and
graceful stamp on this basic drabness. They painted the window-
frames and doorjambs bright yellow, orange, crimson, or blue. They
filled the balconies and fire escapes with porcelain pots of China
lilies; they hung huge, balloonlike lanterns everywhere, brightened
the walls with bold red or black ideographs and made works of art
out of their displays of goods. The streets were lively bazaars of
sidewalk shops and stalls. There were markets with exotic vegetables,
shark fins, ancient eggs encased in mud, birds' nests for soup, live,
squawking fowl; there were sedately elegant shops where one could
find exquisite works of art, and dignified chemist shops with tiered
rows of red-lacquer boxes filled with medicinal herbs, dried sea
horses, or powdered deer horn. Indoors or out, artisans jewelers,
lantern-makers, chaircaners, chandlers-plied their crafts in full view.
There were many richly decorated temples or, as they were called,
joss houses, where various minor gods and goddesses were
worshiped and prayed to. There was a theater where stylized dramas
went on interminably, and luxurious restaurants that served quantities
of excellent and extraordinary food.
Despite the Exclusion Act of 1882, the district was still
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thickly populated, and this mostly by men from Canton who had
come to America during the sixties and seventies, thinking to make
their fortunes as laborers on the railroads. Men from a higher class
had also come; but none, high or low, dreamed of adopting Western
clothes or ways. Their blue denim or black alpaca trousers and
jackets or their more elegant plum colored coats of quilted silk, their
broad-brimmed black felt fedoras or round skull caps from which
would hang a long queue (or under which one would be coiled),
added as much distinctive charm to the district as did their composed
pursuit of ancient customs. The women whom one saw in the streets
were mostly sturdy Cantonese serving women, wearing trousers and
jackets; but now and then, supported by an attendant, a delicately
formed lady of the upper classes-the wife perhaps of some rich
merchant-would teeter along on tiny, deformed feet, carrying a
sandalwood fan and wearing a gown of pastel silk, richly
embroidered with a garden of color.
To the Western ear, eye and mind, the district was a world apart,
and it was a world predominantly sinister-a world of eerie heathen
rites, opium dens, traffic in slave girls, tong wars and assassinations,
and imminent bubonic plague. This image of Chinatown was
pleasurably tingling to the late-nineteenth-century spine, and most
pleasurably tingling of all was the firm belief in the existence of a
labyrinthine underground city, said to extend seven or eight levels
below the street and to contain in its shadowy dens and twisting
tunnels corresponding depths of evil.
The aura of mystery and lurking peril that made Chinatown a
place of fascination for the average San Franciscan would, of course,
have had no meaning for Swamiji. The Chinatown he saw and liked
to visit was undoubtedly the Chinatown of a cheerful and reserved
people, whose age-old traditions, customs, and modes of life would
have deeply interested him, as did everything connected with
mankind's endlessly inventive cultures. The Chinese were, in turn,
fascinated by Swamiji. The import of his majestic walk and
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luminous glance would not have been lost on this ancient people:
they no doubt recognized him as a holy man from India-a land
revered by the Chinese for well over a thousand years for its religion
and its sages. "They would just flock after him," Mrs. Hansbrough
recounted, " `shaking themselves by the hand,' as the saying went, to
express their pleasure at his presence."
Nothing remains of Chinatown as Swamiji saw it; it was totally
destroyed by the disaster of 1906. Only the walls and granite steps of
Old St. Mary's Church, which stood, as it stands today, at the south
portal of the district, are substantially the same as they were-which is
more than can be said of almost any other downtown San Francisco
building that Swamiji might have passed by or entered.
According to Mrs. Hansbrough's account another place Swamiji
liked to visit was Golden Gate Park-the great park of San Francisco
whose thousand or so acres form a rectangle three-quarters of a mile
wide and over four miles long, running from the shore of the Pacific
to approximately the geographical center of the city. In 1900 the Park
had by no means achieved its present forest-like luxury of growth. Its
innumerable trees and bushes were still relatively short and slender,
and from almost every point there were unobstructed views. But the
Park's basic plan had long since been laid out, and many of its now
famous features were in existence, such as the curving roads and
bridle paths, the lakes, meadows, glades, and dells, the vast lawns and
gardens where one was free to stroll, picnic, or nap. Also existing
were the Japanese Tea Garden [not as large or ornamental as it is
today), the great glass Conservatory (with its display of rare tropical
plants and immense pond lilies), the sunken Music Concourse (still
without its monumental bandstand), a museum (an Egyptian-style
structure, since torn down), and a fairly large number of bronze
statues of famous men. On the other hand, many landmarks that
today seem primordial were not yet there: the big Dutch windmills
near the ocean had not been built, the Aquarium did not exist, and
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the Academy of Sciences Museum was located far away on Market
Street.
We have few details from Mrs. Hansbrough about Swamiji's
drives and walks in Golden Gate Park and can only conjecture that he
visited such places as the Japanese Tea Garden or the Conservatory;
we know for certain, however, that he walked on the island of
Strawberry Hill. One day when Mr. Aspinall had taken Swamiji, Mrs.
Hansbrough, and Mrs. Aspinall for a carriage drive in the Park, they
went to Stow Lake, where one could go boating or feed the swans
and wild, quacking ducks. Swamiji and Mrs. Hansbrough strolled by
the lake-which Mrs. Hansbrough mistook for "a rather swift stream"-
and crossed a bridge to the island, where after a time they became
lost "When we had left the bridge some distance behind," she related,
"and tried to discover some means of recrossing the stream, Swamiji
had realized we were on an island, and without thinking to use just
that word he tried to indicate the fact to me as he looked about for a
means of crossing. Finally when she saw that I had neither caught his
meaning nor perceived that the land was an island he remarked,
`Well, ',Madam, I am glad I haven't your brain!' "
Swamiji also visited the Cliff House, going by means of a street
car pulled along by a little steam engine through empty sand and
dunes. The Cliff House, then a world-famous restaurant housed in a
grandly spired, towered, and gabled seven story wooden chateau, sat
on the very edge of a cliff at the farthermost end of the city. From
here, as one ate lunch, one could have a wide view of the ocean and
a close view of seal Rocks, where the sea lions, then a populous and
rambunctious herd, would bark, roar, and lumber about their spray-
,drenched domain.
Whether or not Swamiji liked the Cliff House, the sea lions, or the
ocean with its long, open beach and charging, white-maned breakers,
Mrs. Hansbrough does not say. No doubt he did; for he saw,
certainly, exquisite and profound beauty in all nature. But, as he had
remarked in Pasadena, man and his
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works interested him far more than "sights." Indeed, he seems to have
cared little for places as such: no place was his home, and none was
alien to him. "He seemed like a bird in flight," Mrs. Hansbrough later
said. "He would stop here and there, with no great concern for liking
or disliking the places where he stopped."
Because of Swamiji's general indifference to sightseeing as a
pastime, it is probable that he did not go, if he could help it, on any of
the then highly popular excursions around the Bay or down the
Peninsula. But it was consistent with his interest in man that he did
go to see a ship being launched at one of the city's shipyards.
Those who have read Reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda will
remember Ida Ansell's account of this occasion, which she, in turn,
had heard from Mr. Allan. The story was, indeed, Mr. Allan's and one
that he often repeated. Therefore I shall give it here as he himself
gave it in the paper he read before the Vedanta Society in 1935. Mr.
Allan, a marine engineer, was employed at the time as a draughtsman
at the Risdon Iron and Locomotive Works in San Francisco, which
had to do with the building of ships; thus he had entree to the
shipyards of the Bay.
"One day," he related, "when the launching of a ship was
mentioned during a conversation, Swami remarked that he had never
seen a ship launched. There was to be a vessel launched in a few days
from one of the big shipyards of San Francisco, and I was able to get
passes for Swami and several others. When we got near the vessel,
the Swami noticed the platform for the launching party, and realized
that from there one could get the finest view of the proceedings. It
was necessary, however, to have a special ticket in order to go on that
platform, which was reserved for guests of the owners. There were
two guards at the approach to the platform, whose duty was to
prevent any unauthorized person from passing. Swamiji simply
walked past these guards, who made no move to stop him."63
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In one of her many letters to Swami Ashokananda, Miss Ansell adds
a charming and somehow poignant incident to this story of the ship
launching. It would seem that before Swamiji strode like a king onto
the platform, he and Mr. Allan had gone aboard the ship itself,
leaving the women of the party sitting on the dock. But Ida Ansell,
who was young and no doubt eager to see the insides of a ship,
followed haltingly after the two men. "Swamiji was so kind," she
related in her letter, "helping me over difficult places, till Mr. Allan
said, `This is no place for women,' and I returned to the dock where I
belonged."64
Swamiji was evidently impressed with the launching: "It is like
the birth of a child,"65 he said; and one wonders what ship it was that
had so auspicious a birth, but there is no knowing for certain. The
only report of a likely ship launching that can be found in the
contemporary San Francisco newspapers, or elsewhere, is of a steam
tug, said to be "sixty feet long and one of the finest craft that has been
built for many a day." This splendid tug, whose name was not given
in the newspapers, was launched at the Potrero docks (about two and
a half miles south of the Ferry Building) on Wednesday, March 14,
and, it was said, was to pass its days in ocean fishing 66 This may not
have been the ship whose birth Swamiji witnessed, but according to
the available news reports, there was none other that could have been.
In addition to going out during the day when there was no
morning or afternoon class, Swamiji went out for dinner on the rare
evenings-generally Saturdays and Sundays-when there was no
lecture. These dinings-out were not invariably successful. Once a Mr.
Charles P. Neilson, a locally well-known artist who lived in
Alameda, invited Swamiji and Mrs. Hansbrough (and perhaps the
Aspinalls), to have dinner with him at one of the excellent restaurants
in Chinatown. He had ordered the dinner in advance, and after his
guests had been seated, the cook himself came from the kitchen to
greet them. But no sooner did Swamiji see this cook than he knew he
could not partake of any of the specially prepared delicacies. There
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was no help for it. "Of course we went home," Mrs. Hansbrough
related. "Mr. Neilson was very disappointed because he knew the
Chinese who owned the restaurant; but Swamiji later explained that it
was because of the character of the cook that he was unable to eat the
food.
"One other such occurrence took place when we had fried shrimps
in a French restaurant," Mrs. Hansbrough continued. "When we got
home Swamiji vomited his dinner. I said fried shrimps were always
hard to digest and probably these were not good, but he insisted that
it was the bad character of the cook that was responsible. `I'm getting
like the Old Man,' he said. `I shall have to live in a glass cage.' " By
"the Old Man" Swamiji meant, of course, Sri Ramakrishna, who, as is
well known, could not eat or drink anything that had come in contact
with an impure person. His body would simply reject it.
Happily, Mr. Neilson had other opportunities to entertain Swamiji;
according to Mrs. Hansbrough, he was his host at dinner several
times and once took him to an exhibition of his paintings at the Mark
Hopkins Institute of Art (then a branch of the University of
California) that was housed in that mammoth, many-roofed mansion
atop Nob Hill where the Mark Hopkins Hotel now stands. It was
perhaps on this occasion that Swamiji, surveying a painting of some
corpulent monks, remarked jokingly (as Mr. Rhodehamel tells it),
"Spiritual men are fat. See how fat I am!"67
Although Swamiji had dinner on occasion with Mr. Neilson and
very likely with others, he lived as quietly as possible in San
Francisco. We do not hear of receptions or social gatherings of any
sort being held in his honor. If he was entertained formally at dinner
or supper, this, as far as is known, was always in connection with his
lectures, and it would appear from our present knowledge that he
entirely escaped public and social lionization.
This does not mean, however, that he was not urged to visit here
and there. We find that at some point during his stay in San Francisco
he spent at least two days with a Dr.
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Albert D. Hiller, a surgeon and homeopathic physician whose home
and offices were at 1011 Sutter Street, in a residential block between
Larkin and Hyde. The information that Swamiji was Dr. Hiller's guest
comes to us from the unpublished, book: length memoirs of Mrs.
Clinton French, and from one of Swamiji's letters we can infer the
approximate date of his visit, as well as learn something of the doctor
himself, of whom Swamiji writes with great humor. Upon the
enthusiastic advice of Miss MacLeod this unfortunate man had taken
his invalid wife to Los Angeles so that she could receive the magnetic
treatments of Mrs. Melton. An earlier letter of Swamiji's supplies us
with the information that on March 15 the Hillers had returned from
Los Angeles full of cheer. "They declare themselves very much
helped by Mrs. Melton," he wrote to Mrs. Leggett. "Mrs. Hiller
expects to get completely cured in a short time."68 But by the end of
March Mrs. Hiller was considerably worse in health than before.
"You ought to have seen [Dr. Hiller] the other morning and heard
him too!" Swamiji wrote on April t to Mrs. Bull. "Mrs. Hiller, it
appears, is many times worse for all the rubbings given; and she is
only a few bones; and, above all, the doctor had to spend 500 dollars
in Los Angeles. That makes him feel very bad. . . . He is a German;
he dances about, slaps his pockets and says, `You can'th have goth
the five hundred, buth for this silly cure!' . . .
"The old doctor is now persuaded that some devils are mis-
arranging his affairs of late," Swamiji continued. "He has counted on
so much to have me as his guest, and his wife righted, but he had to
run to Los Angeles and that upset the whole plan; and now, though he
tries his best to get me in as his guest, I fight shy, not of him, but of
his wife and sister-in-law. He is sure, `Devils must be in it'; he has
been a Theosophical student. I told him to write to Miss MacLeod to
hunt up a devil-driver somewhere so that he might run with his wife
and spend another five hundred! Doing good is not always smooth! . .
. I sent in a Christian Science healer to Dr. Hiller as a makeup of Joe's
misdemeanour, but his wife slammed the door in her
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face and would have nothing to do with queer healing." 69
From the above it is evident that up to and including April 1
Swamiji had succeeded in resisting Dr. Hiller's pleas that he be his
guest. But sometime thereafter, probably during the first part of the
month, his heart gave in to the old German and, as the following
account from Mrs. French's memoirs shows, he went to stay at his
home:
During one part of his sojourn in San Francisco [Mrs. French
wrote], Vivekananda was guest in the home of Dr. Hiller,
possessor of a very valuable library including many rare
Oriental works. The Doctor's wife long an invalid, her sister
(Mrs. N-) gave up her own home to assume management of this
household. A third sister, living in Alameda, I knew very well.
Boston born, pride rankled as she related to me: Oh. yes, she
had met Swami Vivekananda, had heard him speak; he was
wonderful, etc.; but he did not have much respect for women! It
seems she had crossed the Bay to visit her sisters and on
entering discovered Swami Vivekananda squatting on the floor
in front of a bookcase, poring over a book. She spoke to him;
but he did not rise to greet her, or even answer her.
Undoubtedly she misapprehended the intense abstraction,
which his hosts had recognized and safeguarded. It was Dr.
Hiller's concern for Swami Vivekananda's health under the
heavy strain of constant lectures and classes that prompted him
to take Swamiji away to his cabin in the Mt. Shasta region for a
few days of complete rest.
Not only did Dr. Hiller welcome Vivekananda to his home,
but Mrs. N-(professedly an atheist) afterward told me that she
loved Swamiji as a son; she took care of his room, his clothing,
rendered other little services with her own hands, unwilling to
commit these humble tasks to a servant.
Burned out, following the earthquake in 1906, Dr. Hiller
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 soon retired from medical practice and devoted himself to
study. The last one of this family quartette, who thus familiarly
met Swamiji in 1900, had passed on before the close of the
second decade.''70
The impression given here by Mrs. French is that Swamiji spent
many days in the San Francisco home of Dr. Hiller. It is doubtful,
however, that this was the case. Mrs. Hansbrough makes no mention
of this episode, which would lead one to believe that it was of short
duration; in fact, Mrs. French is the only memoirist to mention Dr.
Hiller at all. One finds, however, that both Mrs. Hansbrough and Mr.
Allan note very briefly that Swamiji spent two days and one night in
San Francisco with a Dr. Miller. Since we encounter this Dr. Miller
nowhere else and know neither his first name nor his address, it is
impossible to determine at present whether he was a separate person
existing in his own right or whether he was Dr. Hiller
mispronounced.
Serving to further tangle up Swamiji's doctor friends, Mrs.
Hansbrough mentioned that he visited the home of a doctor whose
name she did not give at all. He may have been a third doctor; then
again, he may have been Dr. Hiller or Dr. Miller or both. In any case,
Swamiji's stay with him could not have lasted for more than twenty-
four hours. Almost at once he sent out a call for help to Mrs.
Hansbrough, as was his wont when caught in desperate straits.
"Invariably he either phoned or wrote me whenever he wanted to
leave any place," she related. "For instance, in San Francisco he was
the guest of some physician and had expected to stay for some time.
But the very day he went to the doctor's home he either phoned or
wrote me-I forget now which he did-to come for him. When I arrived,
his hostess came in, introduced herself, and then withdrew again.
Then Swamiji explained: `The trouble is, she is not a lady: she
doesn't know what to do with me!' "
In view of Swamiji's quiet, almost secluded life, one of the
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last people one would expect him to meet and come to know quite
well was Mrs. Collis P. Huntington, the wife of one of the
enormously wealthy "Big Four" of the Central Pacific Railroad, who
reigned in a palatial Nob Hill mansion. "Someone introduced Mrs.
Collis P. Huntington to him," Mrs. Hansbrough remarked
offhandedly during the course of her "Reminiscences," "and she gave
him six thousand dollars for Sister Nivedita's Girls' School."
The last part of this statement is not altogether correct. At the
beginning of May, Swamiji wrote to Sister Nivedita, who was then in
Chicago, "Mrs. C. P. Huntington, a very, very wealthy lady, who has
helped me, came; wants to see and help you. She will be in New
York by the first of June. Do not go away without seeing her. If I
cannot come early enough, I will send you an introduction to her.""
Sister Nivedita did indeed meet Mrs. Huntington in New York-but of
this more in a later chapter.
As was the case everywhere, Swamiji met people of all kinds in
San Francisco, and, as was the case always, he was equally friendly
to all. "He seemed to like all people," Mrs. Hansbrough once said.
"He was most compassionate; it seemed as if he never saw
distinctions between people-almost as if he didn't see the difference
between a duck and a man!" "He talked, acted and moved in such a
way," she said at another time, "that it was clear he always saw
everything imbued with God." Even from a lower point of view
Swamiji taught compassion for all. How often did he not say: "We do
not progress from error to truth, but from truth to truth"? "Thus we
must see," he told Mr. Allan, "that none can be blamed for what they
are doing, because they are, at this time, doing the best they can. If a
child has an open razor don't try to take it from him, but give him a
red apple or a brilliant toy, and he will drop the razor. But he who
puts his hand in the fire will be burned; we learn only from
experience."72
One might go so far as to say that if Swamiji had any preference
for one person over another, he preferred the sinner
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who was learning through experience to the self righteous man who
never stepped beyond the bounds of convention. "As far as we could
understand," the Allans once said, "if there was anything Swamiji did
not like it was a `goody-goody' person. He had no use for such
people. He would say, `Do something even if it is bad; but do
something! Everyone says, "Be good, be good." Why should I be
good?' "73
During his stay at Turk Street-through most of March and the first
week or so of April-Swamiji's health on the whole improved. "I work
every day morning and evening," he wrote to Sister Nivedita around
the end of March, "eat anything any hour-and go to bed at 12 p.m. in
the night-but such fine sleep!! I never had such power of sleeping
before!"74 "-and trudge all over the town!" he added in a letter to Miss
MacLeod. "And get better too!"75 How many hours Swamiji actually
slept he did not say; perhaps few, for throughout his life his habit was
to sleep very little: deep in the night or in the early hours before dawn
he would sit in meditation, his mind in those quiet, solitary times
entering into the state most natural to it. One is justified in supposing
that such was the case at Turk Street, for while Swamiji did not write
or, as far as we know, speak directly of his spiritual practices and ex-
periences, there is much to indicate that during this period he was
living on the verge of samadhi. His San Francisco lectures give us
some insight into his state of mind, as do some of the things he is
quoted as having said in conversation; but nothing is as revealing in
this respect as his letters to those few people to whom he confided his
personal thoughts-Sister Nivedita, Mrs. Bull, Josephine MacLeod,
and Mary Hale. Reading his letters to these friends in chronological
order, one finds a gradual crescendo of mood, from depression and
nervousness in Los Angeles to a growing peace in San Francisco and
on to a sort of ecstasy of transcendence in Alameda in the East Bay.
It seems to have been toward the end of March in San Francisco that
Swamiji definitely stepped, as it were, across a line into the last phase
of his life.
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 "I am the infinite blue sky; the clouds may gather over me, but I
am the same infinite blue," he wrote on March 25 to Sister Christine.
"I am trying to get a taste of that peace which I know is my nature
and everyone's nature. These tin-pots of bodies and foolish dreams of
happiness and misery-what are they? My dreams are breaking. Om
Tat Sat!"76 And to Mary Hale three days later, "I am attaining peace
that passeth understanding, which is neither joy nor sorrow, but
something above them both. Tell Mother [Mrs. Hale] that. My
passing through the valley of death, physical, mental, last two years,
has helped me in this. Now I am nearing that Peace; the eternal
silence. Now I mean to see things as they are, everything in that
peace, perfect in its way. `He whose joy is only in himself, whose
desires are only in himself, he has learned his lessons.' . . . `Alone
through eternity, because I was free, am free, and will remain free for
ever.' This is Vedantism. I preached the theory so long, but oh, joy!
Mary, my dear sister, I am realising it now every day. Yes, I am. `I
am free.' `Alone, alone, I am the one without a second.' 77
The postsctipt to this last letter is even more indicative of his high
state of consciousness. "Now I am going to be truly Vivekananda," he
declared-and I quote from an early copy of the original letter,
retaining, among other things, his spellings of "all" and "good" which
were clearly in mimicry of the pronouncements then current in New
Thought circles. "Did you ever enjoy evil! Ha! Ha! you silly girl-Awl
is goood! Nonsense. Some good, some evil. I enjoy the good and I
enjoy the evil. I was Jesus and I was Judas Iscariot; both my play, my
fun. . . . Ostrich method? Hide your heads in the sand and think there
is nobody seeing you! Awl is goood! Be brave and face everything,
come good, come evil, both welcome, both of you my play. I have no
good to attain, no ideal to clinch up to, no ambition to fulfil; I, the
diamond mine, am playing with pebbles, good and evil; good for you,
evil, come; good for you, good, you come too. If the universe tumbles
round my eats, what is that to me? I am Peace that passeth
understanding;
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understanding only gives us good or evil. I am beyond, I am peace."
And again to Sister Nivedita on March 28, ". . . the seed must die
underground to come up as the tree. The last two years were the
underground rotting. I never had a struggle in the jaws of death, but it
meant a tremendous upheaval of the whole life. One such brought me
to Ramakrishna, another sent me to the U.S., this has been the
greatest of all. It is gone-I am so calm that it astonishes me
sometimes!!"78
It was in this mood, or rather, in this state of being which no mood
could disturb-that Swamiji lectured, held classes, and gave interviews
in San Francisco, delivering his final and, as he was heard to say, his
highest teachings.'79

In March and April all of Swamiji's evening lectures in San

Francisco were given in the Red Men's Building at 320 Post Street,
which like Union Square Hall was in the center of town. To get there
from Turk Street, he would have taken exactly the same route as he
did on Sundays, except that at the intersection of Powell and Post he
would have crossed to the north side of post Street and walked half a
block east instead of west. The Red Men's Building, which belonged
to the Improved Order of Red Men, a secret society similar to
Freemasonry, was a rather narrow, three-story building in the center
of the block, facing Union Square. The street floor was given over to
two or more shops; the third floor, as a large sign stretching across
the top of the building proclaimed, was occupied by the Pacific
Business College. Washington Hall was probably on the second
floor, as, no doubt, was a smaller auditorium known as Social Hall,
where Swamiji was to lecture once or twice and where the Vedanta
Society of San Francisco, now named the Vedanta Society of
Northern California; was to come into being.
Union Square, the famous park that fills a square block in
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the heart of downtown San Francisco, had the same dignified status
in 1900 as it has today, but the surrounding scene was very different.
The now venerable Saint Francis Hotel that faces the park on the west
and that seems to have been there forever was in 1900 still
nonexistent. The southern part of the block on which it now stands
was occupied by the Calvary Presbyterian Church, a handsome stone
building with a columned facade. (One can find the same church
today on the corner of Fillmore and Jackson streets, to which spot it
was moved stone by stone in October of 1900.) The northern part of
the block was occupied by several low, nondescript buildings. Early
photographs of the three other boundaries of Union Square show a
scene as unrecognizable. For the most part the buildings were from
three to five stories high and, except for the Pacific Union Club, a
mammoth five-story structure with an ornamental dormer roof that
stood on the northwest corner of Post and Stockton, were
unprepossessing. As for Union Square itself, it was adorned by
lawns, small trees, low shrubs, and a flagpole, which last, said to be
"menacing to life and limb " was removed during the period Swamiji
was lecturing at the Red Men's Building. (The Dewey Monument, a
tall granite shaft topped by an arabesquing figure of Victory, today a
long familiar landmark, was not to replace the flagpole until two or
three years later.) There were of course no automobiles on the streets;
the sounds were of horses' hooves on cobble-stones, the hum and
thwack of underground cables, and the joyful clankety-clink-clink of
cable car bells. Except on Sundays, it was nighttime when Swamiji
walked, or rode a cable, up the slope of Powell Street to Post. His
lectures in Washington Hall (in the Red Men's Building) were
scheduled to begin at eight o'clock, by which hour the March sun had
long since set and the street lights been turned on.
The first series of three evening lectures that he gave after he had
moved into the Turk Street flat and decided to remain awhile in San
Francisco had the same title as the first series he had given in Los
Angeles: "Applied Psychology." Individually,
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the lectures were entitled "The Mind: Its Powers and Possibilities,"
"Mind Culture," and "Concentration"-all clearly concerned with raja
yoga. He delivered them on, respectively, the evenings of Tuesday,
March 13, Thursday, March 15, and Friday, March 16.
The only lecture of this series at which Ida Ansell took notes is the
last. But from Mr. Rhodehamel's memoirs as published in the Life
one learns something about the first, which, in a sense, marked the
opening of the most important period of Swamiji's work in the Bay
Area. His previous lectures had been, as I have mentioned, more or
less preliminary. His main work now began, and it began, so to
speak, with a bang. He had promised that it would. "Tomorrow
night," he had said at the conclusion of what must have been The
Way of Salvation at Wendte Hall, "I shall lecture on `The Mind: Its
Powers and Possibilities.' Come to hear me. I have something to say
to you. I shall do a little bomb-throwing." Here, according to Mr.
Rhodehamel, he glanced smilingly over the audience, and then with a
wave of his hand added, "Come on! It will do you good.‖80
The following night there was barely standing room, and Swamiji
kept his word. "Bombs were thrown, and he, of all people, knew how
to throw them with telling effect," Mr. Rhodehamel reported. "In this
lecture he devoted considerable time to the subject of chastity as a
means of strengthening the mind. As a practice to develop purity, he
expounded the theory of looking upon every woman as one's mother.
When he had presented the idea, he paused and, as though in
response to inarticulate questionings from the audience, said, `Oh,
yes, this is a theory. I stand up here to tell you about this beautiful
theory; but when I think of my own mother I know that to me she is
different to any other woman. There is a difference. We cannot deny
it.. But we see this difference because we think of ourselves as
bodies. This theory is to be fully realised in meditation. These truths
are first to be heard, then to be meditated upon.'
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47
 "He held purity to be for the householder as well as for the
monk, and laid great stress on that point. `The other day a young
Hindu came to see me,' he said. `He has been living in this country
for about two years, and suffering from ill-health for some time. In
the course of our talk, he said that the theory of chastity must be all
wrong, because the doctors in this country had advised him against it.
They told him that it was against the law of nature. I told him to go
back to India, where he belonged, and to listen to the teachings of his
ancestors, who had practised chastity for thousands of years.' Then
turning a face puckered into an expression of unutterable disgust, he
thundered, `You doctors in this country who hold that chastity is
against the laws of nature, don't know what you are talking about.
You don't know the meaning of the word purity. You are beasts!
beasts! I say, with the morals of a tomcat, if that is the best you have
to say on that subject!' Here he glanced defiantly over the audience,
challenging opposition by his very glance. No voice was raised,
though there were several physicians present "81 (And one fancies
that in that silence there was many a blush among the maidens and
matrons of the audience, for this was 1900 when the words "sex" and,
by association, "chastity" were still taboo. But Swamiji was in no
way deceived by the hypocrisies of Victorian society. While he was
well aware, as he was to say later on, that "public discussions of this
subject were not to the taste of this country," as he said exactly what
he wanted to say, when and where he wanted to say it).*
Frank Rhodehamel's memoirs are not his only contribution to our
knowledge of Swamiji's lectures in San Francisco. He had taken
notes of the three lectures of the "Applied Psychology" series, which
one can find (with only slight alterations) in volume six of the
Complete Works under the titles "The Importance of Psychology" and
"The Power of the Mind ", which latter consists of his combined
notes of "Mind Culture" and "Concentration of the Mind," the seam
between them occurring invisibly between paragraphs seven and
eight.** In
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48
these notes one finds only bare traces of the bombs that were thrown
at the audience and that remained so vividly in Rhodehamel's
memory. One can imagine that during Swamiji's moat forceful, most
stunning of utterances the young Frank sat breathless, his pen
suspended, the words burning themselves into his mind, though
making no impression on his notebook.
But even when Swamiji was speaking more quietly and Frank
Rhodehamel was taking notes, one finds statements that must have
been startling to those who really heard them. In those pre-Freudian
days Swamiji's discussion of the almost total power of the
subconscious over one's conscious life was hairraising. Here again,
Christian and Western concepts were overturned like bowling pins-in
this case, the concepts of sin, Free will, and responsibility, to say
nothing of the presumed tabula rasa of each newborn babe.
We are all slaves to our own and to everybody else's mind
[he said]; whether we are good or bad, that makes no difference.
We are led here and there because we cannot help ourselves. We
say we think, we do, etc. It is not so. We think because we have
to think. We act because we have to. We are slaves to ourselves
and to others. Deep down in our subconscious mind are stored
up a11 the thoughts and acts of the past, not only of this life, but
of all other lives we have lived. This great boundless ocean of
subjective mind is full of all the thoughts and actions of the past.
Each one of these is striving to be recognised, pushing outward
for expression, surging, wave after wave, out upon the objective
mind, the conscious mind. These thoughts, the stored-up energy,
we take for natural desires, talents, etc. It is because we do not
realise their true origin. We obey them blindly, unquestioningly;
and slavery, the most helpless kind of slavery, is the result; and
we call ourselves free. Free! . . .
The mind uncontrolled and unguided will drag us down, for
ever-rend us, kill us; and the mind controlled and
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49
 guided will save us, free us. So it must be controlled, and
psychology teaches us how to do this .83

(It is interesting to notice that Swamiji used the word psychology

to mean the study of the mind in the deepest possible sense,
compared to which the psychological theories and treatments that
would prevail in the West in the first part of the twentieth century
would be mere surface scraping. In a sentence of Frank Rhodehamel's
original notes of "Mind Culture," Swamiji is quoted as having said,
"Psychology takes in the study of the soul; metaphysics is employed
more with the mere mind.")84
But to return to his berating of his audience, one learns a little
more of his manner of doing this from Miss Sarah Fox, whose
recollections of her attendance at the Unitarian church in Oakland we
have quoted earlier. "My sister and I heard only one other lecture by
Swamiji," she added in her memoirs; "this time in San Francisco. In
the first half of it he flayed his listeners for their Licentiousness, and
in the second half he poured out his affection upon them."85 Swamiji's
profound, undeviating affection for man was always there. It was
indeed this that made his insights so unerring, his chastisements so
incisive. While truth was the dynamite of his bombs, it was his love
that ignited them. Not everyone, how. ever, could withstand them.
Mr. E. C. Brown, who was present at most of Swamiji's lectures in
the Bay Area, later told of the astonished indignation with which
some members of the audience became aware that his "bomb-
throwing" was aimed at them. "Does he mean me?" was
incredulously asked by more than one person. "Several people," Mr.
Brown reported, "stopped coming to the lectures."86
This would not have troubled Swamiji in the slightest. He well
knew that those who were annoyed by his words today would feel
blessed by them tomorrow. "I will compare truth to a corrosive
substance of infinite power," he had written
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50
during his first visit to the West in an impassioned reply to some
well-meant advice that he soften his approach. "It burns its way in
wherever it falls-in soft substance sooner, hard granite later, but it
must. . . . I have a message to give," he continued, "I have no time to
be sweet to the world, and every attempt at sweetness makes one a
hypocrite."87 In 1900 Swamiji was again receiving advice-notably
from those who had not known him earlier. His answer was in
essence no different, but it was the succinct answer now of a veteran
warrior who had never compromised or turned his back, and whose
truth had flooded the world-to burn its way in soon or late. Miss.
Hansbrough, it will be remembered, once ventured in Los Angeles to
suggest that he sometimes antagonized his audiences, only to meet
with the reply, "Madam, I have cleared whole halls in New York." 88
Perhaps she brought up the point again in San Francisco. "Once while
we were in the Turk Street apartment," she related, "I questioned
something about the way Swamiji was handling the work. He did not
answer, but simply said, 'Within ten years of my death, I will be
worshiped as a god‘‖89
While some people, their pride badly damaged, may have stopped
coming to Swamiji's lectures, his following as a whole was to remain
constant throughout his stay in San Francisco. As has been said
earlier, the attendance at his pay lectures had at first been so
unsatisfactory that he had felt it not worth his while to remain in
California. But soon this situation changed. "The attendance averaged
from one hundred and fifty to two hundred," Mrs. Hansbrough
recalled, "which was not bad, considering that there was a charge of
fifty cents for each lecture and one dollar for a series of three."90
By a stroke of good fortune, there was no lack of advertising for
these later lectures. Among the people who were attracted to Swamiji
from the beginning was Mrs. Clinton French, the wife of a printer. In
the early part of 1900, Cara French, like Ida Ansell, had been
attending a class on the Gita held by Miss Lydia Bell at the
California Street Home of Truth. She had
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51
drifted there, she recounted in her unpublished memoirs, for lack of
an anchor and because "of the keen interest of several relatives in
Home of Truth teachings." "Then," she wrote, giving the sentence a
paragraph of its own, "came VIVEKANANDA!" "A prolonged
illness of Mr. French, with consequent financial strain, hampered
me," she continued; "but so intense was my desire to attend Swami
Vivekananda's lectures and classes, the way seemed to open. Mrs.
Hansbrough and others in charge needed advertising matter: we had a
printing shop. So through Mr. Wiseman, caretaker at the [California
Street] Home of Truth, a mutually favorable arrangement was made.
Copy with the cuts of Swamiji reached our desk; and presently they
had dodgers (small handbills), quarter-cards (for window display),
and tickets-and I the coveted admissions to his courses of lectures: '91
This arrangement was a godsend for all concerned. Because of her
husband's illness, Mrs. French did a good deal of the printing work
herself and thereby not only received free admission to Swamiji's
lectures (together, surely, with the cost of printing) but, as she often
said in later years, derived much happiness from the work itself. As
for Swamiji, the San Francisco newspapers did not often mention his
lectures; advertising was expensive; and, as we have seen, the
Reverend B. Fay Mills had declined to announce his lectures to his
own San Francisco congregations. Dodgers and quarter-cards were
just the thing. Evidently a great many of the latter were placed in
strategic windows about the city to announce each lecture series; for
one remembers Miss Partington's mention (in the Chronicle of March
18) of a photograph or "cut" which "has been extensively used in
lecture advertisements here." But of the handbills, display cards, and
tickets turned out by the Frenches' press (then located in the Phelan
Building at Market and O'Farrell) only a few handbills have been
recovered.
Mrs. French's memoirs, incidentally, are revealing of the awe-
inspiring effect Swamiji had upon some of his listeners. Although she
attended all his lectures and his classes as well,
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52
although she was happy in serving his cause, she "had no personal
conversation with him." "With abundant opportunity, it was my own
fault that I did not," she wrote. "Others crowded about him with
questions or in greeting; I slipped out quietly, even from the small
classes held at the Turk Street flat, where I was obliged to pass
around him to reach the stairway in leaving. There were several
reasons for my attitude," she continued; "young [then in her late
twenties] and naturally shy, I felt utterly insignificant, and wondered
what I was doing in being there. Captivated by the spiritual force and
magnetism of his presence, yet in a degree resisting it-for was he not
bowling over or knocking to pieces many a preconceived idea of
spiritual teaching-my mind was dazed and in a turmoil. However, I
do not now regard it as an altogether lost opportunity. No one
squatting on the floor Oriental fashion (for lack of sufficient chairs)
just a few feet from Swami Vivekananda, could possibly have
escaped his observation; his mental, moral and spiritual appraisal:"92
Indeed not, and in any event Mrs. French was captivated for good;
she spent the rest of her life-she lived to be over eighty-in the study
and service of Vedanta.
During the third lecture Ida Ansell took shorthand notes (for the
first time), and we are fortunate enough to have her transcripts, the
second of which has been published in volume four of the Complete
Works. Miss Ansell's notes of this lecture "Concentration" were
particularly scrappy; for when she took them Swamiji's ideas were
still more or less new to her, as was the rich, cascading flow of his
language. Yet her notes are much more full than Frank Rhodehamel's
of this same lecture, and from her transcripts one can follow the gist
of his talk. He outlined the essential steps of raja yoga, stressing the
central practice of concentration, without which no knowledge, either
secular or spiritual, can be obtained. "The subject of the present
lecture," he said near the beginning, "is how to concentrate the mind
in order to study the mind itself. Yogis have laid down certain rules,
and this night I am going to give you a
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53
sketch of some of these rules." He went on to speak of the prime
necessity of perfect morality-inner morality, not the observance of
outward forms. "External purity is very easy and all the world rushes
toward it," he said, ". . . any fool can do that. When it is grappling
with the mind itself, it is hard work. . . . It is culture of the heart that
we want."93 He then spoke of some of the steps in the actual practice
of raja yoga-posture, breathing, concentration. He digressed to
denounce hatha yoga, whose goal was longevity and which, generally
speaking, was the West's only idea of yoga-and a vague idea at that.
Returning to the practice of raja yoga-the practice of mental control-
he concluded (and I quote here from the first transcript), "Then comes
meditation. That is the highest state. . . . Meditation is practiced, and
through meditation comes direct super consciousness. By proper
concentration the soul becomes entirely free from the bonds of the
gross body and knows itself as it is. Whatever one wants, that comes
to him. Power and knowledge are already there. The soul identifies
itself with that which is powerless-matter-and thus weeps: It
identifies itself with the mortal and weeps because it is mortal. . . . He
who has become God-there is nothing impossible to such a free soul.
No more birth and death for him. He has become free forever." 94
It is evident from Ida Ansell's first transcript that during the course
of this lecture Swamiji recounted the extraordinary and elaborate
practices of the hatha yogis in considerable detail. "He puts a long
stick down his throat and pumps it up and down," he said in part.
"Puts a thread through one nostril and brings it out through the other.
Some of the hatha yogis try to arrive at a sort of trance. They turn the
tip of the tongue back and [attain a trancelike state], and in that trance
they remain for days. Days after he will come out, quite alive. What
more immortality do you want!. . . These ideas, I have told you, have
ruined races."95
Swamiji also told more stories in this lecture than the second
transcript indicates. Apart from the story of Pavhari Baba, there was,
Miss Ansell noted parenthetically, a "Story of the
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Sage in the Forest" and a "Story of a Girl." One finds scattered
throughout the first transcripts many such titles in parentheses.
"Swamiji always told some story on the lecture platform," Mrs.
Hanabrough once recounted. "He said he gathered his mind in this
way."96 Certainly he gathered the mind of his audience in this way, or
relaxed the minds too highly strung. Ida Ansell never took his stories
down, and this for the very reason that his manner of telling them was
so enthralling.
One misses not only Swamiji's stories in the transcripts but also
the wonderful play that would go on between him and his listeners.
No transcript, however complete, could capture the subtlety of his
humor, his teasing, his pauses that held a wealth of meaning, his
inflections, gestures, and facial expressions, all of which could bring
about gasps, laughter, even delighted applause. All are lost to us in
the written word. .
At one point in this lecture on "Concentration " for instance,
Swamiji had his listeners in a state of suspense as he teased them in
regard to his age. In the first transcript one finds this odd sentence: "I
am only a few years"-a sentence meaningless if one does not know
what was taking place: In his memoirs Mr. Rhodehamel recalled the
incident: "Much conjecture was rife as to his age. He must have
known this, for he availed himself of an opportunity to have a little
fun on this point at the expense of the audience. Alluding to his own
age, which was apropos of the subject, he said, `I am only-'
(breathless pause, anticipation) `-of a few years,' he added
mischievously. A sigh of disappointment ran over the audience. The
Swami looked on waiting for the applause, which he knew was ready
to break out."97 And, no doubt, break out it did. To judge from
various newspaper reports, applause was always breaking out during
Swamiji's lectures; and, to judge from Mr. Rhodehamel's memoirs, so
was laughter, including Swamiji's own: His lectures seem to have
been, in fact, veritable festivals.
Indeed, Swamiji's wit, his vibrant life, his many-faceted
attractiveness-all luminous with She quality Miss Albers referred to
as "soul-force"-made as deep an impression upon #

55
his audience as his words. Even his physical appearance was
arresting. After two years or more of unremitting illness, work, and
anguish of heart, he was evidently as strikingly handsome as he had
been during his first visit to the West. "The beauty of Swamiji
nobody can imagine," Mrs. Allan once said. "His face, his hands, his
feet, all were beautiful. Swami Trigunatita later said that Swamiji's
hands were far more beautiful than any woman's. His color would
seem to change, some days being darker and some days lighter, but
usually there was about it what can best be described as a golden
glow."98 On the platform, wearing his robe-its shade described once
as "persimmonish terra-cotta," once as "crushed strawberry"-his
appearance was godlike, and to some, as Miss Ansell recalled, it
appealed more than did his doctrine. "I remember," she wrote with a
touch of disapproval, "one very wealthy and aristocratic young lady,
who was studying music with my teacher, saying ecstatically, `Oh, he
is like a lovely golden statue!' "99 But one cannot blame the young
woman for admiring this aspect of Swamiji. Most people did-men
and women alike. "The Swamiji's personality impressed itself on the
mind with visual intensity," Mr. Rhodehamel was to write some ten
years later. "The speaking eyes, the wealth of facial expression and
gesticulation; the wondrous Sanskrit chanting, sonorous, melodious,
impressing one with the sense of mystic potency; the translations
following in smiling confidence; all these set off by the spectacular
apparel of the Hindu Sannyasin; who can forget them?" 100
During his first visit to the West Swamiji's voice was often
described as sheer music. It was still thrilling to his listeners. "His
voice was so magnificent!" Mrs. Roorbach once recalled. "It would
roll out with those Sanskrit verses and everyone in the audience
would sit up and take notice. They didn't know a word of Sanskrit; I
didn't either. His voice was not tenor " she added, "but bass-low
bass."101 As far as I know, no one else ever described Swamiji's voice
as "low bass," but if even one person remembered it as such, it must
have been in the
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lower ranges. Mrs. Hansbrough confirmed this. "His voice was the
most musical I have ever heard,"102 she said of his lectures in Los
Angeles, and she had judged his pitch to be closer to bass than to
tenor. "It was not a powerful voice," she recalled at another time, "but
it had great depth. The manager of Washington Hall in San Francisco
once told me he had never heard so sweet a voice."103 If his voice was
not powerful, it was clear and carrying. "There was never any doubt
about hearing what Swamiji said," Mrs. Allan once told a fellow
Vedantin. "He spoke out very decidedly and very loudly. He used
quite long sentences,"104 she added.
Everything about Swamiji was expressive of the greatness of his
personality, and that personality was as startling a revelation to his
listeners as were his teachings. One recalls here a passage from Sister
Christine's reminiscences: "Our conception of spirituality was not
only clarified [through knowing Swamiji]," she wrote, "but
transcended. Spirituality brings life, power, joy, fire, glow,
enthusiasm-all the beautiful and positive things, never inertia,
dullness, weakness. Then why should one have been so surprised to
find a man of God with a power in an unusual degree? Why have we
in the West always associated emaciation and anaemic weakness with
spirituality? Looking back upon it now one wonders how one could
ever have been so illogical. Spirit is life, shakti, the divine energy."105
It was precisely this truth that Swamiji made apparent. The
incomparable attractiveness of God as seen through him was ever a
source of amazement in the West, and it was one of the moat
important lessons he taught--simply by his presence. But the divine
energy he manifested also made of his every word a thunderbolt, and
perhaps no one knew this better than he.
"One evening after one of his lectures at Washington Hall several
of us were walking home with him," Mrs. Hansbrough related. "I was
in front with someone, and he behind with some others. Apropos of
something he had been discussing, he said, `You have heard that
Christ said, "My words are spirit and they are life." ' He pointed his
finger at me and declared, `So
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57
are my words spirit and life; they will burn their way into your brain
and you will never get away from them!"106

8
From the rough drafts of Mrs. Allan's memoirs one learns that
during the question and answer period following Swamiji's lecture on
"Concentration" someone in the audience requested that he speak on
philosophy in his next series: A murmur of agreement arose from the
audience. "So you want philosophy," Swamiji replied. "Then you
must be prepared for cannon balls." "We got them," Mrs. Allan
remarked .1
Two days later, the San Francisco newspapers carried small
advertisements that read:

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA . . . will give a course of three

lectures on "The Vedanta Philosophy" ["Vedanta philosophy" in
the Examiner; "Vedonta Philosophy" in the Chronicle], at
Washington Hall, 320 Post st. Subjects; Tuesday, March 20th, 8
p.m., "Nature and Man" Friday, March 23rd, 8 p.m., "Soul and
God"; Tuesday, March 27th, 8 p.m., "The Goal". Tickets, 50c;
course, $ 1.00.

Of these three lectures the only one that the newspapers later
commented upon was the first. On March 21 the San Francisco Call
produced the following:

Vedantic Philosophy

Swami Vivekananda the Hindoo exponent of the Vedantic

school of philosophy delivered last evening the first of a series
of lectures upon the elements of the system he represents. It was
an abstruse treatise on the origin of the species and the
development of the human mind. . . .
It was, it so happens, no such thing. One cannot be grateful #

58
enough that by the time Swamiji gave his series on Vedanta
Philosophy Ida Ansell was busy with her pencil. Her transcripts of
the three lectures have been published in the Complete Works:
"Nature and Man" in volume eight under the title "I Am that I Am";
"Soul and God" in volume one; and "The Goal" in volume two. (The
first is among those edited from the first transcripts and published in
The Voice of India.) True to his word, Swamiji bombarded the
audience. His stress on monism, so pronounced during his second
visit to the West, reached in this series a climax of explicit and
impassioned expression; cannon balls flew to right and to left.
"Audiences were jolted out of hereditary ruts, and New Thought
students, so-called, were subjected to scathing, though constructive
criticisms without mercy," Mr. Rhodehamel, whose notes of these
three lectures have also been published,* wrote in his memoirs.
"Smilingly, [the Swami] would announce the most stupendous
Vedantic conceptions so opposed to Christian theologic dogma; then
pause an instant; how many, many times, and with such winsome
effect!-with his teeth pressed over his lower lip as though with bated
breath observing the result."2 To judge from the examples Mr.
Rhodehamel proceeded to give of "the violence done to the
traditional teachings of Christendom," he had particularly in mind
this series on Vedanta Philosophy; all the concepts he cited can be
found here, and many more besides.
The series started out quietly enough. In "Nature and Man"
Swamiji gave a clear, concise explanation of the essential teachings
of Advaita Vedanta by contrasting nature-both external and internal
phenomena, both matter and mind, changing, mortal, and bound-with
the substance or noumenon, the free, immortal, unchanging, and
infinite Self. "That substance -the soul-as it were moulds itself," he
said, "as it were throws itself into the cast of name and form, and
immediately becomes bound, whereas it was free before. And yet its
original nature is still there. That is why it says, `I am free; in spite of
all this bondage I am free.' And it never forgets this. .. .
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The awakening of the soul to its bondage and its effort to stand up
and assert itself-this is called life. Success in this struggle is called
evolution. The eventual triumph, when all the slavery is blown away,
is called salvation, Nirvana, freedom. Everything in the universe is
struggling for liberty. When I am bound by nature, by name and
forms, by time, space, and causality, I do not know what I truly am.
But even in this bondage my real Self is not completely lost. I strain
against the bonds; one by one they break, and I become conscious of
my innate grandeur. Then comes complete liberation. I attain to the
clearest and fullest consciousness of myself-I know that I am the
infinite spirit, the master of nature, not its slave. Beyond all
differentiation and combination, beyond space, time, and causation, I
am that I am."3 (The title given to this lecture in The Voice of India
and subsequently in the Complete Works was, of course, taken from
those resounding words, with which he concluded.)
In "Soul and God" and "The Goal" Swamiji left no question as to
the implications of the philosophy he had expounded -what it
demanded of those who could follow it; what it demanded, indeed, of
all men worthy of the name Man. "Do not say God, do not say Thou,
say I," he thundered toward the close of "Soul and God." (I quote
from the first transcripts.) "The language of materialism says God,
Thou, my Father. The language of the spirit says, dearer unto me than
I am myself. I would have no name for Thee. The nearest I can use is
I. God is true, the universe is a dream. Blessed am I that I know this
moment that I shall be free all eternity, that I know that I am
worshiping only myself, that no nature, no delusion has any hold on
me. Vanish nature from me. Vanish these gods. Vanish worship.
Vanish all creeds and ceremonies. Vanish superstitions. For I know
myself. I am the Infinite. . . . How can there be death for me, or birth?
Whom shall I fear? I am the One. . . . I am everything. I am God." 4
In "The Goal" Swamiji continued to blast concepts dear to
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Christian thought-new as well as old. "You are a slave," he cried.
"You never do anything of your own will because you are forced to
do everything. Your only motive for action is some force. . . .
Throughout nature, everything is bound. Slavery, slavery! To be in
harmony with nature is [slavery). What is there in being the slave of
nature and living in a golden cage?" He crumpled up and threw aside
the idea that God had created the world for some purpose of His own.
"[You say] God is free. Again you ask the question why God creates
the world. You contradict yourself. The meaning of God is entirely
free will. The question put in logical language is this: What forced
Him, who can never be forced by anybody, to create the world? . . .
The question is nonsense. He is infinite by His very nature; He is
free. We shall answer questions when you can ask them in logical
language. Reason will tell you that there is only one Reality, nothing
else."5
In Frank Rhodehamel's notes on "The Goal" one finds Swamiji
speaking on this subject in somewhat different words: "Such
questions as, `Why did God create the universe?' `Why did the All-
perfect create the imperfect?' etc., can never be answered, because
such questions are logical absurdities. Reason exists in nature;
beyond nature it has no existence. God is omnipotent, hence to ask
why He did so and so, is to limit Him; for it implies that there is a
purpose in His creating the universe. If He has a purpose, it must be a
means to an end, and this would mean that He could not have the end
without the means. The questions, why and wherefore, can only be
asked of something which depends upon something else."6
Even as God has no purpose, neither in reality has man. "You are
infinite; God is infinite. You are all infinite," Swamiji said. "There
cannot be two existences, only one. The Infinite can never be made
finite. You are never bound. That is all. You are free already. You
have reached the goal-all there is to reach. Never allow the mind to
think that you have not reached the goal. . . . It is all play. You may
say, `We have to do something; let us do good.' Who cares for good
and evil? Play! God
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Almighty plays. That is all. You are the almighty God playing. . . . It
is all fun. Know it and play: That is all there is to it. Then practise it.
The whole universe is a vast play. All is good because all is fun. This
star comes and crashes with our earth, and we are all dead. That too is
fun. You only think fun the little things that delight your senses! . . .
Who is born and who dies? You are having fun, playing with worlds
and all that. . . . The Infinite is the real; the finite is the play. You are
the infinite body and the future body in one. Know it! . . . Know that
you are always free. The fire of knowledge burns down all the
impurities and limitations. I am that Infinite."7
What will become of one's individuality? 5wamiji answered this
objection often, not only in his lectures themselves but after them as
well. "In the questions which usually followed a talk on [Advaita
Vedanta]," Mr. Rhodehamel recalled, "there was almost sure to be the
question `But, Swami, what will, become of one's individuality when
one realises one's oneness with God?' He' would laugh at this
question, and playfully ridicule it. He would say: `You people in this
country are so afraid of losing your in-di-vid-u-al-i-ties;' drawling out
the word in laughing mockery. `Why, you are not individuals yet.
When you know God you will be. When you realise your whole
nature, you will attain your true individualities, not before. In
knowing God you cannot lose anything worth having.' 8
Swamiji shooed his alarmed listeners out of the churches. "No
church ever saved by itself," he cried at the close of "The Goal." "It is
good to be born in a temple, but woe unto the person who dies in a
temple or church. Out of it! It was a good beginning, but leave it! It
was the childhood place but let it be! Go to God directly." And to
those who indulged in bemoaning their sins he cried, "Don't repent!"
"Do not be miserable! Do not repent! What is done is done. . . . Be
sensible: We make mistakes; what of that? That is all in fun. They go
so crazy over their past sins, moaning and weeping and all that. Do
not repent! After having done work, do not think of it. Go on!
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Stop not! Don't look back! What will you gain by looking back? You
lose nothing, gain nothing. You are not going to be melted like butter.
Heavens and hells and incarnations-all nonsense!"9
This was a religion for heroes: no heaven, no hell, no incarnations,
no worship, no doctrines, no churches, no external God, not even any
beating of the chest. If Swamiji had thought none could follow it, he
would not have preached it; yet he knew it demanded intense effort.
"This is the religion of philosophy," he said toward the end of "Soul
and God." "Difficult? Struggle on! Down with all superstitions!
Neither teachers nor scriptures nor gods! Down with temples, with
priests, with gods, with incarnations, with God Himself! I am all the
God that ever existed. There, stand up, philosophers. No fear! Speak
no more of God and superstitions of the world. Truth alone triumphs
and this is true. I am the Infinite."10 He left man no quarter; he
challenged him, as undoubtedly the coming centuries will themselves
challenge him, to stand up alone to the full glory of his own
infinitude.
The concepts Swamiji presented are startling today; in 1900 they
were thunderclaps, and delivered by him, propelled by the incredible
force of his personality, they could be profoundly unsettling. His
words were not mere words; they were experiences, cutting new
pathways in the mind. Many people, like Mrs. French, tried to resist,
yet despite themselves were drawn deeper and deeper into the world
of light Swamiji was opening to them. "[Their] powers of resistance,"
Mr. Rhodehamel observed, "were neutralised by the irresistible logic,
acumen and childlike simplicity of the Great Teacher. Indeed, there
were a few who arose to demur but who resumed their seats either in
smiling acquiescence or in bewildered impotency."11 As far as is
known, only one crusty soul had the courage, of sorts, to leave the
hall. "On [one] occasion while he was expounding Advaita,"
Rhodehamel recounted, "an old man sitting in the front row, arose
deliberately, and with a look which said as plainly as words, `Let me
get out of
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63
this place in a hurry,' hobbled down the aisle and out of the hall,
pounding the floor with his cane at every step. The Swami apparently
enjoyed the situation, for amusement overspread his features as he
paused to watch him. The attention of the audience was divided
between the Swami, smiling, fun loving, and the disgusted old man
who had had enough of him."12
But that old man, stomping and grumbling his way out, was a
rarity; others sat spellbound. It is true that Swamiji had written to
Mrs. Bull from southern California, "I cannot any more tell from the
platform";13 and toward the beginning of his stay in San Francisco,
"Platform work is nigh gone for me."14 And, to be sure, the years of
intensive, "cyclonic" public work were indeed gone for him, or,
rather, he had withdrawn from them, their purpose served. But there
is no indication that the power he could project from the platform had
in any way diminished. With a single sentence he could electrify a
hall. "Once before beginning his lecture," Mrs. Allan related, "he
looked out at the audience for a moment and then said: `Arise, awake
and stop not till the goal is reached!' It was like an electric shock!
Marvellous!"15
According to Mrs. Hansbrough, who had, of course, heard
Swamiji lecture in both southern and northern California, he "showed
greater power in San Francisco than in Los Angeles." 16 Perhaps this
was because his health, for a time at least, was better in northern
California, his mind more free from anxiety; perhaps it was because
his audiences in San Francisco were more sophisticated and more
responsive than those in southern California (in Pasadena his listeners
had not wanted to her philosophy; in San Francisco they asked for it,
and they asked for a class in practical instruction as well) ; perhaps it
was for reasons too subtle to be so easily explained. Mrs.
Hansbrough, in any event, told the facts as she saw them. "He seemed
to get greater satisfaction from his work here," she said. "He thought
that he got a better response here than he did in Los Angeles. And he
was much more jolly in San Francisco. He could
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see the end of his work after he had come here."17

After a spiritual feast, a worship, or religious discourse, it is, I

have been told, the custom in Bengal (as it is the custom in the West
after some cultural event-the opera or theater, for instance) to serve a
delicious repast, "to sweeten the mouth," as the saying goes. After
food for the spirit, comes food for the body. Perhaps thinking of this,
perhaps also wanting to express his gratitude for those who had
helped him, Swamiji would some6mes treat a few members of his
audience; they, in turn, would sometimes treat him. But this was not
only a matter of custom; there was practical necessity as well.
"Swamiji never ate dinner before a lecture," Mrs. Hansbrough
related; "he said it slowed his thinking."18 Thus he was ready for
supper when his lecture was over. "Usually," Miss Ansell writes, " . .
. some of the devotees would take him either to Mr. Louis Juhl's
restaurant in the section of San Francisco known as Little Italy or to
some uptown cafe, depending on whether his mood and the weather
called for hot food or ice-cream."19 Mr. Louis Martin Juhl, an elderly
German, whom we shall meet again later on, was a member of the
California Street Home of Truth and a follower of Miss Lydia Bell.
His restaurant stood at 533 Broadway (across the street from the
County Jail, a notable landmark of the era), where Columbus Avenue
(then Montgomery Avenue) diagonally intersects the block between
Kearny Street and Grant Avenue (then Dupont Street). This location,
on the south edge of North Beach (a district lying in the valley
between Telegraph Hill and Russian Hill) and in the center of the
Latin Quarter, was then a convivial meeting point of many national-
ities--Indian, Spanish, Mexican, Basque, German, and some Chinese.
When Swamiji and his friends went to Mr. Juhl's restaurant from the
Red Men's Building they could take the little Powell Street cable car
that rattled and changed over Nob Hill to land in the Latin Quarter
not far from where they wanted to go; or, as an alternate and perhaps
more sensible
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65
route, they could take a cable car at Stockton and Geary streets, and,
after winding awhile through the dimly lit and silent business district,
get off at Dupont and Broadway, just a few steps from the restaurant.
Since Swamiji sometimes preferred ice cream to a hot supper, one
might think that the San Francisco nights were sometimes balmy in
March or early April. It was not so; the evenings were never warm,
and more often than not a chill, penetrating north wind would blow
and the temperature would fall to the low fifties. Mr. Rhodehamel
recounts that after a lecture during which Swamiji had spoken of the
various types of hells in different religions (the Hindu hells far
outclassing Dante's Inferno), he emerged from the overheated hall
into the bitter wind and, gathering his coat tightly about him, said
vehemently, "Well, if this isn't hell, I don't know what is!"20 But
Swamiji liked ice cream; thus, whatever the weather, he would some-
times choose to go to an ice cream parlor rather than to Mr. Juhl's.
"One evening after a lecture," Miss Ansell relates in her memoirs
(and I quote here from her first or original version), "a few of us, with
Swami, stopped on the way home to have refreshments. It was very
cold, but we ate ice cream. We had to wait for one of the party to
attend to something, I have forgotten what, but I remember Swami's
admonition, `Don't be long, or you will find only a lump of chocolate
ice cream when you return!"21
The Allans used to tell of an incident that took place at an ice
cream parlor on Powell Street, which Mrs. Allan once described as
"an old established store." (This was the parlor, probably, that
Swamiji most often went to after his evening lectures, for it would
have been directly on his way home, but research has failed to turn up
its name and exact location. The only "old established" ice cream
parlor that stands today on Powell Street was not there until long after
1900.) Both Mrs. Allan and Ida Ansell have related the following
story in their published reminiscences, but the most authentic,
complete, and plausible version seems to be one found among the un-
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published papers of Mr. Allan. Indeed, like the story of the ship-
launching; this was his story, and I shall give it here as he told it:
"One evening after the lecture," he wrote, "Swamiji invited tight
of us [not ten or twelve] to have ice cream with him, and we were a
merry throng that walked with him down Powell Street. In that party
there was-in addition to Swamiji-Mrs. Hansbrough, Mrs. Emily
Aspinall, Mrs. Eloise Roorbach, George Roorbach, Eric F. A. Julihn,
Miss Fanny Gould, Viraja [Mrs. Allan], Ajoy [Mr. Allan]. As we
were walking along, Swamiji seemed to one lady [Mrs. Allan] to
become very tall, while the rest of us appeared as pigmies. When we
got to the parlor we all ordered "Ice Cream," but the waitress brought
nine ice-cream sodas, which none of us liked, least of all Swamiji.
When the error was pointed out the waitress said she would change
the sodas for ice cream and was on her way to do so when the
manager of the store, who had observed what had taken place,
stopped her and began to speak crossly to her. Noticing this, Swamiji
at once called out: `Don't scold that poor girl! If you do I will eat all
those ice-cream sodas myself!, "22
The story does not go on to show us Swamiji blissfully eating the
ice cream he had ordered. But we know from Mrs. Allan that on one
such occasion he turned to her and said, "Food for the gods, madam,
food for the gods."23

After delivering his series on "Vedanta Philosophy," Swamiji at

once returned to the subject of raja yoga. Under "Church Notices" the
San Francisco papers of March 25 announced:

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA . . . will continue the lectures on

"Mind Culture" at Washington Hall, 320 Post Street . . . :
Thursday, March 29, "The Science of Breathing"; Tuesday,
April 3, "Meditation"; Thursday, April 5, #

67
 "The Practice of Religion, Breathing and Meditation"; tickets
50c; or the course $1.00

Ida Ansell's second transcripts of these three lectures have been

published in volumes one, four, and one, respectively, of the
Complete Works.* (I should remind the reader that in quoting from
the edited and published forms of Miss Ansell's second transcripts, I
have omitted the ellipsis marks and brackets. The dots and brackets
given here are my own.) As published, Swamiji's first lecture in this
series on "Mind Culture" has been entitled simply "Breathing" and
has been dated, in accordance with Miss Ansell's transcript, March
28, rather than March 29 as in the above announcement. The third
lecture has been entitled "Practical Religion: Breathing and
Meditation." More important to notice than dates and titles, however,
was Swamiji's reason for giving this second series on raja yoga. He
himself explained it.
"In the last course," he said near the opening of "The Science of
Breathing," "we have been studying the method of philosophy, trying
to bring everything under control, once more asserting the freedom of
the soul by customs of its own, conquering the body without [the
body's] help." (The last part of this sentence following "freedom of
the soul" has been omitted from the Complete Works.) "It is very
difficult," he continued. "This way is not for everybody. The
embodied mind tries it with great trouble."24 As pointed out in the
Complete Works, these last three sentences were a free translation
from the Bhagavad-Gita (I2:5). But while in this chapter, "The Way
of Divine Love," the Gita recommends devotion to the Personal God
as an easier path to the same goal, Swamiji recommended in this
particular lecture the way of raja yoga-the impersonal, methodical
means of strengthening, the mind and will, of drawing forth unlimited
power from within oneself.
"A little physical help will make the mind comfortable," he went
on. "What would be more rational than to have the mind itself
accomplish the thing? But it cannot. The physical
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help is necessary for most of us. The system of raja yoga is to utilize
these physical helps, to make use of the powers and forces in the
body to produce certain mental states, to make the mind stronger and
stronger until it regains its lost empire. By sheer force of will if
anyone can attain to that, so much the better. But most of us cannot,
so we will use physical means, and help the will on its way."25
Toward the end of this lecture Swamiji explained further the
utility of the first stages of raja yoga. "Slowly and gradually you get
into the chambers of the mind and gradually get control of the mind.
It is a long, hard struggle. It must not be taken up as something
curious. When one wants to do something, he has a plan. Raja yoga
proposes no faith, no belief, no God. If you believe in two thousand
gods, you can try that. Why not? But in raja yoga it is impersonal
principles."26
According to a brief report in the San Francisco Chronicle of
March 30, "Vivekananda answered questions at the close of the
lecture as he will after the next two which will be on `Meditation' and
`Explanations in Regard to Breathing.' "
The very heart of raja yoga was, of course, meditation; and in his
lecture of that title Swamiji explained why. "The world is a
combination of you [that is, of one's mind] and something else. . . .
These waves that rise in the mind have caused many things outside.
We are not discussing the merits of idealism and realism. We take for
granted that things exist outside, but what we see is different from
things that exist outside, as we see what exists outside plus ourselves.
Suppose I take my contribution out of the glass. What remains?
Almost nothing. The glass will disappear. If I take my contribution
from the table, what would remain of the table? Certainly not this
table, because it was a mixture of the outside plus my contribution. . .
. If I do not contribute my share, it has got to stop. You are creating
this bondage all the time. How? By putting in your share. We are all
making our own beds, forging our own chains. . . . Meditation means
the mind is turned back upon itself The mind stops all the thought-
waves and the
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world stops. Your consciousness expands. Every time you meditate
you will keep your growth."27
Swamiji kept the goal of meditation in clear view of his audience:
"It is meditation that brings us nearer to truth than anything else. . . .
This is what I mean by meditation-the soul trying to stand upon itself.
That state must surely be the healthiest state of the soul, when it is
thinking of itself, residing in its own glory."28 "Word worshippers!"
he scoffed. " `God is spirit.' God is spirit and should be worshipped in
spirit and faith. Where does the spirit reside? On a tree? On a cloud?
What do you mean by God being ours? You are the spirit. That is the
first fundamental belief you must never give up. I am the spiritual
being. It is there. All this skill of Yoga and this system of meditation
and everything is just to find Him there."29
"But is it practical?" was a question Swamiji was often asked in
regard to Vedanta. The question had two meanings: first, was the
ideal possible to attain, and second, would its attainment make for a
better world. In the third lecture in the series on "Mind Culture"_
`Practical Religion: Breathing and Meditation" (as I shall call it)-he
answered both questions.
"Can man attain to the power of mastery of the body? Yoga says it
is practical. Supposing it is not-suppose there are doubts in your
mind. You have got to try it. There is no other way out."30 That took
care of the first question. As for the second, Swamiji devoted much
more time to its answer.
"Why are people struggling?" he asked in "Practical Religion,"
and answered, "To lessen the misery [of the world]. [But whence
comes this misery?) All unhappiness is caused by our not having
mastery over the body. We are all putting the cart before the horse.
Take the system of work, for instance. We are trying to do good by
comforting the poor. We do not get to the cause which created the
misery. It is like taking a bucket to empty out the ocean, and more
water comes all the time. The Yogi sees that this is nonsense. . . . The
Yogi says, religion is practical if you know first why misery exists.
All the misery in the world is in the senses. . . . You may do good
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70
time. All the same, you will be the slave of your senses, you will be
miserable and unhappy. . . . You call yourselves men! You stand up
and build hospitals. You are fools! . . . The conquest of internal
nature is the only way out, according to Yoga. . . . It is much easier to
do anything upon the external plane, but the greatest conqueror in the
world finds himself a mere child when he tries to control his own
mind. This is the world he has to conquer-the greater and more
difficult world to conquer."31
Perhaps nothing could have more dumbfounded many of
Swamiji's listeners, or have seemed more Orientally pessimistic and
other-worldly to them, than his concepts of practical religion. Let us
take a little time here to recall what was going on at the end of the
last century and the beginning of the present one in regard to this
subject.
After the Civil War ( 1861-65), a number of people, largely
thinkers, writers, reformers, and clergymen of the well-to-do middle
classes, had become aware, first in England, then in America, that the
Industrial Revolution was not turning out to be an unmitigated
blessing. "At the beginning of this marvelous era," Henry George
wrote in 1877 in the introductory chapter of what was to become his
famous and influential book Progress and Poverty, "it was natural to
expect, and it was expected, that labor-saving inventions would
lighten the toil and improve the conditions of the laborer; that the
enormous increase in the power of producing wealth would make real
poverty a thing of the past. . . . Now, however, we are coming into
collision with facts which there can be no mistaking."32 These
unmistakable facts were, among other things, the grinding, hopeless
poverty and debilitating toil of millions of men, women, and children,
the unspeakable urban slums, rampant vice, unchecked municipal
corruption, frequent industrial depressions, and along with all this (in
what many felt to be a causal relationship), the increasing splendor
and power of the capitalistic rich.
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 Henry George was not alone in taking note of such facts. In the
eighties and nineties many men-Edward Bellamy, Lester Ward,
Richard Ely, Henry C. Adams, Jacob Riis, to mention only a few-
wrote books and articles, gave lectures, and organized societies to
protest the glaring and proliferating evils of the age and to propose
various solutions that ranged from gradual reform to radical and
immediate socialism. Simultaneously, the liberal churches entered the
field with a solution called the Social Gospel or, as a movement,
Socialized Christianity or Christian Socialism. This, too, varied
widely in its degrees of radicalism; indeed, except for its frequent
references to God, it was not on the whole different in its outlooks,
methods, or goal from the secular movements. The general idea
behind all these movements-both those within the churches and those
outside them-was that man must take a hand in the natural laws of
Progress by exerting political control over his social and economic
environment. Few people questioned the inevitability of Progress
itself; the question that agitated the late -nineteenth-century mind was
how God and nature intended Progress to proceed.
Generally speaking, these various reform movements were in
direct opposition to the theories of the social evolutionists. According
to Herbert Spencer, William Graham Sumner, and their popularizer,
the personable, learned and highly persuasive John Fiske, the natural
laws of evolution, such as competitive struggle and the survival of the
fittest, through which God was unfolding His great Purpose, should
not on any account be interfered with, harsh though they might some-
times seem, but be allowed to bring about the ultimate and glorious.
Goal for which the Creator had set them in motion, namely, the
perfect human society. "Enthusiastic social architects," William
Graham Sumner wrote, only postpone all our chances of real
improvement. "Society needs first of all to be freed from these
meddlers-that is, to be let alone."33
But the "meddlers"-the new Christian Socialists and the Social
Gospelers-saw God's plan in a different light-a light
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which disclosed that the ethical teachings of Christianity were a
necessary part of evolution. According to one of the more liberal
papers read at the Parliament of Religions, Christianity was "the
further evolution. It is an evolution re-enforced with all the moral and
spiritual forces that have entered the world and cleaved to humanity
through Jesus Christ. . . . Organic evolution is but the earlier chapter
of Christianity. .. . Christianity is but the later evolution."34 The
Reverend Francis G. Peabody, a Unitarian and a Harvard professor,
spoke for Socialized Christianity when he assured the Parliament that
"a completed social order was Christ's highest dream." The Kingdom
of God on earth, he said, was the one thing to be desired-"that
perfected world of humanity in which, as in a perfect body, each part
should be sound and whole, and thus the body be complete." 35
Properly understood, the Social Gospelers contended, Christ's
teachings meant just one thing: the Kingdom of God on Earth must
be brought about and could be brought about only through the moral
regeneration, or the Christianization, of the political, economic,
industrial, and social environment. To accomplish this wholesale re-
generation was the essential, indeed the only, function and
responsibility of religion. "Do you want to commence building a
Heaven on earth?" Mrs. B. Fay Mills had cried in her Oakland
sermon "Heaven and How to Escape from It." "You can begin at
once. There is a work for you right at hand. You can find in the
political, educational, social and industrial conditions that surround
us a great field in which to begin."36
During his first visit to the West Swamiji had had a firsthand
acquaintance with the views of Socialized Christianity. Unitarian and
Congregational ministers, at whose churches he sometimes spoke,
were generally of Social Gospel persuasion. The Free Religious
Association, to which a number of his friends belonged and before
which he once spoke, was a staunch upholder of social reform. Many
of the members of the Brooklyn Ethical Association, with whom he
was well acquainted, were swinging toward the Social Gospel or its
secular equivalent
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(though its former president, Swamiji's great friend Dr. Lewis G.
Janes, was an ardent Spencerian). Again, the forward looking
Twentieth Century Club in Boston, where Swamiji spoke in 1896,
was dedicated to Progress and Reform.
Although the Social Gospel had its beginnings largely on the East
Coast among the liberals and intellectuals, its spirit soon spread
throughout the country. Many preachers and reformers took up the
theme of collective moral regeneration. The Reverend B. Fay Mills,
for instance, switched from evangelism to liberalism, from saving
individual souls to saving society. The ordinarily reserved and
scholarly Reverend Charles H. Parkhurst, pastor of the staid Madison
Square Presbyterian Church and a friend, or at least an acquaintance,
of Swamiji's, suddenly sought to eliminate vice from New York and
indeed managed, almost single-handedly, to dethrone for a time the
powerful and infamous administration of Tammany Hall. On quite a
different level, the young and rambunctious Vrooman Brothers, who
were also acquaintances of Swamiji's, railed interminably against
corrupt Baltimore politics, calling their campaign "Dynamic
Religion."
Perhaps the most well-known and influential popularizer of the
Social Gospel was the Reverend Charles M. Sheldon, a
Congregational pastor of Topeka, Kansas, one of whose books, a
novel entitled In His Steps: What Would Christ Do?, first published
in 1896, is said to have sold more copies throughout the world (some
twenty-two million by 1937) than any other book written in America.
What would happen, Mr. Sheldon asked, if a whole congregation
should follow "in His steps" for a year, each person conducting his
business or profession as Christ would conduct it? The concept had
tremendous appeal. In February of 1900, Mr. Sheldon conceived the
idea of editing a newspaper "as Christ would edit it," and the
following month he actually assumed for a week the editorship of the
Topeka Capital, filling its columns with denunciations of, among
other things, trusts and the liquor traffic.
Partly in consonance with this spirit of reform, a veritable #

74
flood of good works poured over the United States. "By the end of
the century the voluntary gifts by both rich and poor totalled
hundreds of millions of dollars annually."37 But by no means all of
this humanitarianism stemmed from the liberal churches or was
directly inspired by the Social Gospel. Much of it was the result of a
sort of counter gospel, known as the Gospel of Wealth. As Andrew
Carnegie had put it in his essay of that title: "Thus is the problem of
rich and poor to be solved. The laws of accumulation will be left free,
the laws of distribution free. Individualism will continue, but the
millionaire will be but a trustee of the poor. . . . Such, in my opinion,
is the true gospel concerning wealth."38 To a great many Americans
this true gospel concerning wealth seemed an excellent means of
tempering the stern laws of evolution without recklessly tampering
with them. And who, after all, could be better trustees of the poor
than the rich? Americans had been brought up to believe firmly that it
was the wise, virtuous, upright man who became the rich man. "In the
long, run, it is only to the man of morality that wealth comes " Bishop
William Lawrence of Massachusetts could solemnly proclaim from
the pulpit. "Godliness is in league with riches."39 And the extremely
popular Reverend Henry Ward Beecher had earlier declared to his
wealthy congregation in Brooklyn, "Generally thc proposition is true
that where you find the most religion there you find the most worldly
prosperity."40
One might say that there was a sort of undeclared, and to the
majority of churchgoers unsuspected, war of good work. going on in
America at the end of the century. One side was good-working to
maintain the status quo; the other, very much outnumbered, side was
good-working to change it Both efforts (which overlapped here and
there and reflected many shades of opinion, for nothing was clear-cut
in that confused age) were dedicated to material Progress, or, as i was
more generally spoken of, the realization of the Kingdon of God on
Earth. Both were politically oriented and both were called practical
religion. Indeed, by 1900 organized human-
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itarianism, in all its uses and motivations, constituted the very core of
religion itself.
"What is the practical religion you are thinking of?" Swamiji
cried. "Lord help us! `Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see
God.' That means street-cleaning, hospital building, and all that?
Good works, when you do them with a pure mind. . . . Serve as
worship of the Lord Himself in the poor, the miserable, the weak.
That done, the result is secondary. That sort of work, done without
any thought of gain, benefits the soul. And even of such is the
kingdom of heaven."41
In that age of heady optimism when Americans stood, so they
thought, on the threshold of the Millennium, Swamiji thundered,
"Renounce! Renounce! Sacrifice! Give up! Not for zero. Not for
nothing. But to get the higher. . . . This is practical religion. What
else? Cleaning streets and building hospitals? Their value consists
only in this renunciation. And there is no end to renunciation. . . .
Where God is, there is no other. Where the world is, there is no God.
These two will never unite. . . . This is what I have understood from
Christianity and the life of the Teacher. Is not that Buddhism? Is not
that Hinduism? Is not that Mohammedanism? Is not that the teaching
of all the great sages and teachers?"42
From one point of view, one might say that the heart of Swamiji's
message lay in his definition of practical religion, indeed of religion
itself, and nowhere was that definition more clearly, more sharply
enunciated than in "The Practice of Religion," which he delivered in
Alameda on April 18 and from which the above quotations come.
Although this lecture takes us some three weeks beyond our story, it
was, in a sense, a continuation of his San Francisco lecture "Practical
Religion: Breathing and Meditation," and is thus not out of place
here. It was his answer, not to bigotry, not to narrowness, but to
something equally ruinous to spirituality: the secularization of
religion in the name of religion itself, which was rapidly stifling what
little mysticism (to use that word in its true sense) Christianity then
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 "We hear all around us about practical religion," Swamiji said in
Alameda, "and analyzing all that, we find that it can be brought down
to one conception-charity to our fellow beings. Is that all of religion?
Every day we hear in this country about practical Christianity-that a
man has done some good to his fellow beings. Is that all? What is the
goal of life? Is this world the goal of life? Nothing more? Are we to
be just what we are, nothing more? The highest dream of many
religions is the world. The vast majority of people are dreaming of
the time when there will be no more disease, sickness, poverty, or
misery of any kind. They will have a good time all around. Practical
religion, therefore, simply means: `Clean the street! Make it nice!'
We see how all enjoy it. Is enjoyment the goal of life?... What a
mistake then to become a man! Vain have been my years-hundreds of
years--of struggle only to become the man of sense enjoyments.
"Mark therefore," he continued, "the ordinary theory of practical
religion, what it leads to. Charity is great, but the moment you say it
is all, you run the risk of running into materialism. It is not religion. It
is not better than atheism-a little less. You Christians, have you found
nothing else in the Bible than working for fellow creatures, building
hospitals? Here stands a shopkeeper and says how Jesus would have
kept the shop! Jesus would neither have kept a saloon, nor a shop, nor
have edited a newspaper. That sort of practical religion is good, not
bad, but it is just kindergarten religion. It leads nowhere."43
Nor was that sort of practical religion practical even for its own
ends. "Look at the sum total of good and evil in this world," Swamiji
pointed out. "Has it changed? Ages have passed, and practical
religion has worked for ages. The world thought that each time the
problem would be solved. It is always the same problem. At best it
changes its form. . . . It is like old rheumatism: Drive it from one
place, it goes to another. . . . This universe, nature, or whatever you
call it, must be limited; it can never be unlimited. The Absolute, to
become
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nature, must be limited by time, space, and causation. The energy at
our disposal is limited. You can spend it in one place, losing it in
another. The sum total is always the same. Wherever there is a wave
in one place, there is a hollow in another. If one nation becomes rich,
others become poor. Good balances evil. . . . Some weep and others
laugh. The latter will weep in their turn and the others laugh. What
can we do? We know we cannot do anything. Which of us do
anything because we want to do good? How few! They can be
counted on the fingers. The rest of us also do good, but because we
are forced to do so. We cannot stop. Onward we go, knocked about
from place to place. What can we do? The world will be the same
world, the earth the same."44
In those days when Progress was an almost sacred concept, as
though it were some sort of divine attribute-the way in which God
behaved-Swamiji's logical denial that good will steadily increase, evil
as steadily decrease, must have seemed almost blasphemous. Even
those closest to him were disturbed by his apparent pessimism. Did
he not know, as one who walked with God should know, that all
things were working together for good? " `God's in His heaven, all's
right with the world,' " Mary Hale had reminded him during his first
visit to America and had reinforced this thought with another: "
`Through the ages one increasing purpose runs, and the thoughts of
men are widened with the process of the suns.' I cannot see that,
holding that to be true," she had continued, "our efforts to ameliorate
conditions would be paralyzed-I think they would be strengthened."45
In 1900 Tennyson's lines were no doubt still on the lips of many of
Swamiji's friends. "Through the ages one purpose runs sure," he
mocked in a letter to Mary Hale, written possibly in January* "And
that will be finished with the destruction of this earth and the sun!
And worlds are always in progress indeed! And nobody as yet
developed enough in any one of the infinite worlds to communicate
with us! Bosh! They are born, show the same phenomena and die the
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same death! Increasing purpose! Babies! Live in the land of dreams,
you babies!"46
Should we not try to do good then? "Certainly," Swamiji would
often reply. "Do good for good's sake!" In India he perhaps spoke
more strongly on this point than elsewhere, for in India the futility of
material progress as an end in itself was all too well understood.
"What good will come of any kind of work in this evanescent
world?" Swamiji's disciple Chakravarty had typically asked him. "My
boy," Swamiji had answered, "when death is inevitable, is it not
better to die like heroes than as stocks and stones? And what is the
use of living a day or two more in this transitory world? It is better to
wear out than to rust out-specially for the sake of doing the least good
to others."47 Further-to the same disciple, who on another occasion
had asked the same question: "[To do good to others] is necessary for
one's own good. We become forgetful of the ego when we think of
the body as dedicated to the service of others. . . . Thus it is that doing
good to others constitutes a way, a means of revealing one's own Self
or Atman."48
Actually, there was no cry of the human heart that Swamiji did not
hear and long to comfort; there was nothing about man he ignored, no
aspect of his welfare that did not claim his concern. "You know," he
once said to Mrs. Hansbrough in San Francisco, "I may have to be
born again." The reason he gave was not that he would have to come
back with Sri Ramakrishna, as he had said at other times; rather, the
will to return would be his own as well as his Master's and of a piece
with his own vastness of heart. "I may have to be born again," he
said, "because I have fallen in love with man."49 But he knew, knew
with a knowledge as profound as his compassion, that there was only
one remedy for the anguish of man: until men become spiritual, until
their acts and thoughts are impregnated with the spiritual ideal, and
until this ideal is made real through spiritual experience there can be
no heaven on earth in any sense of the term. Indeed, to Swamiji's
mind
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the very last way to ameliorate conditions in the West was to
socialize, secularize Christianity. Thus, where "doing good" was
piously undertaken for material ends and where both these means and
these ends were fast becoming the whole of religion, he pointed out
again and again the basic fallacy, if not the hypocrisy, behind this
particular "gospel."
What, then, was practical religion? "Practical religion," Swamiji
replied, "is identifying myself with my Self. Stop this wrong
identification [with matter]! How far are you advanced in that? You
may have built two thousand hospitals, built fifty thousand roads, and
yet what of that, if you have not realised that you are the spirit? . . .
You must see God. The spirit must be realised, and that is practical
religion. It is not what Christ preached that you call practical religion.
. . . The Kingdom of Heaven is within us. He is there. He is the soul
of all souls. See Him in your own soul. That is practical religion. That
is freedom. . . . That is real worship. Realise yourself. That is all there
is to do. Know yourself as you are-infinite spirit. That is practical
religion. Everything else is impractical, for everything else will
vanish. That alone will never vanish. It is eternal. Hospitals will
tumble down. Railroad givers [builders?] will all die. This earth will
be blown to pieces, suns wiped out. The soul endureth for ever. . . .
Therefore to realise the spirit as spirit is practical religion. Everything
else is good so far as it leads to this one grand idea. That realisation is
to be attained by renunciation, by meditation-renunciation of all the
senses, cutting the knots, the chains that bind us down to matter. `I do
not want to get material life, do not want the sense-life, but
something higher.' That is renunciation. Then, by the power of
meditation, undo the mischief that has been done."50
Americans were quick to reply to Swamiji: Well, now, if this kind
of practical religion leads to conditions as they are in India-the all-
around degradation, the famines, the plagues (there were, in fact,
severe plague and famine in India in February and March of 1900),
the hopeless poverty, the inequalities and injustices of the caste
system, the misery of child
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widows . . . (the list was long), then how can this kind of practical
religion be practical? The question, with its implications of Western
superiority, always annoyed Swamiji. He could have replied, and
sometimes did, that the condition of India was due in part to British
colonialism (as readers of Henry George would have known), in part
to the complex and inevitable rises and falls of the historical process,
in part to the fact that the pure Vedanta of the Upanishads had never
been given to the Hindu masses. But more beneficial for Americans
to hear from Swamiji's lips was a rebuke of their own bottomless
conceit. In the lecture "Meditation" one finds a paragraph in which he
strongly chided the people of the West for their assumption of
superiority in all matters under the sun. In the published version the
quotation marks within this paragraph would seem to be wrongly
placed, thus robbing Swamiji's reproach of its sting:
"I am asked," he said, " `Why do you Indian people not conquer
these things [through yoga] ?' "51 Here the quotation marks should,
one thinks, be closed. The remainder of this paragraph does not
appear to be a continuation of the query, but Swamiji's scathing reply
to it, not all of which, one suspects, Miss Ansell took down, or took
down correctly. Her first, unedited, transcript reads at this point:
"You all the time claim to be the superior people of everybody else.
You practice it and do it quicker than anybody else. Indian people are
not fit themselves for such great work! You are fitter. Carry it out. If
you are the great people, you ought to have the great system. You
will have to [dispense with] the gods. Let them go to sleep. You take
up the great philosophy. You are mere babies, as superstitious as the
rest of the world, and all your claims are failures. If you have the
claims, stand up and be bold, and all the heaven that ever existed is
yours. The musk deer has the fragrance inside and he does not know
where the fragrance is. Then after days and days he finds it in him.
All these gods [and] demons [are] within [you]. You must find out,
by the powers of reason, education and culture, that it is all in your-
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81
self. No more gods and superstitions. You want to be rational, to be
Yogis, really spiritual. Everything [in the West] is material. What
more material than God sitting on a throne? Yet you look down upon
the poor man who is worshipping the image. You are not better. And
you gold worshippers, what are you? The image worshipper worships
his God, something he can see. But you do not even do that. You
[neither] worship the spirit nor something that you can understand." 52
Thus (though more clearly, it is certain,) did Swamiji press home
his point. Yet, needless to say, everything in the West (over eighty
years later) is still material. In spite of all its disillusionment with
progress (no longer spelled with a capital P), in spite of all its
gropings for a religion profound enough, universal enough, and
"man-making" enough to meet the unprecedented demands of the
present age-a religion that would spring from and, in turn, serve to
draw forth the enormous, indeed infinite, power and goodness of
man-the Western world has yet to assimilate Swamiji's message. But,
as we have said before, he spoke not for a day but for an age, an age
that was then only in its infancy. "You may not like what I am
saying," he told a San Francisco audience when speaking of the
monistic concept of God and man. "You may curse me today, but
tomorrow you will bless me.‖53

10

To return to Swamiji's lectures at Washington Hall, we now come

to one entitled "Discipleship," which, unlike most of his West Coast
lectures, does not belong to a series. According to Ida Ansell's
transcript, Swamiji gave it on March 29; but around this time Miss
Ansell seems to have been a day behind. She gave the date March 28
to "The Science of Breathing," though Swamiji almost certainly
delivered it on March 29. It would be in keeping, then, for her to give
the date March 29 to a lecture delivered on March 30. But whenever
Swamiji gave "Discipleship," one does not find a lecture similar to it
in the
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Complete Works. It was in a class by itself, as were several others
that he gave in California, such as "My Life and Mission" and
"Women of India," both of which had been given in Pasadena on
requests from the audience. In "Discipleship" Swamiji dealt with the
four basic conditions of discipleship. In the order that Swamiji spoke
of them, these were: renunciation, control of the senses and the mind,
faith in the guru and an intense desire for freedom, and discrimination
between the Real and the unreal* "These are the four conditions
which one who wants to be a disciple must fulfill," he concluded;
"without fulfilling them he will not be able to come in contact with
the true guru. And even if he is fortunate enough to find him, he will
not be quickened by the power that the guru may transmit. There
cannot be any compromising of these conditions. With the fulfillment
of these conditions-with all these preparations-the lotus of the
disciple's heart will open and the bee shall come. Then the disciple
knows that the guru was within the body, within himself. He opens
out. He realizes. He crosses the ocean of life, goes beyond. He
crosses this terrible ocean, and in mercy, without a thought of gain or
praise, he in his turn helps others to cross."54
On April 8 Swamiji delivered the fifth and last lecture in his
Sunday series on the Great Teachers of the World. On the previous
Sunday afternoons, as the reader will remember, he bad spoken on
the messages of Christ, Buddha, Mohammed, and Sri Krishna. One
might have expected him to close this series with a talk on the great
Teacher of the present age, his Master, Sri Ramakrishna, but,
significantly, he chose instead the title "Is Vedanta Philosophy the
Future Religion?" Throughout his mission Swamiji had preached his
Master's message; seldom had he spoken publicly on his Master
himself. Perhaps the primary reason for his reticence in this regard
lay in his insistence upon placing principle above person, an insis-
tence never so pronounced as during his second visit to the West,
when even during his lectures on the Great Teachers he had urged
man to "be not an imitation of Jesus, but be
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Jesus!" His great care always was not to start a cult. "I have never
preached personalities," he had said in 1898 during an interview in
Calcutta. "My own life is guided by the enthusiasm of this great soul
[Sri Ramakrishna] ; but others will decide for themselves how far
they share in this attitude. Inspiration is not filtered out to the world
through one channel, however great, Each generation should be
inspired afresh. Are we not all God?"55
On the other hand, there seems to have been little doubt in
Swamiji's mind that Sri Ramakrishna would become universally
known and worshiped, that the unprecedented greatness of that life
would become a source of spiritual inspiration to the entire world for
an untold number of generations. Indeed, the inevitability of the
universal worship of Sri Ramakrishna was perhaps all the more
reason that he dwelt almost exclusively on the essential principles of
his Master's teachings, impressing upon the world-mind the eternal
truths which had been exemplified to the full in his person. Before Sri
Ramakrishna could be imprisoned within a cult, before he could be
stereotyped and limited by one interpretation or another, or divided
up into a number of divergent interpretations, Swamiji presented the
universality of his life and teachings, equating them with the
impersonal and timeless teachings of Vedanta.
"Is Vedanta the Future Religion?" (as it is entitled in the Complete
Works) was fully in keeping with the dominant trend of Swamiji's
teaching during this second visit to America when his emphasis on
"man-making" was so strong, so pronounced. By Vedanta he here
meant Advaita, or monistic, Vedanta, the religion that left behind
scriptural authority, left behind dependence upon a Savior, left
behind even the Personal God-the religion, in short, that outdistanced
most of the things that the majority of people looked upon as the very
foundation of religion itself. "These are what Vedanta has not to
give," he said. "No book, no man to be singled out from the rest of
mankind. . . , no Personal God. All these must go. Again, the senses
must go.... What is the God of Vedanta? He is
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principle, not person. You and I are all Personal Gods. The absolute
God of the universe, the creator, preserver, and destroyer of the
universe, is impersonal principle. You and I, the cat, rat, devil, and
ghost, all these are Its persons-all are Personal Gods. You want to
worship Personal Gods. It is the worship of your own self. If you take
my advice, you will never enter any church. Come out and go and
wash off. Wash your self again and again until you are cleansed of all
the superstitions that have clung to you through the ages."56
It was indeed a "man-making religion" that Swamiji preached in
San Francisco, a religion to build heroes. "We want a Personal God, a
saviour or a prophet to do everything for us," he said. . . . "All this
running after help is foolishness. . . . Never does any help come from
the outside. There is no help for man. None ever was, none is, and
none will be. Why should there be? Are you not men and women?
Are the lords of the earth to be helped by others? Are you not
ashamed? You will be helped when you are reduced to dust. But you
are spirit. Pull yourself out of difficulties by yourself! Save yourself
by yourself! There is none to help you-never was. To think that there
is, is sweet delusion. It comes to no good."57
But could the world accept a religion such as this? Could man
accept here and now the truth of his own spiritual sovereignty, or
would he have to inch and wind toward that high summit along the
old paths of lesser truths-and would he reach it even then?
"Sometimes I agree," Swamiji said, "that there is some good in the
dualistic method: it helps many who are weak. . . . All the various
practices and trainings, Bibles and Gods, are but the rudiments of
religion, the kindergartens of religion. But then," he went on, "I think
of the other side. How long will the world have to wait to reach the
truth if it follows this slow, gradual process? How long? And where
is thc surety that it will ever succeed to any appreciable degree? It has
not so far. After all, gradual or not gradual, easy or not easy to the
weak, is not the dualistic method based on falsehood? Are not all the
prevalent religious practices often
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85
weakening and therefore wrong? They are based on a wrong idea, a
wrong view of man. Would two wrongs make one right? Would the
lie become truth? Would darkness become light?‖ 58
Studying Swamiji's California lectures and classes as a whole,
bearing in mind that he himself felt he had a new message to give,
one cannot but conclude that this lecture was a deeply considered
one. "Today I am preaching the thing I like," he said. But he was also
preaching as a World Teacher who knew the time had come to give
the highest truth to all. He asked whoever could to leap ahead in one
courageous bound rather than to crawl along snail-paced and with
dubious success from "lower truth to higher truth," Was it not to
bring about this swift upward surge of the human soul that Sri
Ramakrishna had come to earth? "I am the servant of a man who has
passed away," Swamiji said. "I am only the messenger. I want to
make the experiment. The teachings of Vedanta I have told you about
were never really experimented with before: Although Vedanta is the
oldest philosophy in the world, it has always become mixed up with
superstitions and everything else."59
Yet the question remained: Is Vedanta the future religion?
Swamiji was regretfully aware that not everyone could, or would,
accept it. "There is a chance," he said, "of Vedanta becoming the
religion of your country because of democracy. But it can become so
only if you can and do clearly understand it, if you become real men
and women, not people with vague ideas and superstitions in your
brains, and if you want to be truly spiritual, since Vedanta is
concerned only with spirituality."60 But that was a big "if." "If
Vedanta-this conscious knowledge that all is one spirit-spreads, the
whole of humanity will become spiritual," he said later on in this
same lecture. "But is it possible?" Realistic always, he answered: "I
do not know. Not within thousands of years. The old superstitions
must run out. . . . Religion has been religion to very few. . . . For
thousands of years millions and millions all over the world have
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been taught to worship the Lord of the world, the Incarnations, the
saviours, the prophets. They have been taught to consider themselves
helpless, miserable creatures and to depend upon the mercy of some
person or persons for salvation. There are no doubt many marvellous
things in such beliefs. But even at their best, they are but
kindergartens of religion, and they have helped but little. Men are
still hypnotised into abject degradation. However," he concluded,
"there are some strong souls who get over that illusion. The hour
comes when great men shall arise and cast oft these kindergartens of
religion and shall make vivid and powerful the true religion, the
worship of the spirit by the spirit."61
It was for these great men who would leaven the whole that
Swamiji taught. His conviction seems always to have been that a few
such "lion-souls" in each country would be enough to shake the
world. Further, he seemed more and more convinced that a much
larger number of men and women than is ordinarily believed could
rise to his call and to the greatness of their own divine nature. If
Vedanta could not be at once practiced by all, it surely could be
practiced by many, and it surely could serve as the ideal for millions
more. Why else, if Swamiji was not certain of this, did he preach the
divinity of man during these last years of his life so steadily, with
such bold strokes and in such clear, undiluted colors? "How many of
you take me seriously?" he asked in "Is Vedanta the Future
Religion?" "But the truth is all here, and I must tell you the truth,"62

11

"Is Vedanta the Future Religion?" would have been Swamiji's last
lecture in San Francisco. A day or two later he moved from the Turk
Street flat to the town of Alameda in the East Bay, and if nothing
untoward had in the meanwhile taken place, it is probable that his
public work in San Francisco would have thus come to a close. After
the first week in March
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things had gone well. "I am getting all the work I can do and more,"
he had written to Mrs. Bull on April 1. "I will make my passage,
anyhow. Though they cannot pay me much, yet they pay some, and
by constant work I will make enough to pay my way and have a few
hundred in the pocket anyhow."63
Swamiji would have learned of his financial standing through
consultation with Mrs. Hansbrough. Although he himself tried for a
time to keep track of his earnings and expenses in San Francisco
(there is a little notebook preserved at Belur Math which bears brief
testimony to this effort), he rarely remembered to write down the
figures. Mrs. Hansbrough was the acting accountant, which is not to
say a great deal, for, as I have learned from her daughter, keeping
accounts was not among her skills; yet her method was direct. As
mentioned earlier, she used to change the admission or collection
money into twenty-dollar gold pieces, which in those days circulated
freely. These-each the size of a silver dollar-she stowed in a teapot.
Later, when the teapot was half full, she appropriated other small pots
around the flat, until at length she had "several pots half full of
twenty-dollar gold pieces." From time to time, Swamiji would ask her
to figure out how much he had earned to date. "So I would get my
notebook and pencil," she related, "and would bring the pots and
dump the coins out on the table. After counting the money Swamiji
would find that there was not enough, so he would decide to open
another series of lectures."64
But after Swamiji had completed his San Francisco lecture series
on raja yoga in the first week of April (he had given the last lecture of
this series—―Practical Religion: Breathing and Meditation"--on April
5) he seems to have been satisfied with the number of gold coins he
had earned. "My work here is done," he wrote to Sister Nivedita on
April 6. "I will come in fifteen days to Chicago if Mary [Hale] is
there."65
As it happened, however, Swamiji's work in San Francisco was
not yet done. The very next day (April 7) he wrote to
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Mrs. Bull, "You see, I will have to stay here more than I want and
work." The explanation of his overnight change of plan is contained
in an unpublished passage that preceded this sentence. "Today's letter
from the Math," he had written, "tells me that the Raja of Khetri has
stopped the stipend well, Mother's will. The Raja has been very good
for years. All blessings on him and his. I am calm and quiet more
than ever," he continued. "I am on my own feet working-hard and
with pleasure. To work I have the right-Mother knows the rest. So
you see I will have to stay here. . . . "66
That the Raja of Khetri had "stopped the stipend" was not a matter
of small importance, and since it has bearing on our present story,
something of the relationship between Swamiji and his good friend
and disciple Maharaja Ajit Singh of Khetri can be told here. In his
book Swami Vivekananda-A Forgotten Chapter of His Life, Mr. Beni
Shanker Sharma has pointed out the important role the Maharaja
played in Swamiji's life, concluding that it was he who had paid his
passage to America in 1893 (certainly he had borne a substantial
share of the cost) ; it was he, also, who had helped in the support of
his mother and two younger brothers, sending them one hundred
rupees a month (then about $32.50) and thus lifting a great burden
from Swamiji's mind. The Maharaja had also contributed to
Swamiji's own living expenses, forwarding him money from time to
time (more than half of which Swamiji would, in turn, regularly give
to the Belur Math). Further, it was the Maharaja to whom Swamiji
felt free to turn when matters connected with his personal finances
became desperate.
Writing to Mrs. Bull in July or August of 1895, he had spoken of
his esteem for and gratitude to the Maharaja:

In India Raja Ajit Singh of Khetri & in America Mrs. Ole

Bull-these are the two persons upon whom I can depend at any
time. Of all the friends I have in the world you two show such
wonderful steadiness of purpose and both are so calm and silent.
. . . The raja is taking very
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 good care of my family. I have no fear on that account even if I
die it will go on all the same. So you need not trouble yourself
about them anymore.67

Along with other previously unpublished material, Mr. Sharma

has included in his book two letters written by Swamiji toward the
end of 1898, asking Maharaja Ajit Singh for help for both his family
and himself. In the first of these letters, dated November 22, 1898, he
wrote in part:

. . . I appeal to your Highness's word, generosity and

friendship. I have one great sin rankling always in my breast and
that is to do a service to the world I have sadly neglected my
mother. Again since my second brother [Mahendranath] has
gone away she has become awfully worn out with grief. Now
my last desire is to make [seva] and serve my mother for some
years at least. I want to live with my mother and get my younger
brother married to prevent extinction of the family. This will
certainly smoothen my last days as well as that of my mother.
She lives now in a hovel. I want to build a little decent home for
her and make some provision for the youngest as there is very
little hope of his being a good earning man. Is it too much for a
royal descendent of Ramchandra to do for one he loves and calls
his friend? I do not know whom-else to appeal to. The money I
got from Europe was for the `work' and every penny almost has
been given over to that work. Nor can I go beg of others for help
for my own self. About my own family affairs I have exposed
myself to your Highness and none else shall know of it. I am
tired heart-sick and dying-do, I pray, this last great work of
kindness to me.68

The Maharaja evidently agreed to help Swamiji in whatever way

he could, and in his second letter, dated December 1, 1898, Swamiji
went into greater detail:#

90
 The lowest possible estimate of building a little home in Calcutta
is at least ten thousand rupees. With that it is barely possible to buy
or build a house in some out-of-the-way quarter of the town a little
house fit for 4 or 5 persons to live in.
As for the expenses of living, the 100 Rs. a month your
generosity is supplying my mother is enough for her. If another
100 Rs. a month be added to it for my life-time for my expenses
which unfortunately this illness has increased, and which I hope
will not be for long a source of trouble to you, as I expect only
to live a few years at best; I will be perfectly happy. One thing
more will I beg of you-if possible the 100 Rs. a month for my
mother be made permanent. So that even after my death it may
regularly reach her, or even if your Highness ever gets reasons
to stop your love and kindness for me, my poor old mother may
be provided, remembering the love you once had for a poor
Sadhu.69
On receipt of this letter the Maharaja at once sent Swamiji five
hundred rupees (about $160), bot whether or not he was able to give
ten thousand rupees toward the purchase of a small house is not clear.
All we know at present is that it was necessary for Swamiji to
borrow five thousand rupees from the Belur Math in order to buy a
house from his aunt and that later, when this house was not conveyed
to him, he thought of building a cottage for his mother on the Ganges.
This later plan, which one reads of in one or two of his letters written
in March of 1900, was short-lived; in May, he wrote to Mrs. Bull in
an unpublished letter, which I shall give in full later on, "I have long
given up the idea of a little house on the Ganges-as I have not the
money. . . . Kindly write to Saradananda from yourself to give up the
little house plan."70 Thus, all in all, it would appear that the Maharaja
of Khetri had not been able to help in regard to a house for Swamiji's
mother. Very possibly, however, he began to send Swamiji a
monthly#

91
stipend in 1899, and possibly he assured him that the monthly
allowance to his mother would be permanent. If he gave his word to
that effect, he would by all means have meant to keep it. "A Rajput
would rather die than break his promise," Swamiji once wrote; 71 and
Maharaja Ajit Singh was a Rajput. Unfortunately, however, in
January of 1901 he died from a fall, and his only heir, a son born in
1893, died at the age of eleven in 1904. After that, the kingdom of
Khetri passed into the hands of another family, whose members had
no particular interest in Swamiji or his mother. 72 Thus it does not
seem likely that the sum of Rs. 100 was paid to the latter from the
treasury of the Khetri estate until her death in 1911. But neither is it
likely that the allowance was cancelled during the lifetime of Ajit
Singh.
Presumably, then, the stipend that he abruptly stopped in April
(or March) of 1900 was not the monthly allowance to Swamiji's
mother but the money he had been sending to Swamiji through the
Belur Math for his personal expenses only a small part of which, as
we have seen, Swamiji kept for himself. Why the Maharaja stopped
sending this money is not known at the present time; perhaps he felt
that Swamiji had many rich American friends who could look after
him in their own country. But whatever the cause may have been, the
result was that Swamiji had to give an extra series of evening lectures
in San Francisco, coming from Alameda once or twice to do so. Yet
he did not seem sorry to work longer and harder than he had
intended. "Don't disturb yourself a bit," he wrote in his letter of April
7 to Mrs. Bull. "I will work all my problems out. I am on my own
feet. I begin to see the light. My success would have led me astray,
and I would have lost the reality that I am a Sannyasin-that is why
Mother is giving me this experience."73 And he of course had nothing
but blessings for his old friend and disciple, the Maharaja.

Although Swamiji again and again insisted that man break away
from abject dependence upon a Personal God or upon a
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Savior and stand up free and fearless, he by no means repudiated the
path of devotion. As though to underscore this fact, he chose the
subject of Divine Love for his additional series at Washington Hall.
According to the last-minute newspaper announcements of April 8,
the lectures were entitled "Worshiped and Worshiper," "Formal
Worship," and "Devotion and Love." They were given on the
evenings of, respectively, Monday, April 9; Tuesday, April 10; and
Thursday, April 12. All three were taken down by Ida Ansell, and her
second transcripts of them have been published in volume six of the
Complete Works-"Worshiped and Worshiper" under the title (with
variant spelling) "Worshipper and Worshipped," and "Devotion and
Love" under that of "Divine Love."
Swamiji's definition of the Personal God-a definition he had often
given in effect during his first visit to the West-reconciled in a few
words the philosophy of monism and the path of devotion. "You, as I
see you," he explained in "Worshipper and Worshipped," "are as
much of your absolute nature as has been limited and perceived by
me. I have limited you in order to see you through the power of my
eyes, my senses. As much of you as my eyes can see, I see. As much
of you as my mind can grasp is what I know to be you, and nothing
more. In the same way, I am reading the Absolute, the Impersonal,
and see Him as Personal. As long as we have body and mind, we
always see this triune being: God, nature and soul. There must always
be the three in one, inseparable. . . . The universal soul has become
embodied. My soul itself is a part of God. He is the eye of our eyes,
the life of our life, the mind of our mind, the soul of our soul. This is
the highest ideal of the Personal God we can have. If you are not a
dualist, but a monist, you can still have the Personal God. There is the
One without a second. That One wanted to love Himself. Therefore
out of that One, He made many. It is the big Me, the real Me, that the
little me is worshipping. Thus in all systems you can have the
Personal God."74
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 And thus Swamiji was by no means contradicting himself when
on Sunday afternoon he cried, "What is the God of Vedanta? He is
principle, not person. You and I are all Personal Gods!" 75 and on the
following evening extolled the worship of the Personal God as a
means to the spiritual goal. But this God was not the remote,
magisterial monarch as conceived by most, if not all, dualistic
religions. "He is the Infinite, the Ever-Pure, the Ever-Free. He is no
judge. God cannot be a judge. He does not sit upon a throne and
judge between the good and the wicked. He is no magistrate, no
general, nor master. Infinitely merciful, infinitely loving is the
Personal God." Again, the Personal God was a God for the strong, a
God comprehensible, in fact, only from the standpoint of the spirit.
He was the God of all that is apparently evil as well as all that is
apparently good. "Face the terrible," Swamiji cried in "Worshipper
and Worshipped." "Tear aside the mask and find the same God. . . .
There is none else. . . . He is the good; He is the evil; He is the
beautiful; He is the terrible; He is life; and He is death."76
There was a call here for as much manliness as in Swamiji's
lectures on jnana yoga or raja yoga, for as much same-sightedness, as
much selflessness, and as much freedom from the senses. Further, the
way of love was as much a requirement of the present age as the way
of reason. "A bird cannot fly with only one wing," he said at the
outset of "Worshipper and Worshipped." "What we want is to see the
man who is harmoniously developed-great in heart, great in mind,
great in deed. We want the man whose heart feels intensely the
miseries and sorrows of the world. And we want the man who not
only can feel but can find the meaning of things, who delves deeply
into the heart of nature and understanding. We want the man who
will not even stop there, but who wants to work out the feeling and
meaning by actual deeds. Such a combination of head, heart, and
hand is what we want. There are many teachers in this world, but you
will find that most of them are one-sided. . . . Why not have the giant
who is equally active, equally
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knowing, and equally loving? Is it impossible? Certainly not. This is
the man of the future, of whom there are only a few at present. The
number of such will increase until the whole world is humanized." 77
In "Formal Worship," Swamiji explained the value of (but did not
necessarily recommend) the various stages of worship, the
"kindergartens of religion," through which man passes. "Working
through the plane of the senses [through worship of forms and
symbols], you get more and more entry into the other regions, and
then this world falls away from you. You get one glimpse of that
spirit, and then your senses and your sense enjoyments, your clinging
to the flesh, will all melt away from you. Glimpse after glimpse will
come from the realm of spirit. You will have finished yoga, and spirit
will stand revealed as spirit. Then you will begin the worship of God
as spirit. Then you will begin to understand that worship is not to
gain something. At heart, our worship was that infinite-finite element,
love, which is an eternal sacrifice at the feet of the Lord by the soul.
`Thou and not I. I am dead. Thou art, and I am not. I do not want
wealth, nor beauty, no, nor even learning. I do not want salvation. If
it be Thy will, let me go into twenty million hells. I only want one
thing: Be Thou my love!' "78
"To be completely turned into love of God," Swamiji said in
"Divine Love," "-there is the real worship! You have a glimpse of
that now and then in the Roman Catholic Church some of those
wonderful monks and nuns going mad with marvellous love. Such
love you ought to have! Such should be the love of God-without
asking anything, without seeking anything. . . . At last, love, lover,
and beloved become one. That is the goal. . . . All these ideas [such
as] `He is the creator,' are ideas fit for children. He is my love, my
life itself-that must be the cry of my heart!"79
This combination of intense, boundless love for the Personal God
who is everywhere, who is everyone and everything, with the
recognition that in the final analysis-indeed the final
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realization-there is neither I nor Thou, but only Brahman, the One
without a second, was perhaps one of Swamiji's most important
contributions to religious thought. The practice of monism became in
his teachings not the practice of world negation, but "the vivid and
powerful worship," within the world, of the spirit by the spirit-the
fearless, selfless worship of the Big Me by the little me. Devotion, at
the same time, became the spontaneous expression of the underlying
unity of God, soul, and nature; the monistic Reality was its very
essence. "Love," Swamiji had said in an Oakland lecture ("The
Reality and the Shadow"), "is simply an expression of this infinite
unity. Upon what dualistic system can you explain love?"80
It was no doubt around the time that Swamiji was giving his series
of lectures on divine love at the Red Men's Building that he told Mrs.
Allan that he disliked platform work. For one thing, the lectures were
titled in advance. "It is killing," he said. "At eight o'clock I am to
speak on love. At eight o'clock I do not feel like love." 81 But if
Swamiji had not felt like love before giving any of the three lectures
of this series, once he started, his words poured out as from the heart
of love itself. It was, of course, always so. Whatever subject Swamiji
found himself committed to speak on, his lecture was, literally, an act
of worship, an act of divine love. "Just now I am worshipping you,"
he told his audience during the course of "Is Vedanta the Future
Religion?" "This is the greatest prayer. Worship the whole world in
this sense-by serving it. This standing on a high platform, I know,
does not appear like worship. But if it is service, it is worship."82
This-the service of man as the actual worship of God himself-was the
powerful religion Swamiji taught from so many different approaches
and points of view, and it was the religion he made real by
exemplifying it with his every breath.

In addition to giving lectures in downtown San Francisco,

Swamiji spoke at least once during his stay in the city at the
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Pine Street Home of Truth and once at the California Street Home of
Truth. Unfortunately, we have very little certain information
regarding either of these talks, except that the second took place
before April 8 and was preceded by a dinner at which Ida Ansell (and
surely also Miss Bell, Mrs. Hansbrough, and Mrs. Aspinall) was
present. In her early unpublished memoirs Miss Ansell recalled this
occasion in a passage which I shall quote in full:

One night, Swamiji was to give a lecture in the Home of

Truth and first he had dinner with us. Mrs. [C. W.] Steele [a
resident member of the California Street Home] who prepared
the dinner, had for dessert some very fine dates, which Swamiji
much enjoyed. That night he delivered one of his most forceful
lectures. He "threw many bombs" as he expressed it, and told us
plainly and frankly just what he thought of us. It was startling,
thought-provoking and uplifting. Later, when Mrs. Steele
expressed appreciation of the lecture, he replied, "It was your
dates, Madam." It was at this dinner also that he surprised us
with the remark mentioned in "Is Vedanta the Future Religion?'
-"I will say grace to you, Madam; you have done all the work."83

("When I work, I say grace to myself," Swamiji had continued in

that lecture. "Praise be unto me that I worked hard and acquired what
I have! All the time you work hard and bless somebody else because
you are superstitious, you are afraid. No more of these superstitions
bred through thousands of years! It takes a little work to be
spiritual.")84
In her later memoirs, as published in the Reminiscences of Swami
Vivekananda, Miss Ansell wrote that in his lecture at the California
Street Home of Truth Swamiji rebuked American doctors for
advising against the practice of chastity. But, as I mentioned earlier, I
have taken as correct Mr. Rhodehamel's memory that this rebuke was
contained in "Mind: Its Powers
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97
and Possibilities," which Swamiji gave in Washington Hall. It is
possible, of course, that he spoke twice in exactly the same vein; but
of this we cannot be certain.
In any case, the Home of Truth lecture was, as Miss Ansell
recalled, a forceful one, and as we learn from Mrs. Allan, it was well
attended. The Home occupied a house on the south side of California
Street between Laguna and Buchanan-a fashionable block, graced in
those days by more than one large stone mansion. Although the
Home of Truth house, which is no longer standing, was considerably
less than a mansion, it was spacious enough to accommodate, with
some squeezing, an audience of well over a hundred people.
According to Mrs. Allan, who was present that evening, two rooms
on the lower floor had been thrown open for the occasion. "But so
many people came," she related, "that they were crowded into the
hallway and even up to the top of the stairs." Mrs. Allan was among
those who sat on the topmost stair, and there, after the lecture, she
was spied by Swamiji. "He came into the hall to greet the people,"
she said, "and seeing me, he called out, `Madam! What are you doing
up there among the gods?' "85

Swamiji's work in San Francisco was virtually finished; he now

had enough money, even without the Maharaja of Khetri's stipend,
and was ready to rest. "Now, as you say," he wrote to Miss MacLeod
on April 10, "I am going to send [to New York] all the money I have
made here. I could do it today but I am waiting to make it a thousand.
I expect to make a thousand in Frisco by the end of this week. I will
buy a draft on New York and send it or ask the bank the best way to
do it. . . . I think I should rest now, although I can have $100 a week
average in this city all along."86 Two days later he attained his
financial goal. "I have made over a thousand dollars in San Francisco
which I am going to send to Mr. Leggett this week in a New York
draft in his name," he wrote in an unpublished portion of a letter to
Mrs. Bull dated April 12. "I will still have money left to travel-so you
need not feel the
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least anxiety about me. As about my health, it is so so. Some days
good, others bad. . . . The pressure of work and irregularity of food
and sleep was tremendous in San Francisco-yet I love it well after all.
It is my nature to be at my best when left alone."87
Thus with the series "Divine Love," Swamiji's public lectures in
Washington Hall came to a close. It is known, however-primarily
through a reference in Mr. Allan's notebooks-that he gave "a short
series of lectures on Bhakti Yoga" in the smaller hall in the Red
Men's Building known as Social Hall. What Mr. Allan meant by
"short series" is hard to understand. Almost all of Swamiji's lecture
series consisted of three lectures, and fewer than three could not, one
thinks, be called a series. But however that may be, this "series" was
not announced in the newspapers, nor mentioned later; it was no
doubt semipublic and attended by a relatively small audience. The
first, and possibly the only, lecture of the "series," certainly the only
one of which we know the date, was given on the evening of
Saturday, April 14, 1900-a memorable date in the history of the
Vedanta movement in America, for it was immediately after the
lecture that the Vedanta Society of San Francisco was founded.

12

According to Mrs. Hansbrough, it was she who had suggested to

Swamiji that he found a Vedanta Society in San Francisco, even as
she had suggested that he found one in Pasadena. He was not certain,
she said, that either society would last; yet her suggestions would
have come to nothing if they had not been in keeping with Swamiji's
desire and had not received his consent and approval. It was, in fact,
almost inevitable that he would himself want to found Vedanta
societies in those places where he had poured out spiritual energy,
giving day after day the highest and strongest of his teachings. He
would naturally have wanted those teachings to take root and grow,
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not only in the hearts of the relatively few individuals to whom he
taught them, but in a group of individuals, a society, where, undiluted
and un-compromised, they would be permanently available to all. To
leave behind living vessels of this sort, in which the seeds he had so
liberally sown would take root and flourish and from which
thousands could thenceforth find spiritual nourishment, was indeed a
necessary part of Swamiji's mission.
There was also another reason why he wanted to found Vedanta
societies. Never did he forget the needs of his Motherland. His hope
was that students of Vedanta would recognize their debt to India and
would send the financial help she so sorely needed. "He felt that he
had come to the West for two purposes," Mrs. Hansbrough once said:
"to deliver a message and to get help for India. But he was terribly
disappointed in the amount of help he got." In California, however,
Swamiji found a generosity of spirit that touched him. "He was often
asked questions about going to India," Mrs. Hansbrough related,
"especially by women students. He used to tell them, `If you are
going to India to see great yogis, don't go. You will see only poverty,
filth and misery."'88 But despite Swamiji's warning, some still wished
to go, their ardor unquenched.
In a heretofore unpublished passage of a letter Swamiji wrote to
Mrs. Bull on April 12, two days before the founding of the San
Francisco Vedanta Society, he praised Californians for this warm
heartedness. "My chief idea in all western work has been to help
India," he said. "On New York I and mine have spent the greatest part
of our energies, and Indian work never had any help from New York-
and I do not believe will ever have. . . . Here in California people are
poor-but they come out with their help the best they can and I have
several applications every day from men and women to follow me to
India!"89
In this same letter, again in a heretofore unpublished passage,
Swamiji mentioned specifically (but did not name) two of the
Californians who were set upon going to India. "By the by,"
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100
he wrote, "there is a very clever Scotchman and his Swiss wife here.
The man is an inventor, electrician, etc. Just now there is a good
chance of his making money by one of his automobile inventions. He
is sure to go to the Seviers with his wife if he can succeed in his
scheme." (Captain and Mrs. J. H. Sevier, as has been mentioned
earlier, were English disciples of Swamiji and were then in charge of
his Himalayan retreat at Mayavati. Who the very clever Scotchman
and his Swiss wife were one cannot say, for no one whom we know
of today meets that description. Mr. Allan was a Scot, but he was not
an inventor or an electrician; nor was Mrs. Allan Swiss, she was
English to the bone. No married couple, in any event, ever went from
San Francisco to Mayavati.)
But however that may be, one of Swamiji's reasons for wanting
Vedanta societies in California was that they would keep alive not
only his message but the fire of generosity and sympathy toward
India that he had ignited in some hearts. He expected the societies in
both southern and northern California to send regularly what money
they could to Belur. "Don't be indifferent to the question of sending
money to the Math," he was to write several months later to Swami
Turiyananda, who was then working in California. "See that money
goes certainly every month From Los Angeles and San Franciaco."90
While Swamiji's desire to found a Vedanta Society in San
Francisco was a condition essential to the event, there was another
condition equally necessary: this was the existence of a group of
people eager to band together under his leadership. One indication
that such a group existed and had discussed the matter with him in
advance is to be found in another unpublished portion of his letter of
April 12 to Mrs. Bull. Referring to a dispute that was then taking
place in the New York Vedanta Society between Swami
Abhedananda on one side and Mrs. Bull and the Leggetts on the
other, Swamiji wrote, "If you think Abhedananda's stay in New York
will create disturbance, I can induce him to come over to San
Francisco-he
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can have all the organization here he wants. I can try at least. I will
write him by this mail."91 It would seem clear from this passage that a
society was in the offing, that the inaugural meeting of April 14 was
not a spur-of the-moment affair but had been under consideration by
both Swamiji and a group of his followers for at least a few days.
There are three firsthand accounts of this historic meeting
historic, because the San Francisco Vedanta Society was the second
of the two presently existing Vedanta societies established by Swami
Vivekananda in the Western world, the first, of course, being the
Vedanta Society of New York, which he founded in November of
1894. Perhaps the most important account of the San Francisco
inaugural meeting is its Minutes, but in addition to these we have the
eye-witness reports of Mrs. Hansbrough and Mr. Albert S. Wollberg.
(Mr. and Mrs. Allan did not attend the meeting. They did not, in fact,
become members of the Vedanta Society until after 1903.) Mr. and
Mrs. Wollberg had been more or less regular attendants of Swamiji's
downtown lectures and certainly enthusiastic and serious ones. Mr.
Wollberg, a long-confirmed atheist from the East Coast, had found on
hearing Swamiji that he could, after all, believe in God and had
promptly become a theist. He and his wife were to be active members
of the Vedanta Society for the remainder of their lives, and it is said
that Mr. Wollberg moved from theism to monism before he died. His
account of the inaugural meeting is a simple statement written in pen
and ink on one and a half sheets of letter paper. But simple and brief
as it is (and in part misleading), it forms one of the important
documents of the early history of the Vedanta Society of Northern
California:

The Origin of the Vedanta

Society of San Francisco

After the last lecture given by Swami Vivekananda on Raja

[Bhakti] Yoga at Social Hall, Red Men's Building on April 14th
1900 Swamiji was approached by me as to #

102
 the advisability of forming a Vedanta Centre here in San
Francisco.

He seemed to be very pleased & said "Why not?" Whereupon he

advised it would be well to start it right away.
There was an anteroom adjoining the Hall & those that seemed
to be interested attended this impromptu meeting.

Mrs. Hansbrough broached the idea of forming a permanent

Centre here which met with a universal "Aye." Thereupon the
meeting was called to order & Mrs. Dr. Plumb was elected the
first President. Dr. Logan who was present thereupon offered
the Class his offices at the Corner of Market and Geary Sts for
the meetings. Later Swamiji gave several lectures there. As the
Class grew in numbers Dr. Logan offered the finished basement
of his home at Oak and Steiner Streets for the meetings. There
Swamiji gave a number of discourses on the Gita-later on he left
for Paris.92

Turning again to Mrs. Hansbrough's "Reminiscences," we find

more details in connection with the Society's inaugural meeting:

[Dr. Logan] was present the night the San Francisco lectures
closed. The Wollbergs were there, but I don't remember whether
the Allans were or not. We had asked a Mr. Chambers to invite
any to stay at the close of the lecture who would be interested in
continuing the study of Swamiji's teachings. He did this, and
when the others had left he asked me to tell about the
organization of the Los Angeles and Pasadena centers. Then we
discussed the organization of a center here, but did not complete
the arrangements that night. Dr. Logan then suggested that we
meet the next night in his office at 10 Geary Street, which we
did, and it was on that night that the organization of the Society
was completed. Swamiji held some
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 classes before the Society and he also held some there after he
returned from Camp Taylor.
At the first meeting, I suggested to Swamiji that he leave
before the meeting opened. He asked me why, and I told him,
because I wanted to say some things about him that I would
rather he did not hear. So he agreed, and went home. [He was
then living in Alameda.] It was not that his staying would have
made any difference to Swamiji; my reason for asking this was
that I myself would have been embarrassed to speak as I wanted
to about him in his presence.93

The third and, as I said, perhaps the most important record of this
first meeting of the Vedanta Society is its Minutes. These, together
with the Minutes of the subsequent meetings, were neatly written in
an ornate, feminine hand in a red leather-covered, wide-ruled
copybook, which has been preserved in the archives of the Society.
The Minutes for Saturday, April 14, 1900, read as follows:

Minutes of the Vedanta Class

About twenty-five persons met together at 8 o'clock on the

evening of the 14th of April, 1900, in Social Hall, to discuss the
advisability of forming an organization to assist Swami
Vivekananda in his work in India and for the purpose of
studying the Vedanta Philosophy.
Dr. Plumb was chosen Chairman.
After much discussion it was found that a majority of those
present were in favor of forming a class, which they proceeded
to do.
After some discussion upon the subject a motion was duly
made, seconded and carried that the name of the organization be
the Vedanta Class.
Upon motions duly made and seconded Dr. Plumb was
chosen as President, Miss Mizener as Secretary and Treasurer,
and Mrs. Moore as Reader of the Class.#

104
 A motion was duly made, seconded and carried that the dues
of the members of the Vedanta Class be $1.00 per month, and
that the amount collected the first month be kept in the treasury
for incidental expenses.
A standing vote was taken as to the time for the meeting of
the class and Thursday evening found to be suitable to a
majority and was thereupon selected, a meeting to be held each
week.
Dr. Logan very kindly offered the class the use of his offices
until such time as it had a sufficient membership to warrant it in
renting a hall, and the class very gladly accepted the offer.
A motion was duly made, seconded and carried that the
Secretary be instructed to invite Mr. Nielson [Charles P.
Neilson, Swamiji's artist friend] to speak to the class on the
Vedanta Philosophy or the Gita.
The President was instructed to authorize the payment of the
bill of $3-for printing, and the bill of $4-for rent of hall.
There being no further business for consideration the class
then adjourned until Thursday evening, April 19th. 94

Presumably, but not certainly, the "bill of $4-for rent of hall" was
for the rent of the anteroom in which the meeting was held. As for the
"bill of $3-for printing," there are no existing records to indicate what
printing this might have been. Also unexplained in any account is the
hour at which the inaugural meeting is said in its Minutes to have
opened. Inasmuch as the meeting convened after an evening lecture
on "Bhakti Yoga," eight o'clock seems improbably early. Miss
Mizener, however, may have felt it a seemly hour for a meeting to be
held and have written up the Minutes accordingly.

Miss Mizener may have further tidied up history. Mrs.

Hansbrough has told us that the first meeting took place in two parts,
the second part being held the following night, which

105
would have been Easter Sunday, at Dr. Logan's offices. The above
Minutes, however, seem to be as complete as one could wish, and
one suspects that Miss Mizener combined the business of both
meetings under the date April 14, this being the orderly way to
handle the matter. On the other hand, Mrs. Hansbrough's memory
may have telescoped the time intervening between the first and
second meetings, and the launching of the Society may actually have
been carried over to its second regular meeting, which was held five
nights later on Thursday, April 19. At that meeting, however, nothing
further appears to have been necessary in the way of inaugural
business. Its Minutes read:

April 19th 1900.

The Vedanta Class and those interested in the work met

together at Dr. Logan's offices at 8 p.m. at 10 Geary St. Dr.
Plumb called the meeting to order.
There was a general discussion as to the advisability of
forming classes in Oakland and Alameda, but no definite action
taken.
The minutes of the preceding meeting were read and
adopted.
Mr. Nielson then spoke to us upon the Gita, and read
portions therefrom.
At the conclusion of such reading a motion was made,
seconded and carried that Mr. Nielson be asked to continue the
reading of the Gita at the future meetings of the Class.
Upon motion duly made and seconded it was decided that we
have one open meeting each month.
There being no further business before the Class, the meeting
adjourned until the 26th.95

Although the Society was at first called the "Vedanta Class," after
about a year the term "Vedanta Society" began to be used off and on
in the Minutes. No reason was given for this #

106
variation in name, but one finds that Swami Turiyananda (who came
to California in the summer of 1900) consistently referred to the San
Francisco organization as "the Vedanta Society" in his unpublished
letters of this period to Mrs. Hansbrough and others, which I have
had the good fortune to read. Further, on the cover of each issue of
the Pacific Vedantin, a magazine produced by the Society in 1902, is
printed "Issued by the Vedanta Society of San Francisco, California."
(The Ramakrishna Mission seal also appears on every cover.) After
Swami Trigunatita took charge of the Society in the beginning of
1903, the names "Vedanta Class" and "Vedanta Society" continued
for a time to be used interchangeably. Gradually the term "Vedanta
Society" took precedence and finally came to be used exclusively. As
far as can be discovered, no motion was made, seconded, and passed
that the name be permanently changed from "Class" to "Society"; the
change simply came about-as was inevitable, for the type of
organization had been from the start that of a society.
#

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 NOTES FOR CHAPTER EIGHT

p.23 * There is highly relaiable evidance that Swamiji also gave

Miss MacLeod a mantra. For information regarding this see
notes to Chapter One of World Teacher –I .
p.48 * In her published memoirs Ida Ansell has related that this
particular bomb was thrown during a lecture Swamiji gave at
the California Street Home of Truth. This recollection does
not occur in her original, unpublished memoirs, written in
1946, and it is possible that her published account of
Swamiji‘s words was borrowed, along with much else, from
Frank Rhodehamel;s memoirs. But be that as it may, there is
no indubitable evidence to tell us exactly where and when
this blast took place. I have taken Rhodehamel‘s mention of
―The Mind: Its Powers and Possibilities‖ to be a reference to
Swamiji‘s Washington Hall lecture of that tide, and while
that seems to be a reasonable supposition, it is, to be sure, a
supposition only.

** It may be of interest of students of Swamiji‘s lectures to

note that the last two paragraphs of ―The Importance of
Psychology‖ (Complete Works, 6:32) are actually the first
two paragraphs of Rhodehamel‘s original notes of ―Mind
Culture‖ (or, as published, ―The Powers of the Mind,
―Complete Works, 6:125).
p.59 * Frank Rhodehamel‘s notes of ―Natural and Man,‖ ―Soul
and God,‖ and ―The Goal‖ have been published in volume
six of the Complete Works under their original titles,
approximately. From these brief published notes it is
sometimes possible to understand Ida Ansell‘s ―scrappy‖
notes more clearly. For instance,

108
 p. 59 in ―The Soul and God‖ as taken down by Miss
Ansell and
(cont.) transcribed by her for publication in Vedanta and the west a
sentence reads (as edited), ―Either the [soul permeates] space
or space is in [it]‖ (Complete Works, I : 495). This same
passage in Rhodehamel‘s notes, ―Soul and God,‖ reads:
―Either you are in space, or space is in you‖ (Complete
Works, 6:93). One is inclined to think that Mr.Rhodehamel‘s
version comes closer to the words Swamiji uttered.

p. 68 *If Frank Rhodehamel took notes of this series, the originals

are today not available to us; if they have been published they
have not been identified.

p. 78 *This letter, written from Los Angeles, could not be dated

June 17, 1900, as in the Complete Works, 8:524. January 17,
1900, seems a more likely date.

p. 83 *Shankaracharya lists the four indispensable qualifications

for the attainment of liberation as follows: ―The first is
discrimination between what is eternal and what is not
eternal. The second constituent is the lack of attachment for
such of the objects of enjoyment as may be gained either here
or hereafter. The six noble qualities, such as calmness of
mind and the like [tranquility, control of senses, fortitude,
renunciation, faith, concentration], when taken together, form
the third constituent. According to the Sastras, the fourth and
final constituent is the desire for liberation‖ (The
quintessence of Vedanta, 14, 15 trans. Swami Tattwananda).

109
 CHAPTER NINE

A WORLD MISSION DRAWS TO A CLOSE-I

By the time Swamiji founded the Vedanta Society of San

Francisco he had already moved from the Turk Street flat to the
Home of Truth in Alameda, a small town just south of Oakland.
Inasmuch as his last known letter from San Francisco was dated April
10, 1900, and his first known letter from Alameda April 12, it would
seem fairly safe to assume that he moved to the East Bay on April 11,
a Wednesday. According to Mrs. Hansbrough, she, Swamiji, and
Mrs. Aspinall left the flat for the last time in the late afternoon, each
carrying a small suitcase. (Mrs. Hansbrough had sent on Swamiji's
trunk by express. "I may have packed it for him, too," she said, "as I
often did.")1 In the hall Swamiji helped the women on with their
coats, and as he did so he spoke those wards of appreciation to Mrs.
Hansbrough that for all time made up for his many long and articulate
scoldings: "Well, you have worked like a demon!"2
They took the Turk Street cable car to Market Street and there, at
the foot of Powell, transferred to the larger Market Street car that
rattled down to the Ferry Building. (This transfer point, incidentally,
was a noisy, bustling spot in San Francisco where Swamiji must have
often stood, waiting for a streetcar on his way to the East Bay. In a
lecture some seven weeks later, he gave what one can, I think, take to
be a picture of himself at that precise point. Speaking of the
attainment of yoga, he said, "This is the question: With every sense
and every organ active, have you that tremendous peace [in which]
nothing can disturb you? Standing on Market Street, waiting for the
car with all the rush going on around you, are you in
#

110
meditation-calm and peaceful? In the cave, are you intensely active
there with all quiet about you? If you are, you are a yogi, otherwise
not.")3 The ferry to Alameda (a half hour's ride) connected at the
Alameda mole with a railway that made a nine-mile run to a station
in the heart of town. From there the three passengers could easily
walk to their destination-the Alameda Home of Truth.
Swamiji had been invited to stay at the Home by Mr. and Mrs.
George Roorbach and Miss Lucy Beckham, its directors. Although he
had not found the Home of Truth in Los Angeles particularly
congenial and had felt crowded at the Home on Pine Street, he was
not averse to Homes of Truth in general. "He once told me," Mrs.
Allan recalled, "that he thought the work of the Home of Truth was
the best then available in the , West, and he appreciated the fact that
the workers there did not charge for spiritual assistance, as some
others did."4 Swamiji seems to have particularly liked the Alameda
Home. "He begged to come after we invited him," Mrs. Roorbach
related in later years. "He said he `smelled' over the house and saw
that we were pure and said we were worthy of a little help." 5
The house, which stood uncrowded by neighbors at 2527 Central
Avenue, was a large mid-Victorian dwelling with wide lawns and
well-kept gardens-"a beautiful place," Swamiji wrote to Mrs. Bull on
April 12, "surrounded by flowers and green orchards."6 A porch
covered with wisteria vines serpentined around its front and sides,
Mrs. Allan remembered; and in April this vine would have been in
bloom, as would the near by orchards. The house, a photograph of
which is here reproduced, had been loaned to the Home of Truth, in
return for its care, by a wealthy family named Barton, who were
away in Europe. It has long since been torn down, and except for a '
huge palm tree and a magnolia, under both of which Swamiji, it is
said, liked to walk while smoking his pipe, no signs are left of its
gardens. (Where the house had stood, the Alameda Hotel, a Spanish-
California style structure, stands today.)
"When we arrived at the Home of Truth," Mrs. Hansbrough
#

111
continued in her account of Swamiji's move from San Francisco to
Alameda, "we were met in the hall by the teachers, Mr. George
Roorbach and his wife, Eloise (both of whom were artists), and Miss
Lucy Beckham. George Roorbach took Swamiji up to his room on
the second floor. It was a fine, big room."7 ("We gave him a corner
room in the back of the house," Mrs. Roorbach later recalled.) 8
According to an item on the front page of the Alameda Daily Argus
of Friday, April 13, Swamiji was entertained that evening at a dinner
given in his honor at the Alameda home of a Mrs. George H. Perry.
And directly after this dinner, he gave a lecture in Tucker's Hall, but
of that, more later.
In a sense, Alameda was to San Francisco what Pasadena was to
Los Angeles-a fashionable suburb. Although in those days it
contained twice as many people as Pasadena (almost the reverse is
true today), it was, like the latter, essentially residential, and its
residents, though not as boastful as their southern counterparts,
considered their town beyond compare as a place to live. They, too,
moved amidst gardens and trees in the serene and leisurely fashion
befitting dwellers in paradise.

Easily reached by the half hour ferry and short rail ride from
San Francisco [a guide book of the period reads], is the little
suburban town of Alameda; population, twenty thousand; one
principal business street, and a number of wide, level, well-
paved roads, lined on both sides with picturesque houses in all
styles of architecture, and varying in size from the tiniest cottage
to the most imposing mansion. A double line of rail traverses the
town. . . . While the city does not make much claim to the
possession of imposing public buildings, it has a number which
are worthy of passing notice, chief among them being the City
Hall, a handsome, roomy structure, in the Spanish style of
architecture, on Santa Clara Avenue. The principal hotel is the
Yosemite, at the corner of park Street, facing directly
#

112
 on the narrow-gauge railroad. Alameda boasts of an opera -
house, the possession of its own electric-light plant, a good
water supply, and a free public library. When the estuary shall
have been completed, Alameda will be an island. [This did not
come to pass until 1902.] On this estuary, to the north, there are
splendid opportunities for boating and sailing with perfect
safety, and along the mole some of the most important sculling
matches which have taken place on this coast have been held. . .
. Alameda is favored by horsemen, cyclists, and drivers
[carriage, not automobile], on account of the splendid pavement
of its roads and their unusual width. The streets of handsome
homes are bordered by shade-trees. In fact, Alameda is a model
suburban town, and revels in garden-like lawns and a floral
wealth quite indescribable.9

Alameda was not new to Swamiji. Before April 11 he had lectured

there at least three, and possibly five, times. His first series, which
had been in the nature of "parlor lectures," had been announced on
March 16, 19, 20, and 21 on the Front page of the Daily Argus, one
of Alameda's two newspapers, both of which generally gave him
marked attention. The most complete announcement read:

THREE PARLOR LECTURES BY

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA

Three lectures will be given by Swami Vivekananda under

the auspices of the Alameda Cheney Section at the residence of
Mrs. George H. Perry, 1424 Oak Street, near Santa Clara
Avenue. Subjects: Wednesday March 21, 8 p.m., Mind-its
powers and possibilities; Thursday March 22, 8 p.m., Mind
Culture; Wednesday March 28, 8 p.m., Concentration of Mind.
Full course $3. Single tickets $1.
"The Alameda Cheney Section," the Daily Argus informed
#

113
its readers in another connection, "is composed of twelve ladies who
attended the lectures of Mrs. John Vance Cheney, delivered in the
Adelphian Club rooms last year. The purpose of the section is to
study the art of living and to apply it to the service of humanity." 10 In
pursuing their study of the art of living, the ladies of the Cheney
Section evidently invited various lecturers to speak to them, opening
these meetings to the paying public as well. Mr. B. Fay Mills, for
instance, had given a lecture under the auspices of the Cheney
Section in March. Whether Swamiji actually lectured before the
group three times, as announced, is problematic. Only one lecture
was reported upon by the Alameda papers, and this not altogether
clearly. The item, which appeared in the "Social and Personal"
column of the Alameda Daily Encinal of March 23, read:

Swami Vivekananda delivered a lecture on "Mind, Its

Powers and Possibilities," under the auspices of the Alameda
Cheney Section at the residence of Mrs. George H. Perry, 1424
Oak Street, last evening.

"Last evening" would have been March 22, on which date

Swamiji had been scheduled to speak on "Mind Culture," not on
"Mind, Its Powers and Possibilities." The latter was to have been
delivered on March 21. There is no way of knowing whether the
above news item was incorrect or whether Swamiji's lecture
engagement of March 21 was canceled and his subject transferred to
the following evening.
In regard to the third lecture of the Cheney Section series,
"Concentration of Mind," scheduled for March 28, we are equally in
the dark. The Alameda papers say nothing about its having been
given or its having been canceled. There would appear to be no
reason, however, for thinking that Swamiji did not give it on the
evening announced.
In any event, he had certainly intended to speak three times on the
subject of raja yoga before the Cheney Section, and he did without
doubt give at least one of these talks at Mrs. Perry's #

114
house on either March 21 or 22. (This house, incidentally, was moved
in later years from 1424 Oak Street to 2005 Alameda Avenue and
after its change of location was remodeled, it is said, beyond all
recognition.)
In addition to lecturing before the Cheney Section, Swamiji, as
has not heretofore been known, gave a series of three lectures at
Tucker Hall, delivering the first on April 4. The following
announcement appeared often (and with variations) in both Alameda
papers:
SWAMI VIVEKANANDA,
THE HINDOO PHILOSOPHER,
ALAMEDA LECTURES

Will be held in Tucker Hall, 1424 1/2 Park Street, near Santa
Clara Avenue, the first being given on next Wednesday evening,
April 4th. The subject, "The Influence of Surroundings on the
Development of Religion." The second of the series will be on
the evening of Friday, April 6th, and the third and last on
Wednesday, April 11th. Tickets for full course $1. Single
lecture, 50 cents.

The Daily Encinal wrote a short article to celebrate Swamiji's

coming lecture course and accompanied it by a picture of him seated
in his robe and turban-the same photograph Blanche Partington had
used for her interview of March 18 in the San Francisco Chronicle.
The article, if one may call it that, read as follows:

LEARNED HINDU
Vivekananda To-morrow Evening
The Swami Vivekananda first came to this country as the
representative of the Vedanta philosophy of India at the
Congress of Religions at the World's Fair. He is an eloquent and
forceful speaker, and seems as familiar with the literature and
history of the Occident as he is learned in the philosophy of the
Orient. In his teaching of Vedantism #

115
 he expresses the ideas that all systems of religion and
philosophy are based on the love of goodness and truth and will
lead to the same goal.
At the Congress of Religions he made a decided sensation,
arousing intense interest. He is to deliver a lecture to-morrow
night at Tucker's Hall on "The Influence of Surroundings in the
Development of Religions."

On the day the above appeared in the Encinal (April 3), the Argus
printed a longer article and accompanied it by one of the photographs
taken in San Francisco which showed Swamiji standing in his robe
and turban, his left hand on his sash. As had an interviewer in San
Francisco, the Argus reporter quoted from the pamphlet of Swamiji's
Harvard lecture of March 25, 1896; in fact, the entire Argus article
was, admittedly, a quotation from the introduction by Dr. Charles
Carroll Everett (dean of the Harvard Divinity School). Inasmuch as
this has not been published in the Complete Works and only in part in
the Life, it may be of interest here. It could have served as a salutary
reply to the missionary questionnaire of 1897, which was mentioned
in the last chapter.

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA
Sketch of the Expounder of Hindu Philosophy.
Has Attracted Much Attention in This Country.

The following description of the Swami Vivekananda and his

work was written by Charles Carroll Everett, D.D., LL.D., of
Harvard University, as an introduction to an address by the
Swami on "The Vedanta Philosophy of India" :
"The Swami Vivekananda was sent by his friends and co-
religionists to present their belief at the Congress of Religions
that was held in connection with the World's Fair in Chicago.
This he did in a way to win general interest and admiration.
Since then he has lectured on the same theme in different parts
of our country. He has been #

116
 in fact a missionary from India to America. Everywhere he has
made warm personal friends, and his expositions of Hindu
philosophy have been listened to with delight.
"It is very pleasant to observe the eager interest with which
his own people in India follow his course, and the joy that they
take in his success. I have seen a pamphlet filled with speeches
made at a large and influential meeting in Calcutta, which was
called together to express enthusiastic approval of the manner in
which he has fulfilled his mission and satisfaction at this
invasion of the West by Oriental thought. This satisfaction is
well grounded. We may not be so near to actual conversion as
some of these speakers seem to believe, but Vivekananda has
created a high degree of interest in himself and his work.
"There are, indeed, .few departments of study more attractive
than the Hindu thought. It is a rare pleasure to see a form of
belief that to most seems so far away and unreal as the Vedanta
system, represented by an actually living and extremely
intelligent believer. This system is not to be regarded merely as
a curiosity, as a speculative vagary. Hegel said that Spinozism is
the necessary beginning of all philosophizing. This can be said
even more emphatically of the Vedanta system. We occidentals
busy ourselves with the manifold. We can, however, have no
understanding of the manifold if we have no sense of the One in
which the manifold exists. The reality of the One is the truth
which the East may well teach us; and we owe a debt of
gratitude to Vivekananda that he has taught us this lesson so
effectively."

Tucker's Hall (or Tucker Hall), where Swamiji gave all his public
lectures in Alameda, was located in the Tucker Building, a two-story
structure built in 1879 on the southeast corner of Park Street and
Santa Clara Avenue-the very heart of town. The hall itself, as Mr.
Herman Kihn, vice-president of the Alameda Historical Society and
an old-time resident of
#

117
Alameda, has told us, was on the second story, to the right of the
stairway as one ascended; offices and living quarters were on the left,
that is, on the corner. The ground floor of the building was occupied
by a real estate office, a candy store, and various other stores and
offices. As for the hall itself, it was a plain, level-floored auditorium,
equipped with a stage and about two hundred and fifty movable
folding chairs. (Six years later the Tucker Building was so heavily
damaged by the great earthquake that the entire second floor,
auditorium and all, had to be removed. The ground story, however,
was repaired and remodeled, and a portion of it, further remodeled,
still stands on the corner, occupied by a drugstore.) The town's largest
hotel, the Yosemite, stood across Park Street, and along Santa Clara
Avenue the little narrow-gauge train periodically chugged and tooted.
On April 5 the Daily Encinal and the Daily Argus printed on their
front pages fairly long and almost identical reports of Swamiji's
lecture "The Influence of Surroundings on the Development of
Religion"-his only lecture in Alameda upon which the newspapers
wrote at any length. The Daily Argus's article read as follows:

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA

An Interesting Address by Hindu Philosopher.

He Talks on the Development of Religion.
Swami Vivekananda, the prominent Hindu scholar and
philosopher, delivered an address before an attentive audience in
Tucker's Hall last evening. His subject was "The Influence of
Surroundings on the Development of Religion."
The speaker referred to the old idea held by orthodox
believers in all countries that their religions were the direct
inspirations from a deity who, as it were, regulated or influenced
the affairs of this world from a distance.
The primitive man, when his mind was moved by the strange
and beautiful phenomena of nature, attributed
#

118
 the wonders that he saw to the power and caprice of an outside
God or gods.
The scientific mind, on the contrary, instead of seeking for
outside causes for phenomena, endeavored to find the cause in
the thing or condition itself And while at first this method of
investigation might seem to take from religion its vital elements,
yet in reality it resulted in man finding that the spiritual
attributes of God and the states of mind producing Heaven and
Hell were here and now within himself.
While modern scientific investigation might seem to con-
tradict the old religious scriptures, yet it was not really so, For
the prophets and teachers of old had true perceptions, but were
only mistaken in attributing their experiences to outside
agencies, instead of realizing them to be the development and
expression of element[s] in their own souls, before unknown and
unrecognised.
In referring to the evolution of the soul, the speaker said that
it was impossible for the mind or soul to begin as a blank and
gradually acquire knowledge, for knowledge was simply the
reaction and association of ideas and unless some ideas were
already there, there could be no reaction.
Swami Vivekananda will deliver the second address of the
series to-morrow evening in Tucker's Hall. His subject will be
"Formation of God Ideals."
The Encinal's front-page report of the same lecture was largely
repetitious of the above and need not detain us here; it is given,
however, in the Appendix.
On April 7 the Daily Argus noted that Swamiji had lectured as
scheduled on "The Formation of God Ideals" but did not report what
he had said. The very title of this lecture, however, suggests that it
was not unlike "The Soul and God," in which, in San Francisco, he
had traced the evolution of religious concepts.
#

119
 As for the third lecture of the series, the Daily Encinal told its
readers on April 12 that Swami Vivekananda, the Hindu philosopher,
had "lectured to a good audience last night in Tucker's Hall on `Man's
Ultimate Destiny.' " That was all the Alameda press had to say. Mrs.
Allan, however, tells us something more of this particular lecture. It
was at its close, she related in her memoirs, that Swamiji made a
statement that stunned the audience. "While in Alameda," she wrote,
"Swamiji gave public lectures in Tucker Hall. He gave one wonderful
lecture `The Ultimate Destiny of Man' and [after taking us step by
step up the heights of Advaita, he] finished by placing his hand on his
chest and saying `I am God.' A most awed silence fell upon the
audience, and many people thought it blasphemy for Swamiji to say
such a thing: '11
Remembering that Swamiji always spoke, as Swami Saradananda
once said "out of his own direct experience " one can , only imagine
how high his state of consciousness and how vibrant his power must
have been when, deliberately and gravely, he spoke those three
words. One can also only imagine their impact upon his listeners. It
must have seemed to them at the time, for so awed a silence fell, that
he was not speaking solely from an Advaitic point of view, that he
was not saying, "I am Brahman," but, rather, "I am the Personal
God!" A tremendous statement indeed. Had they misunderstood his
meaning? One recalls that in his lecture "Meditation," delivered in
San Francisco a week or so earlier, he had said (I quote from the first
transcript), "Don't you make this mistake. When I say in English, I
am God, it is because I have no better word. In Sanskrit,
Satchidananda means absolute Existence, Knowledge, and Wisdom,
infinite self-luminous Consciousness. No person. It is impersonal. I
am never [Rama] but am [one with Brahman, the impersonal, all-
pervading Existence]: '12
Yet Swamiji was a soul ,so vast, so perfect, so filled with divine
power-the power, as he himself said, to liberate with a touch13-that
one must place him beside those great Messengers who, as he said in
Los Angeles, are "higher than all our con-#

120
ceptions of God" and who can indeed be looked upon as God
Himself. "When a man has reached that perfect state," he said in the
lecture (or article) "The Essence of Religion" (published in the San
Francisco Examiner on March 18, 1900), "he is of the same nature as
the Personal God: `I and my Father are one.' He knows himself one
with Brahman, the Absolute, and projects himself as does the
Personal God."14 There are many indications that after he had begun
his mission Swamiji was aware of his divine status. Mrs. Allan once
related, for instance, that during his stay in northern California one of
his women students was complaining, "Oh, if I had only lived earlier,
I could have seen Sri Ramakrishna!" Swamiji turned quietly to her
and said, "You say that, and you have seen me?"15 Fully aware of
himself as one with Brahman, and aware as well of his prophet-hood,
could not Swamiji say with the ring of total authority, "I am God,"
and could he not mean it in the special, personal sense in which the
audience, stunned into "a most awed silence," had understood it?

Swamiji intended to rest for a week in Alameda and then, as he

wrote in an unpublished passage of a letter of April 12, 1900, to Mrs.
Bull, "go to a place called Stockton."16 His earliest known mention of
wanting to work for a few days in Stockton -a small but thriving city
eighty miles east of San Francisco, where the College of the Pacific
(today named the University of the Pacific) was located-is contained
in a letter of March 30 to Josephine MacLeod. On April 8 and 10 he
again mentioned going to Stockton (his writing of the name appears
in the Complete Works as "Star Klon"), but after April 12 we hear no
more of the plan, and it would seem certain that he gave it up,
perhaps because of ill health.
His stay in Alameda did not by any means give him the complete
rest that he needed. Aside from lecturing at Tucker's Hall four times,
he crossed the Bay at least twice to lecture in the evening in San
Francisco: once on April 12 to deliver his final talk in the series on
Divine Love, and again on April 14, to
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speak on "Bhakti Yoga" and to found the Vedanta Society. (It should
be noted here that in their accounts of the inaugural meeting both
Mrs. Hansbrough and Mr. Wollberg mention that Swamiji gave some
classes or lectures for the benefit of the new Society at Dr. Logan's
office. In both cases the inference is that this was before he went to
Camp Taylor-that is, in the month of April. But one finds no other
references to these talks, and so we can say nothing about them,
except that they could not have been held on the evenings of the
Society's regular weekly meetings, for as the Minutes attest, Mr.
Charles Neilson read on those evenings from the Gita, which
certainly would not have been the case had Swamiji given a talk
before the group.)
In addition to his public lectures and possible Vedanta Society
talks, Mrs. Hansbrough tells us, "Swamiji lectured at the Alameda
Home of Truth at least twice"17 but unfortunately, we know as little
of these lectures as we do of those given before the Society, for Mrs.
Hansbrough's statement, which I have quoted in its entirety,
constitutes the whole of our present knowledge of them. Although the
Alameda Home of Truth is itself still in existence, its old records are
not. Indeed, the Home possesses no memento of any kind to
commemorate Swamiji's long visit there.
Of Swamiji's lectures in Tucker's Hall the Daily Argus noted as
early as April 11, "Another series of lectures by the Hindu
philosopher has been arranged for to be given shortly." The three
lectures of this second series were announced duly, and often, in both
Alameda papers, the most comprehensive notices appearing, of
course, at an early date. That in the Encinal of April 13 read as
follows:

LECTURES BY SWAMI VIVEKANANDA

The Swami Vivekananda will lecture at Tucker Hall, 1424

1/2 Park street near Santa Clara avenue, Alameda, at 8 p.m.,
each evening. Subjects: Friday, April I3th, Raj Voga; Monday,
April 16th, Concentration and Breathing; #

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 Wednesday, April 18th, the Practice of Religion. Admission 50
cents. Course tickets $1.

This bit of information was all the Alameda papers managed to

say about Swamiji's second lecture series. However, Ida Ansell, who
had apparently missed the lectures of the first series, was in Tucker's
Hall taking notes during the first and third lectures of the second
series, namely, "Raja Yoga" and "The Practice of Religion." Her
second transcripts of these notes have been published in, respectively,
volumes seven and four of the Complete Works. Nor was she the only
person known to have taken notes of Swamiji's second series at
Tucker's Hall. Frank Rhodehamel was, present at all three lectures,
and his notes, heretofore unidentified, have been published in volume
six of the Complete Works under the titles, respectively, "On Proof of
Religion," "Concentration and Breathing," and "The Practice of
Religion."*
The three lectures of this series were, clearly, concerned with raja
yoga, a theme to which Swamiji again and again returned. So much
has been said earlier in regard to his teachings on this subject that
little more need be added here. One need only note that. in Alameda
he again defined the purpose and utility of yoga. "The science of
yoga," he said in his first lecture of the series, "proposes this, that the
one way out is through ourselves. We have to individualize ourselves.
If there is any truth, we can realize it as our very essence. We will
cease being driven about by Nature from place to place. . . . Yoga is
stopping the chitta, the mind-stuff, from getting into these changes.
When all this. creation has been stopped, [and] if it is possible to stop
it, then we shall see for ourselves what we are in reality." 18 (That if in
the last sentence is perhaps a transcriber's error.)
According to Frank Rhodehamel's notes of "Concentration and
Breathing," Swamiji spoke in that second lecture of the series on the
means of "stopping creation" through the practice of deliberate
concentration, which, in turn, has become possible through the
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 In an earlier chapter we have discussed "The Practice of
Religion," but since this was Swamiji's last lecture in California to be
given in a public hall, a few more sentences from it will not be amiss-
least of all its closing ones. "Excepting the infinite spirit," he said,
"everything else is changing. There is the whirl of change.
Permanence is nowhere except in yourself. There is the infinite joy,
unchanging. Meditation is the gate that opens that to us. Prayers,
ceremonials, and all the other forms of worship are simply
kindergartens of meditation. . . . All knowledge you have-how did it
come? From the power of meditation. The soul churned the
knowledge out of its own depths. What knowledge was there ever
outside of it? In the long run this power of meditation separates our-
selves from the body, and then the soul knows itself as it is-the
unborn, the deathless and birthless being. No more is there any
misery, no more births upon this earth, no more evolution. The soul
knows itself as having ever been perfect and free."19
And with those words, spoken in Alameda on April 18, 1900,
Swamiji's public lectures in California came to a close.

At the Home of Truth Swamiji spent a good deal of time in his

room, Mrs. Roorbach recalled; but he also mingled with the people of
the Home, most of whom he found congenial and many of whom
became his followers. ("The people here are so good to me," he wrote
to Mrs. Bull on his arrival.)20 Other friends and students, such as Mr.
and Mrs. Allan and Mr. Rhodehamel, came to visit him. Mrs.
Hansbrough and Mrs. Aspinall were often at the Home, sometimes
staying overnight.
But not everybody at the Alameda Home of Truth approved of
Swamiji. His gaiety and total, childlike freedom, characteristic of the
paramahamsa, were disconcerting to some of the members,
specifically, Mrs. Hansbrough remembered, to two
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English housekeepers, one of whom was named Molly Rankin. Like
some of Swamiji's English disciples, these two women were of the
firm opinion that a spiritual person seldom ate--certainly never ate
meat-never smoked, and never became ill. It was clear to them that
Swamiji was not a spiritual person. "See here," he had said to the
Roorbachs, "I must have meat. I cannot live on potatoes and
asparagus with the work I am doing!" And so, Mrs. Hansbrough
related, "they got meat for him, although they themselves were
vegetarians."21 And on top of this there were his pipe and cigarettes!
"The inmates of the `Home of Truth,‘" Mr. Rhodehamel wrote in
his Prabuddha Bharata memoirs, "had occasion to get used to the
odour of tobacco while he lived with them. He would usually be up in
the mornings before the rest of the family, and lighting his pipe
would walk through the unoccupied rooms, filling them with smoke.
One imagines their efforts to rid the rooms of the odour of tobacco
before time for their usual morning class!"22
All Homes of Truth seem to have had difficulty with Swamiji's
pipe. A story in this regard is told in Swami Nikhilananda's
Vivekananda: A Biography:

The members of the Home of Truth [in Los Angeles] were

not permitted to smoke [Swami Nikhilananda writes]. One
evening the Swami was invited for dinner by a member of the
organization along with several other friends who were all
opposed to the use of tobacco. After dinner the hostess was
absent from the room for a few minutes, when the Swami,
perhaps due to his ignorance of the rule about tobacco, took out
his pipe, filled it up, and began to pull: The guests were aghast,
but kept quiet. When the hostess returned, she flew into a rage
and asked the Swami if God intended men to smoke, adding that
in that case he would have furnished the human head with a
chimney for the smoke to go out.
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 "But he has given us the brain to invent a pipe," the Swami said
with a smile.
Everybody laughed, and the Swami was given freedom to
smoke. 23

While Swamiji would no doubt have respected the rule of the

Home of Truth had he known about it, at least requesting permission
to smoke, ordinarily he had a sometimes childlike, sometimes lordly
indifference to rules. Mr. Rhodehamel tells a relevant tale in
Prabuddha Bharata:

Once while crossing the bay between San Francisco and

Oakland, he took the notion to smoke. He was seated with some
ladies on the upper deck of the ferry where smoking was
prohibited. Drawing a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, he lit
one and blew the smoke in playful defiance at the prohibitive
sign, "No Smoking." One of his companions quickly warned
him, "Swami! Swami! You can't smoke here! . . . Here comes
the officer! Quick-put it out!"
"Why should I put it out?" he drawled in exasperating
coolness.
The officer in question caught sight of the offender, and
started for him. Swami continued to puff until the officer came
up to him. Then he laughingly threw the half smoked cigarette
overboard. The officer looked at him a moment and slowly
passed on.24

"Smoking was not his only offense in the [Alameda] ‗Home of

Truth,' " Mr. Rhodehamel recounted in the same article. "The cream
for breakfast was missing one morning. It was a mystery as they
knew the milk-man had left it. The event was discussed at breakfast.
The Swami quietly listened until all had exhausted their wits in their
efforts to solve the mystery. Then he coolly informed them that he
had_ drunk it! I imagine," Mr. Rhodehamel added, "that the more
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126
of the `Home of Truth' were shocked by his whimsical tendency."25
They were, in fact, shocked by more than Swamiji's whimsical
tendency. Not only was it clear to Molly Rankin and her friends that
Swamiji did not act the way a spiritual person should act, it was clear
that he did not think the way a spiritual person should think. There
was, for instance, his attitude toward healing. In an article entitled
"Swami Vivekananda's Mission to the West," Gurudasa wrote,
referring to the Home of Truth, "There is a sect in America that
teaches that because Jesus healed the sick, to use one's mental power
for healing diseases is the true mission in life."
And then came Swamiji [he continued] and he told them the
story of his own master, how during an illness one of his
followers had suggested that he heal himself through his own
mental efforts. The master had listened. But later he said: "How
mean to take one's mind away from Mother to direct it towards
this filthy body!" And Swamiji concluded with the startling
remark: "Jesus would have been greater, had he not used his
powers."
To some of his hearers, especially to hidebound church
members, such remarks were shocking. . . . But those who were
really sincere . . . to these there was food for thought. And the
very startling effect of the words helped them to lift their minds
out of the old rut of thinking.26

Mrs. Roorbach, who later said "He blew the top out of our minds,
" was among those who had practiced mental healing; yet she herself
questioned its wisdom. "We used to heal a great deal in the Home of
Truth," she related. "People came to us for healing, and I did it too.
One time I healed someone of cancer. It was just before I went to
Swami, and when I talked to him I told him of this and said, `Swami,
I have absolutely no idea how this was done, I only know I have
been using a force which I don't understand and which is too
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big for me. I am a little afraid of it, and I am going to give it up.'
Whereupon Swami smiled and said with a gesture of approval,
`Good. Good.' " (In telling it, Mrs. Roorbach made a broad gesture,
such as Swamiji had made those many years before.) 27
All in all, the Home of Truth, whose religious teachings reached
and influenced many people, could not but have changed during his
visit, and very possibly his disregard of the Home's regulations, such
as his insistence on eating meat and his smoking, was, in some part at
least, purposive. He would not have laid down laws for the Home of
Truth, nor would he have repudiated any of its teachings; that was not
his way. But in every gesture-by what he ate, how he walked, what he
said just by living, he showed these earnest people what spirituality
was and what it was not-it was not, for instance, a diet of asparagus.

One finds Swamiji in many moods during his stay at the Alameda
Home of Truth. We have seen him breaking rules with what must
often have been a mischievous gleam in his eye; in the last chapter
we have seen him meditating with, or, rather, for, Mrs. Hansbrough
to relieve her mind of some oppressive burden; we have seen him in
the kitchen with Mrs. Allan, on the two or three Sundays of his stay,
acting the role of loving parent with an ill and distraught child, letting
her help him prepare Hindu dishes and sharing the finished meal with
her. In addition one catches here and there in memoirs and letters
glimpses of other moods and other occasions.
We find him, for instance, walking alone in the garden in the early
mornings before the others were up or in the late afternoons before
dinner. Sometimes a Mr. William Pingree, one of the teachers, who
also served the Home as head gardener, would walk with him.
"Swamiji said Mr. Pingree had an intuition of the conversation of
trees," Mrs. Hansbrough related. "He used to say the trees talked; he
would put his hands on them and say he could understand what they
were
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saying."28 In his book With the Swamis in America, Swami
Atulananda (Gurudasa) tells a sad story of Mr. Pingree and a
windmill. It would seem that at one time there had been no rain for
weeks and the garden at the Home of Truth was sorely in need of
water. To add to the difficulty, the windmill broke down. What to do?
To Mr. Pingree the answer was clear:

The other members of the Home had all gathered for

breakfast, when the gardener entered the room and in all
earnestness requested that they all go into the silence for a few
moments, that the windmill showed symptoms of disorder. "Let
us treat the windmill," he said; "let us repeat silently: everything
is Divine Mind, there is no disorder in Divine Mind, the
windmill is in good working order and ready to give us water."
The members acquiesced.

The windmill, however, just stood there. "And our simpleminded

gardener," Swami Atulananda concluded, "had to undergo the
humiliation of calling in a mechanic to put things aright."29
Yet this new-thought Don Quixote was perhaps not altogether
simple-minded. "He was the only member of the Home," Mrs.
Hansbrough recounted, "who received pay for his services. He asked
for and got his board and room and fifteen dollars a month: '30 And
then, Mr. Pingree also had the good sense to walk in the cool of the
evening with Swamiji, and he was later among those who visited
Shanti Ashrama when Swami Turiyananda was in charge.
Another glimpse of Swamiji in Alameda comes to us from Mr.
Allan-that big and burly Scotsman, who in his youth had been an
officer in the British Army. "When he was living in the Home of
Truth," Mr. Allan related in his unpublished notes, "one day he was
pacing the floor, while I stood silently in one corner of the room,
watching: suddenly he stopt near me and putting his right hand on my
left shoulder said, `Mr.
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Allan, we are both of the same caste-we are both of the military
caste.' Then he resumed his walk."31
Such small events-a comradely touch, a word-cherished for years,
for all of life! Mr. Rhodehamel, too, remembered Swamiji's touch.
"Again [one] feels the pressure of a friendly arm about him," he
wrote years later; "and he knows, for the time being at least, that his
efforts are not in vain."32
At other times, Swamiji would entertain a group of friends with
jokes and stories, or, suddenly growing serious in response to a need
or a question, would discourse on some aspect of spiritual reality or
spiritual practice. Mrs. Allan, for instance, told of the moonlit
evening of Easter Sunday, when a small group gathered on the wide,
wisteria-curtained porch. Swamiji sat on the railing, smoking his
after-dinner pipe. The air was cool, and someone thought he should
have a hat. "All right," he said. "Bring the red one." (This was the hat
with ear flaps, Mrs. Allan recalled, that one sees him wearing in the
picnic photograph taken in South Pasadena.)33 For a time he joked
and told amusing stories. One of these was of how his feet had hurt
from wearing shoes when he first came to Chicago in 1893 and of
how he was taken to "a lady toe-doctor," who made matters worse.
"Oh, my toe, my toe!" Swamiji cried in telling the tale. "Whenever I
think of that lady toe-doctor my toe hurts!"34 (When Swamiji told it,
the story was no doubt hilarious, for he was a master storyteller and a
master actor as well. Yet, when one thinks about it, it only adds to
the poignancy of his first week or so in America in the summer of
1893: he had been virtually alone, too late to register as a delegate to
the Parliament of Religions, without visible prospects for the future,
hooted at in the streets for his strange clothes. And as if this were not
enough, we now learn that he had been tormented by unaccustomed
and ill-fitting shoes and tortured by an inept lady toe-doctor!)
As Mrs. Allan remembered it, it was after the laughter had died
down that one of the party asked Swamiji to talk on renunciation. "He
smiled," the rough draft of her memoirs
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reads, "and said, `Babies, what do you know of renunciation!'
Someone said, `Are we too young to hear of it?' He was silent for a
time. Then he talked on renunciation and discipleship in a way that
was most inspiring and illuminating. He spoke of discipleship and of
entire resignation to the guru, which was quite a new teaching to the
Western world. `If you want to be my disciple,' he said, `and I tell
you to go to the mouth of the cannon, you must do it without
question.' "35
That was an evening to be long remembered, but another of
Swamiji's conversations at the Alameda Home of Truth stands out as
particularly extraordinary, for it was fraught with such power that
those few who were present were literally transfixed.
"You asked whether I had ever seen Swamiji in any particularly
exalted mood," Mrs. Hansbrough once said during her reminiscences
of him, and went on: "One time was at the Alameda Home of Truth. I
think this was the most inspiring instance except at Camp Taylor. We
were seated at the breakfast table in the Home-Mrs. Aspinall, the two
Roorbachs, Mr. Pingree, the two housekeepers, the two gardeners and
myself. Swamiji began to talk as we all sat there at the breakfast
table. Then someone suggested we go into the front room so that the
housekeepers could clear the table. The two rooms were separated
only by an archway with curtains hung in them. So five of us went
into the front room and the rest went about their affairs: Swamiji,
Mrs. Aspinall, the Roorbachs and I took our seats, Swamiji sitting on
a chair facing the rest of us. He talked a great deal of his Master that
day. Two stories which he said were his Master's I remember,
because he directed them at me.
"The first was a story of an old water demon who lived in a pool.
She had long hair, which was capable of infinite extension. When
people would come to bathe in the pool, sometimes she would devour
them if she were hungry. With others, however, she would twine a
hair around one of their toes. When they went home, the hair,
invisible, would just stretch and stretch; and when the old demon
became hungry she would
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just start pulling on the hair until the victim came back to the pool
once more, to be eaten up.*
" `You have bathed in the pool where my Mother dwells,' Swamiji
said to me at the end. `Go back home if you wish; but Her hair is
twined round your toe and you will have to come back to the pool in
the end!'
"The other story," Mrs. Hansbrough continued, "was of a man
who was wading down a stream. Suddenly he was bitten by a snake.
He looked down, and thought the snake was a harmless water snake
and that he was safe. Actually it was a cobra. Swamiji then said to
me, `You have been bitten by the cobra. Don't ever think you can
escape!'
"Swamiji did not move from his seat once during the whole
conversation. None of us moved from our seats. Yet when he
finished, it was five o'clock in the afternoon. Later the two
housekeepers told us they had tried twice to open the door from the
kitchen into the dining room to clear the table, but could not get it
open. They thought we had locked it so we would not be disturbed.
Even when Swamiji had finished, Mrs. Aspinall was the only one
who thought of taking any food. After talking with Swamiji for a few
minutes in his room I put on my coat and came back to San
Francisco. As we had gone up the stairs to his room, Swamiji had
said, `They think I have driven them crazy. Well, I shall drive them
crazier yet!' "36
And indeed this was not the only time he held the members of the
Home of Truth absorbed and motionless for hours on end. One of
those members, a young unmarried woman by the name of Fannie
Gould, who became an ardent Vedantist and was to spend the autumn
and winter of 1900 at Shanti Ashrama, told Gurudasa of Swamiji's
stay in Alameda. "She often told me," he wrote, "how Swamiji would
keep the members of the Home spellbound when he talked to them
about Vedanta. For hours, Swamiji would go on and on and the
listeners fearing to interrupt the flow of his spiritual outpouring dared
not stir. With bated breath they would sit and listen. They were
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were soaring in a higher sphere, they were entranced. And only after
the Swamiji was silent would they feel themselves tied again to this
mundane existence.‖37
Nor was Mrs. Hansbrough the only one who had been fatefully
bitten. " `You have been bitten by the cobra,' Swamiji said one
morning [to Miss Gould and others as well], `the poison will have its
effect, you will never be your old selves again, the Master has
accepted you.' "38 And it is known that when Fannie Gould died, as
she did when she was still a young woman, she died with the name of
Sri Ramakrishna on her lips.

Swamiji had many friends in Alameda, some of whom he visited.

There were, for instance, Mrs. George H. Perry and other members of
the Cheney Section. Then there was a Mrs. Betts, whom he
mentioned in a published letter of April 20, writing to Miss MacLeod
that he had given Mrs. Betts her message. According to a brief
notation made in later years by an East Bay member of the Vedanta
Society of Northern California, Mrs. Betts's father was an admirer of
Swamiji's and attended his San Francisco lectures. It was, in fact, he,
rather than his daughter, whom Swamiji visited several times. Un-
fortunately, both his name and the exact location of his house have
been lost; all we know today is that he lived "somewhere on Clinton
Avenue on the Bay side of the street" (Clinton Avenue then bordered
Alameda's south shore; but the tidelands have since been filled and
subdivided, and the avenue is today half a mile from the Bay.)
Charles Neilson was another Alameda friend whom Swamiji
visited. It is indeed to him that we owe what many feel to be one of
the most beautiful, "speaking" photographs of Swamiji that we
possess. Among Mr. Allan's papers one finds an account of the
circumstances under which it was taken.
"Swamiji with a party of friends," Mr. Allan wrote, "was invited
to lunch at the home of Mr. Charles Neilson [1122 Lafayette Street,
then also near the south shore). After lunch
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they adjourned to the garden, and Swamiji stretched out on the lawn.
"Mr. Neilson, wishing to take a picture of Swamiji, asked him to
pose. Swamiji being indifferent about having his picture taken was
loath to get up.
"Mrs. Emily Aspinall, one of the party, said, `Swami, Mr. Neilson
wants to take your picture, why not let him?' Swamiji then stood up
in front of the summer house and Mr. Neilson took the picture, and
that is how Swamiji has the flowers [actually a vine-covered lattice]
for a background. . . ."39
It can be added to Mr. Allan's account that Mr. Neilson took two
pictures of Swamiji, the first of which has not been generally known;
it shows him looking not at all pleased. According to Mrs. Allan,
someone then said, "Oh, Swami, please smile for us!" Whereupon,
Swamiji smiled, and as he did so the second photograph, of which
Mrs. Allan once said, "You will see everything in it," was taken. 40
Both pictures are reproduced here: the cross one and the all-inclusive
one.
One does indeed find everything in Swamiji's smiling picture, and
it is small wonder; for throughout his stay in Alameda he was in an
exceedingly exalted state of mind. All anxiety in connection with his
work had long since fallen from him. As we have seen, he had sent
enough money from Los Angeles to defray the expenses of the
Math's critical lawsuit; the muddled Math accounts, which had earlier
been a source of despair, had been straightened out by Swami
Brahmananda and Swami Saradananda, and Swamiji was pleased
with the hard work of his brothers. "I had nice letters from
Brahmananda and Saradananda," he had written to Mrs. Bull on
March 4; "they are all doing well. They are trying to bring the munic-
ipality to its senses; I am glad."41 And again on March 7, "I am very
much reassured by all the news I since received from India."42 In the
letter to Miss MacLeod dated in the Complete Works "April, 1900,"
but more probably written in March he wrote, "I had nice notes from
Saradananda; they are doing beautifully over there. The boys are
working up; well, scolding
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has both sides, you see; it makes them up and doing. . . . They have
planned and are successfully working famine works by themselves
without my help. . . . All this comes from the terrific scolding I have
been giving, sure! They are standing on their own feet. I am so glad.
See Joe, the Mother is working."43
In regard to the trouble seething in the New York Vedanta
Society, he was not greatly concerned. The difficulty, the details of
which are not entirely clear, involved a dispute over the policy to be
followed by the Society. Swami Abhedananda held one view, Mrs.
Bull, Mr. Leggett, and Miss MacLeod another. ("You may not call
me spiritual," Swami Abhedananda was writing around this time in
an incensed letter to Mrs. Bull, who he felt was unfriendly toward
him and "much against the Vedanta work in New York." "But I am
not going to be guided by your or Mr. Leggett's standard of
spirituality. You may keep your standard for yourself.")44 Everyone
but Swamiji was much upset. Nor did he feel he should intervene in
the matter. "I keep quiet for fear of making further trouble," he wrote
to Miss MacLeod on April 18 in a letter that I shall quote from at
length a little later. "You know my methods are extremely harsh and
once roused I may rattle Abhedananda too much for his peace of
mind. I wrote to him only to tell him that his notions about Mrs. Bull
are entirely wrong." Swamiji's faith in Mrs. Bull, whom he had
earlier placed in charge of his work on the East Coast, was
unwavering. "Mother will do Her work-I need not worry," he had
written to her on April 12. (I quote from an early copy, which differs
somewhat from that in the Complete Works.) "For me-alone and
drifting about in the will current of the Mother, has been my life. The
moment I had tried to a break it, that moment I was hurt. Her will be
done. Her power is on you," he reassured her. "I am sure She will
lead you to what is right. . .
"I am happy, at peace with myself," he continued, "and more of
the Sannyasin than I ever was. The love for my own kith and kin is
growing less every day-for Mother increasing;
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memories of long nights of vigils, with Sri Ramakrishna under the
Dakshineswar Banyan are waking up once more-and work? what is
work? whose work? whom to work for? I am free. I am Mother's
child. She works, She plays-Why shall I plan? What shall I plan?
Things came and went, just as She liked, without my planning, in
spite of my planning. We are Her automatons. She is the wire
puller."45
Just as this letter bespoke the great peace in which Swamiji was
living on his arrival in Alameda, so a single sentence revealed his
transcendental mode of consciousness, when in reply to Mr. Allan's
jovial greeting-"Well, Swami, I see you are in Alameda!"-he had
gravely said, "No, Mr. Allan, I am not in Alameda; Alameda is in
me."46 But perhaps the most revealing utterance of all is the letter he
wrote to Miss MacLeod on April 18, which expresses his mood, his
state of being, in words that seem to have been formed just this side
of Silence. "It is just like a voice out of Samadhi," Sister Nivedita
wrote of it years later to Mary Hale. 47 And it has indeed become
known as one of the most beautiful and sublime of all Swamiji's
letters. It has often been quoted both in full and in part; nevertheless I
shall quote it here almost in full, for only Swamiji's own words can
express the state in which lie stood, it seems, on the very threshold of
the Absolute, steeped in divinity. (The original letter, incidentally,
was in later years carried away by a gust of wind when on ship deck
Miss MacLeod drew it from among her cherished mementoes of
Swamiji to show to some new-met fellow passengers.)

. . . I am well, very well mentally. I feel the rest of the soul

more than that of the body. The battles are lost and won. I have
bundled my things and am waiting for the great deliverer.
"Shiva, O Shiva, carry my boat to the other shore." After all,
Joe, I am only the boy who used to listen with rapt wonderment
to the wonderful words of Ramakrishna under the Banyan at
Dakshineswar. That is my true
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nature; works and activities, doing good and so forth are all
superimpositions. Now I again hear his voice; the same old
voice thrilling my soul. Bonds are breaking-love dying, work
becoming tasteless-the glamour is off life. Now only the voice
of the Master calling: "I come Lord I come.-- Let the dead bury
the dead, follow thou Me." "I come, my beloved Lord, I come."
Yes, I come. Nirvana is before me. I feel it at times, the same
infinite ocean of peace, without a ripple, a breath.
I am glad I was born, glad I suffered so, glad I did make big
blunders, glad to enter peace. I leave none bound, I take no
bonds. Whether this body will fall and release me or I enter into
freedom in the body, the old man is gone, gone for ever, never
to come back again!
The guide, the Guru, the leader, the teacher, has passed
away; the boy, the student, the servant, is left behind. You
understand why I do not want to meddle with Abhedananda.
Who am I to meddle with any, Joe? I have long given up my
place as a leader-I have no right to raise my voice. Since the
beginning of this year I have not dictated anything in India. You
know that. Many thanks for what you and Mrs. Bull have been
to me in the past. All blessings follow you ever. The sweetest
moments of my life have been when I was drifting; I am drifting
again-with the bright warm sun ahead and masses of vegetation
around-and in the heat everything is so still, so calm-and I am
drifting, languidly-in the warm heart of the river. I dare not
make a splash with my hands or feet-for fear of breaking the
wonderful stillness, stillness that makes you feel sure it is an
illusion!
Behind my work was ambition, behind my love was
personality, behind my purity was fear, behind my guidance the
thirst of power. Now they are vanishing and I drift. I come.
Mother, I come, in thy warm bosom, floating wheresoever thou
takest me, in the voiceless, in the
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 strange, in the wonderland, I come-a spectator, no more an
actor.
Oh, it is so calm! My thoughts seem to come from a great,
great distance in the interior of my own heart. They seem like
faint, distant whispers, and peace is upon everything, sweet,
sweet peace-like that one feels for a few moments just before
falling into sleep, when things are seen and felt like shadows-
without fear, without love, without emotion: Peace that one feels
alone, surrounded with statues and picture-I come, Lord, I
come.
The world is, but not beautiful nor ugly, but as sensations
without exciting any emotion. Oh, Joe, the blessedness of it!
Everything is good and beautiful; for things are all losing their
relative proportions to me-my body among the first. Om That
Existence!48

Swamiji wrote this letter on the day of his final public lecture in
California. Two days after he wrote again to Miss MacLeod. "I shall
start for Chicago on Monday [April 23]. A kind lady [almost
certainly Mrs. Collis P. Huntington] has given me a pass up to New
York to be used within three months. The Mother will take care of
me. She is not going to strand me now after guarding me all my
life."49

But as it happened, Swamiji did not use his railway pass until
more than five weeks later.
3

It was on the eve of his scheduled departure for Chicago that

Swamiji decided to go instead to a place called Camp Taylor in
Marin County, north of San Francisco. In her "Reminiscences," Mrs.
Hansbrough tells of this sudden change of plan.
"One Sunday evening [April 22] we were all sitting in the Home
of Truth," she recalled, "and Mrs. Aspinall was conjecturing where
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Chicago (I had already made his train reservations for him), I in Los
Angeles, they [the Aspinalls] at Camp Taylor in Marin County. Then,
turning to Swamiji, she said, `You had better change your mind and
go with us.' And Swamiji replied, `Very well; and Madam (indicating
me) will also go.' "50 And thus, without ado, one plan was canceled,
another made.
"I ought to have started [for Chicago] today," Swamiji wrote to
Mary Hale the next morning, "but circumstances so happened that I
cannot forgo the temptation to be in a camp under the huge redwood
trees of California before I leave. . . . Again after the incessant work I
require a breath of God's free air before I start on this bone-breaking
journey of four days. . . . I start tomorrow to the woods. Woof! get
my lungs full of ozone before getting into Chicago. . . . I have
finished work. Only a few days' rest, my friends insist-three or four -
before facing the railway."51
In 1900 "Camp Taylor" was a misnomer for the camp at which
Swamiji decided to spend "three or four" days. Actually, the spot was
a small, private camp situated near Camp Taylor and rented by Mr.
Louis M. Juhl, the German restaurateur, who, as we have seen, was a
member of the California Street Home of Truth and was later to
become a prominent member of the San Francisco Vedanta Society.
(Today, Camp Irving, as the site was called, lies well within the large
area known as Samuel P. Taylor State Park, which was established in
1946, but in 1900 the private camp site and the large resort hotel of
Camp Taylor were two separate and distinct things. The former,
however, was sometimes referred to by memoirists as "Camp
Taylor," for the name "Camp Irving" had no public meaning.) When
Mr. Juhl and his family were not using his camp, he frequently
offered it to one or another of his friends. In the spring of 1900 he
had given the use of it to Miss Lydia Bell, who in turn had invited
Mrs. Aspinall, Mrs. Roorbach, Ida Ansell, and, without immediate
success, Swamiji and Mrs. Hansbrough to be her guests. Miss Bell,
Eloise Roorbach, and Ida Ansell had arrived at the camp on Sunday,
April 22,
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carrying with them only the faintest of hopes that Swamiji would
follow. It was thus with delighted surprise that they learned from
Mrs. Aspinall, who arrived two days later, that he was indeed
coming. "We spent the day preparing for him in greatjoy," 52 Miss
Ansell wrote in her original memoirs. As it turned out, however, the
campers suffered a disappointment.
In her "Reminiscences," Mrs. Hansbrough has told of the events,
or mishaps, that prevented Swamiji from arriving when he had first
intended. "We set out from the Alameda Home of Truth on Tuesday
morning [April 24]," she recounted. "When I went into Swamiji's
room he had on the English hunting suit which someone on the East
Coast had given him. He was putting on the detachable cuffs which
men wore in those days. I had not intended to go to Camp Taylor, but
was planning to return then to Los Angeles. I told Swamiji that I
would go with him on the ferry to Sausalito and say good-bye there.
"He took off his cuffs and dropped them in the bureau drawer.
`Then,' he said, `I go to Chicago.' Of course I at once said that I
would certainly go to Camp Taylor, and we started off shortly
afterward."
There were four steps in the journey from Alameda to Camp
Taylor. First, one took a train to the Alameda mole; second, one
crossed the Bay to the San Francisco Ferry Building; third, from the
Ferry Building one took a big, luxurious ferry for a half hour trip to
Sausalito; fourth, at the Sausalito wharf one boarded the narrow-
gauge train to the camp. In the spring of 1900 only two trains a day
carried passengers from Sausalito to Camp Taylor: the morning train
that left on week days at 7:40 and an evening train that left around
six. Further, there was only one ferry from San Francisco that
connected with the morning train; this left at seven, and if one missed
it, one missed thc trip. To carry the matter back to Alameda, the
ferries between that town and San Francisco ran, at best, only once
every half hour, as did the trains that served them. Thus in traveling
from Alameda to Camp Taylor it was of supreme
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importance to catch a proper train on the first step of the journey.
"The brief discussion I had had with Swamiji about leaving him at
Sausalito," Mrs. Hansbrough continued, "had been just enough to
make us miss the broad-gauge train; we arrived at the Park Street
Station just in time to see it pull out. Mr. Roorbach, who was with us,
said we could probably catch the narrow-gauge train, which was just
a few blocks away. So we hurried to the proper street. This train was
just getting under way as we arrived. I called to the conductor on the
back platform, who called back, `If you'll run, I'll wait for you.' The
train was there within a few yards of us, and I looked at Swamiji. He
simply said, `I will not run.'
"Well, there was no further chance of getting to Camp Taylor that
morning, so we went back to the Home of Truth. On the way back I
remarked that we had missed the train because there was no engine
hitched to our cars. Swamiji [upon whom this sly dig at his refusal to
run was not lost] turned to me and said, `We couldn't go because your
heart was in Los Angeles. There is no engine that can pull against a
heart. Put your heart into your work and nothing can stop you.' It was
a tremendously significant statement, and it has been vivid in my
memory all these years."
(In hearing this story from Mrs. Hansbrough, Miss Ansell
evidently misunderstood it. In her published memoirs she relates that
Swamiji and Mrs. Hansbrough literally sat for some time in a train
that had no engine. Fortunately, we have the correct story in Mrs.
Hansbrough's own words, taken down as she spoke them.)
"The Aspinalls had gone on ahead of us to Camp Taylor," Mrs.
Hansbrough continued, "and I discovered when we missed the train
that my baggage was missing. Later I found they had taken it up with
them. After the missed trains and the loss of time, I had once more
decided to go back to Los Angeles, but the next day I had to go up to
Camp Taylor to recover my luggage. When I told Swamiji I would
have to go
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up for my baggage, he remarked, `Strange, Mother's dragging you up
there, when you tried your best not to go.' When I was there Mrs.
Aspinall tried to make me promise that I would not go to say good-
bye to Swamiji when I got back to the city: she said I would surely
prevent him from getting there a second time. But when I returned
with the baggage, Swamiji said, `Well, come with me to the Camp
for a week; we won't stay longer.' When I finally had departed for the
south [several weeks later], he told someone, `She had to go back
because the babe (Dorothy) wanted her.' "
A full week passed before Swamiji and Mrs. Hansbrough again
set out for Mr. Juhl's camp. The only known hints of what detained
them so long are contained in three published letters written by
Swamiji during this interlude. "Sudden indisposition and fever
prevent my starting for Chicago yet," he wrote to Mary Hale on April
30, 1900. "I will start as soon as I am strong for thejourney." 53 And to
Sister Nivedita on May 2, "I have been very ill-one more relapse
brought about by months of hard work."54 On the same day he wrote
to Mrs. Blodgett of Los Angeles: "Dear Aunt Roxy, . . . I am down
again with nerves and fever after six months of hard work. However,
I found out that my kidneys and heart are as good as ever. I am going
to take a few days rest in the country and then start for Chicago."55 As
published, none of these letters have a return address, but almost
certainly Swamiji spent this week of illness and fever at the Alameda
Home of Truth-a much better place in which to be ill than a camp,
and one can only think that his having missed the train on the
morning of April 24 was, after all, a stroke of good fortune.
On Wednesday, May 2, Swamiji and Mrs. Hansbrough again set
forth For Camp Taylor. Whether they started in the morning or
afternoon is not made entirely clear in any memoir, but probably-
even considering that Swamiji had already written at least two letters
that day-they left in the early morning. Again, he wore his English
hunting suit, which, according to Mrs. Allan, consisted in part of a
Norfolk jacket. What
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kind of trousers and hat Swamiji wore, we are not told.
This time they caught the proper train and arrived duly at the
Alameda wharf, where they boarded a ferry for San Francisco. "I had
packed Swamiji's things, bedding, etc., in two big telescope baskets,"
Mrs. Hansbrough related, "and Mr. Roorbach undertook to handle
them. When we got to the ferry, Mr. Roorbach walked on ahead with
his bulky load. As I mentioned before, he and all the others in the
Home of Truth were vegetarians; and as Swamiji saw him struggling
with the big baskets he said, `Boiled potatoes and asparagus can't
stand up under that!' We had had asparagus tips and potatoes for
dinner the night before." Mr. Roorbach, however, evidently stood up
manfully, and the various connections between train and ferry, ferry
and ferry, ferry and train were managed without a hitch.
In Sausalito, Swamiji and Mrs. Hansbrough, entering upon the last
leg of the journey, boarded the narrow-gauge train of the North
Pacific Coast Railroad. The distance between the rails of this
particular narrow-gauge track was three feet, as opposed to the
standard gauge of four feet, eight and a half inches; and the
locomotive and cars were proportionately diminutive. In 1900, as I
have learned from an authority on the subject, George H. Harlan, this
railroad was in deplorable condition, and, although the company
possessed some large and splendid locomotives, only the small ones
could be safely (or less dangerously) used on the crumbling roadbed.
These brave little engines, for which the term "choo-choo train"
seems apt, sported a huge funnel-shaped stack, consumed quantities
of cordwood, and tooted a shrill peanut-stand whistle at crossings and
around the numerous bends of the road. Although the train generally
proceeded at a cautious and tedious rate from Sausalito to the end of
the line at Cazadero, some eighty-three miles north, derailments and
overturns were frequent. The view from the car windows, however,
was delightful.
"After the train left the little town of Sausalito," Mrs.
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Hansbrough recalled, "we were soon traveling through wooded
country along the bank of a stream, and in the peaceful atmosphere
Swamiji began to relax almost at once. He was sitting next to the
window so that he could look out, and he began to sing softly to
himself. `Here in the country,' he said, `I am beginning to feel like
myself.' "
In the book Narrow Gauge to the Redwoods by A. Bray Dickinson
there is a description of the route (which no longer exists) as it was at
the turn of the century and as Swamiji saw it:

Kaleidoscopic scenes continued to charm and delight the

traveler as trains pulled away from the pier below Sausalito's
steep hillside. There were tide flats with their reeking odors and
house boats tied up to rotten piling. Mount Tamalpais rose in the
background, reflecting the morning sun rays above the lesser
hills spotted with groves of oak and madrone. . . . Rails
traversed the length of lovely Ross Valley, where little streams
flowed through fields of golden poppies and sky-blue lupine.
Scattered along the way were villages half hidden in woods:
Corte Madera, Larkspur, Tamalpais, San Anselmo. . . . The train
crossed ridges with slopes blanketed by thickets of manzanita,
wild lilac and winter red toyon.
Little engines . . . puffed and snorted, stuttered, and spun
driving wheels as they dragged loads up long grades and in and
out of ravines. The trains would . . . roll over creaking trestles,
through smoke-filled tunnels, and around hairpin curves where
passengers saw their locomotive headed in an opposite direction
from themselves. . . .
A 1,300-foot tunnel at the top of White's Hill was con-
structed on a steep grade which made it difficult for a laboring
engine completing the climb. To make matters worse, the water
dropping from springs made the track wet and slippery. Many
long trains became stalled inside the tunnel while a sweating
fireman furiously stoked his
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 fire to get up more steam. The passengers nearly suffocated
from the smoke.
As cars glided down the hill into redwood filled Lagunitas
Canyon passengers frantically raised their windows for fresh air.
The train followed shadowy Paper Mill Creek and then rolled
past the old paper mill all the way out to Tomales Bay. 56

A mile or two before coming to the old paper mill, the train had
stopped to let Swamiji and Mrs. Hansbrough alight at what was
known as Irving Flag Station, a point in the sweet smelling woods by
Paper Mill Creek, twenty miles (about an hour-and-a-half train ride)
from Sausalito.
According to an old railroad map, the flag station was some two
hundred feet beyond the entrance to Mr. Juhl's camp. The camp
abutted on the railroad embankment and ran parallel to it, occupying
a strip of level land about one hundred and fifty feet long and forty to
sixty feet wide between the track on the north and the sloping hank of
the creek on the south, Just here, the stream, whose overall course
was northwest, flowed due west, and just, here also, the narrow,
unpaved county road, which had been running along the south bank
of the stream, turned due north and crossed it on a wooden bridge,
forming the camp's western boundary. At the camp's eastern end the
land dropped sharply from track to stream, and the trees and brush
that grew in this sloping, uninhabitable wilderness formed a natural
barrier. On the north the land continued to rise steeply behind the
railroad, sheltering the area from wind and helping to seclude it.
The railroad, the camp, the stream, arid the county road, to name
them in their north-to-south order, lay in a narrow valley (or broad
canyon) between moderately high hills. This was not mountain
country: the camp was only 135 feet above sea level, and the highest
peak of the surrounding hills was a mere 1,466 feet. The canyon and
the lower slopes were thickly wooded with broad-leafed trees-oak
and bay, maple, alder,
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and willow-and, towering over all, were stands of lordly redwood,
through which sunlight shafted as through high cathedral windows.
Flowering bushes of many kinds grew in abundance, as did tall ferns
and wild berry vines. White azaleas tinged with faint pink and yellow
flourished luxuriantly along the banks of the stream, and in May,
champagne-colored iris, red and yellow columbine, blue monkshood
would have been everywhere in bloom. Indeed the whole canyon was
a luxury of flowering woodland. But the hills that rose above it were
bare, lifting themselves virtually free of foliage to lie grass-green and
buttercup-gold in the springtime sun.
On entering the camp one found the kitchen immediately to one's
right. It consisted of a small cast iron stove, backed by a forked tree
which supported a box-cupboard and shelves and from which hung
pots, pans, a kettle, and various cooking utensils. A large, domed-top
steamer trunk held additional supplies and equipment. Somewhere in
the vicinity of the kitchen must have been a water tap, for, as Mrs.
Hansbrough recalled, water was piped to the camp for cooking and
bathing. Just beyond the kitchen was what Mrs. Roorbach described
years later as the "dining-room set up"-a crude wooden table and two
board benches. A trail led from the entrance to the far end of the
camp, where, in Swamiji's time, a small grove of redwood trees
served as a chapel for meditation and sometimes for a class. In the
area between the kitchen and the rove stood the tents.
g A few photographs taken at the camp in 1900 have been found
among the papers of Mr. and Mrs. Allan. One of these, reproduced
here, was taken by a Robert Notman Miller some three months after
Swamiji had left. It shows the kitchen and dining room with Eloise
Roorbach standing at the stove. (The young woman shown seated on
one of the benches is the wife of the photographer, holding her infant
son in her lap.) As shown here, both the kitchen and the dining room
were shielded from the road and bridge by a canvas fence, and high
above the table an awning was stretched like a hammock
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between the trees. But according to Ida Ansell's memory, this fence
and awning must have been hung later in the year.'* "The dining
room," she recalled, "was right in the open. There weren't any canvas
walLs."57
Aside from its historical interest, this photograph has a special
value, for with its help the spot on which Swamiji's tent stood has
recently been pinpointed. The story of this discovery is perhaps worth
telling. In September of 1948 a group of devotees from the Vedanta
Society of Northern California took Miss Ansell to revisit the camp
site in order to verify its location. (Earlier, they had taken Mrs.
Roorbach to the same place for the same purpose.) Miss Ansell
recognized the spot, though she found it less wooded than it had been
in earlier years. "The shrubs and bushes were very thick then," she
recalled, "and when one entered the camp from the road, one could
see nothing of the tents. . . . The women's tents were just below the
railroad tracks, at the foot of the embankment, and were set about
eight or ten feet apart. There were three: Mrs. Hansbrough's [and
Mrs. Aspinall's], mine and Miss Bell's, and Mrs. Roorbach's. Directly
across from Miss Bell's tent and a little to the right, that is, a little
toward the kitchen, stood Swamiji's tent"58 (Mrs. Roorbach, who had
also recognized the spot, had similarly described the placement of the
tents: "Swamiji had a little tent to himself," she had said. "It was out
further from the embankment than ours and down nearer the dining
room and kitchen spots, because he wanted to be alone and we didn't
feel like coming too close to him.")59
Equipped with this information and the photograph of the kitchen,
a fellow member of the Vedanta Society of Northern California and I
drove to Camp Irving one day in September of 1969. We carried with
us maps, charts, all available memoirs, cameras, a tape measure, a
shovel, and a box of heavy-duty plastic bags. We set out fairly early
in the morning, thinking to avoid picnickers and Park Rangers, for
our mission (the nature of which will become clear) might not have
seemed altogether lawful, and would certainly have seemed odd.
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 Irving picnic area, as the site is now called [no overnight camping
is allowed), is very different than it was when Swamiji was there. Not
only have many trees and shrubs been cleared away to make a large
open space, but the old bridge, the old road, and the trestle are gone.
From the new county road, a wide paved driveway leads into the
camp site and runs its length to the old "meditation grove," where
now (1969) sits a barbecue grill. A public rest room-a small green
house -stands on the approach to the old bridge. (The new bridge
crosses the stream a hundred feet or so to the west.) A few picnic
tables, benches, and litter cans are scattered about. But despite these
changes, the spot is lovely still: many trees grow tall along the bank
of the stream, their branches meeting overhead; the air is fresh and
redolent of the woods, the water is clear. When there are no
automobiles parked about and when no picnickers turn up their
transistor radios, one can feel onself to be deep in the silent woods,
and one can believe that Swamiji was once there, talking of God,
meditating.
The first part of our mission was to locate as exactly as possible
Swamiji's tent site. To do this we had first to find the old kitchen,
which no one had done before us. The only possible tree seemed to
be a forked bay tree growing near the old road and near the stream, its
bark mossy with age and its base about fifteen feet in circumference.
But this could not be the kitchen tree, we told each other, for, viewed
from any angle, its right-hand fork did not curve in conformity with
the tree in the photograph. Then suddenly my friend pointed out that
the bay tree had a stump on its right side which had once been a third
fork, and this fork could have curved to exactly match the right-hand
fork of the kitchen tree. A close inspection of the photograph showed
that the kitchen tree had indeed had three forks, not two, as it had
seemed at first. So this, then, was the tree. This ground where we
stood had been Swamiji's kitchen; just here had been the little stove
just there, the dining room. We began pacing off yards, taking
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148
 Our next step was to locate the exact spot of Miss Bell's tent. This
we were able to do without much trouble. Almost directly opposite
her tent (Miss Ansell had said) and "a little to the right toward the
kitchen," had stood Swamiji's. And, to be sure, the site, thus located,
was just where, measuring from the kitchen, we had thought it should
be. (This spot was indeed almost inevitable; for his tent could not
have been pitched much nearer the kitchen without being almost in
the dining room, nor could it have stood farther from the kitchen
without encroaching upon the stump of a huge and ancient redwood.)
As we reckoned it, his tent would have stood a little to the right of
this stump (possibly a towering tree in 1900) and would have been set
back a little from the bank of the stream.
Now came the second part of our mission-the part requiring the
shovel and the plastic bags. My friend scraped away the loose top soil
from the approximate center of the place where Swamiji's tent had
almost certainly stood and then shoveled clean earth into the bag that
I held open to receive it. Then we smoothed over the hole, leaving no
discernible dent in Samuel P. Taylor State Park. We repeated this
procedure down by the stream, filling another bag, this time with
creek. bed gravel. This done, we drove seven miles west to the
Vedanta Retreat at Olema. There at the monastery we deposited our
holy earth, treasure which was later to be imbedded in a monument to
Swami Vivekananda.

But to go back to the days when that earth was made holy, there
exist, aside from Miss Ansell's oral description of Camp Irving, three
firsthand accounts of Swamiji's two weeks' stay there: one from Ida
Ansell herself, one from Mrs. Hansbrough, and one from Mrs.
Roorbach. In addition, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Allan, who visited now
and then (and once sent Swamiji a case of bottled mineral water),
jotted down a few notes. Of these several records, Miss Ansell's
memoirs are the moat full, and the following story, much of which
will be familiar to readers of Reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda,
is
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largely based on it. From the unpublished accounts, however, many
new bits of information will help to illume this period of Swamiji's
life, when, as he wrote on leaving Alameda, "I am going to throw off
all worry, and glory unto Mother."60
Through Mrs. Hansbrough's memory, as well as Miss Ansell's, we
see him on his first night under the redwoods. "Swamiji built a fire on
a spit of sand that ran out into the stream," the former recalled, "and
we all sat around it in the quiet night and Swamiji sang for us and
told stories, such as those about Suka Deva and Vyasa." "I close my
eyes," Ida Ansell adds, "and see him standing there in the soft
blackness with sparks from the blazing log fire flying through it and a
day-old moon above."61 (The moon was in fact three days old, and
thus in the early evening was still high in the west.) In her original,
unpublished, memoirs (written in 1947) Miss Ansell recalled in a
passage that differs a little from the published version: "We had a
glorious meditation around the camp fire. He said to us, `You may
meditate on whatever you wish, but I shall meditate on the heart of a
lion. That gives strength.' . : . It was a never-to-be-forgotten night.
The profound stillness of the forest, the beauty of the fire, and most
of all-Swami, serene and majestic, evidently very happy to be there,
free from lectures and crowds of people. Though he was tired and
needed a rest, how unutterably grand he was! `We end life in the
forest, as we begin it,' he declared. `But what a world of experience
lies between the two states!' I cannot remember the details of what he
said, but I can still feel the great peace and power of our meditation
that night whenever I think of it."62
Someone remembered a few more details of what Swamiji had
said that first night and later told them to Gurudasa, who in turn
quoted them in his article, "Swami Vivekananda's Mission to the
West": " `Now,' [Swamiji] said, `imagine that you are yogis, living in
the Indian forest. Forget your cities, forget everything. Think only of
God. See,' he said, pointing to the stream flowing nearby, `here is
Mother Ganges.' And they
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lighted the Dhuni and sat around it and he taught them how to
meditate and to make Japam. And facing the stream he would shout:
Hara, Hara, Vyom, Vyom! Hara, Hara, Vyom, Vyom! until that
sound vibrated in every mind and the world was forgotten and the
soul soared into regions unknown before."63
The next day there was a trace of rain; and the day following that,
which was Friday, May 4, there was more than a trace. Indeed,
according to Miss Ansell (who inadvertently skipped over May 3 in
both her published and unpublished memoirs), it rained on Friday all
day. Though Swamiji felt ill and had a fever that morning, he talked
to the five women for hours, sitting on Miss Bell's cot in the tent she
and Miss Ansell shared. That night the rain continued, and Swamiji's
fever worsened. He became very ill, so ill that he made a will (neither
his first nor his last), in which, Miss Ansell said, he left "everything
to his brother monks." Mrs. Hansbrough and Mrs. Aspinall nursed
him. "I can see Mrs. Hansbrough now," Miss Ansell wrote in her first
memoirs, "heedless of the pouring rain, putting some extra protection
over his tent, which was almost opposite ours."64
Mrs. Hansbrough probably had as little sleep that night as
Swamiji. The rain had driven her from a bed under the trees into Mrs.
Aspinall's tent, which was not, it turned out, a watertight shelter.
"Mrs. Aspinall," she related, "had some printed mottoes such as the
Home of Truth people often put up. She had pinned some of these to
the sloping roof of the tent. Of course wherever the pins were, the
tent leaked, and that night I found water dripping steadily on my
forehead from `Love Never Faileth.‘"
That was perhaps the worst night the campers spent. Within a day
or two Swamiji recovered, and we do not hear of his being again
seriously ill at the camp. One cannot, however, say much for the
weather. It was too early in the year for consistent sun and warmth. It
rained once again (on Thursday, May 10) and was often cloudy; on
the other hand, it was often
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clear, and during the day the temperature was almost always in the
sixties. The moon, in its bright fortnight-a crescent when Swamiji
arrived and full before he left-was a presence every night, sometimes
known only by a veiled glow, sometimes threading through islands of
clouds, but often sailing free in an open sky.
In 1900 the camp was not without neighbors. A number of
wooden buildings associated with a tannin mill stood among apple
trees and rose bushes on a stretch of level ground across the road.
There was also a large general merchandise and grocery store for the
convenience of the workmen, and a rose covered cottage rented to a
Miss Ella McCarthy, who, it so happened, was a friend of Eloise
Roorbach's. But these buildings were not visible from the camp, and
whatever sounds may have come from them would have been
absorbed by the intervening woods. The days were serene and still,
and there was very little travel on the county road. Later in the
summer, Sunday bicyclers would pedal past on their way to the
picnic grounds at Camp Taylor, but in early May the traffic was
sparse even on weekends and almost nonexistent during the week. 65
As for the railroad, the little trains, it is true, would roar past
practically on top of the campers, the railway embankment rising a
mere ten feet or so above the level of the tents-- `so close," Eloise
Roorbach remembered, "that the train shook us. It made an awful
racket."66 But as a rule, this fuming, snorting beast did not bear down
upon the camp more than four times a day-twice from the south,
twice from the north -and for all its uproar, it left behind only the
fragrant smoke of burning fuel-wood.
Life at the camp settled into a simple routine. Swamiji, as we learn
from Mrs. Roorbach, was generally up with the sun, which rose
around five o'clock. "My tent was close enough to his," she said, "so
that I could hear him chanting in the early morning. He would chant
by the hour. Sometimes it was very low. I would sneak out and walk
down toward the kitchen so I could hear him better. What he chanted
was always again and
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again, `Truth is one, sages call it by various names.' "67 Perhaps this
was indeed what Eloise Roorbach heard; but it would seem more
likely that in the still, pristine day as the sun rose through the trees
Swamiji chanted from various Sanskrit scriptures and hymns in that
language of the gods, of which she understood, she said, not a word.
A little later the others rose and perhaps dipped into the stream.
For the most part Paper Mill Creek was shallow-so gently flowing
and clear that in a contemporary photograph every pebble on its bed
is as sharply visible as though seen through air alone-but here and
there were deep pools, one of which, Mrs. Hansbrough recalled, was
near the camp. ―There was a delightful pool in the stream for
bathing," she said, "which all of us used except Swamiji, who found
the water too cold." (But he would have braved that cold if necessary,
and at least once he thought it might be. "I remember," Ida Ansell
related, "that once Shanti [Mrs. Hansbrough] went walking in the
creek-she was a daredevil. I was walking on one bank holding her
hand; Swamiji was on the other side just ready to plunge in if
anything happened to her. He was concerned about her and said to
me, `That's a very gingerly hold!' ") 68
"We would usually have breakfast sometime between seven-thirty
and eight," Mrs. Hansbrough said; and for this they gathered in the
kitchen-dining area. The campers' meal taking was not always
unobserved. Miss Ansell tells of an American Indian boy who was
doing some work in the vicinity and who one morning stood
watching as they ate. Later Swamiji talked to him, and the boy, who
had not been offered any coffee, made the comment: "Black man like
coffee, white man like coffee, red man like coffee." "This amused
Swamiji very much," Miss Ansell wrote. "He requested that the boy
be given some coffee, and all the afternoon he kept repeating the
boy's remark and laughing."69
"About ten or ten-thirty," Mrs. Hansbrough recounted, "Swamiji
would hold a meditation, which generally took place
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in Miss Bell's tent, as she had requested." Mrs. Hansbrough said very
little more about these morning sessions, and we learn from Mrs.
Allan, in whom she confided, that she disapproved of them. "Mrs.
Hansbrough thought Swamiji should rest," Mrs. Allan wrote, "as he
had done so much lecturing and should not be asked to talk or
meditate with the students, but Miss Bell wanted him to do so, and he
acquiesced. Mrs. Hansbrough did not attend these meetings. One
morning when the other students had gathered in the tent Swamiji
went into the open-air kitchen and asked if she was not coming to
meditation. She replied, `I can't come just yet; I'm busy cooking. I'll
come later.' Swamiji said, `That's all right, you do not need to
meditate; I'll meditate for you.' "70 (One finds this not improbable
repetition of an incident that occurred in the Turk Street flat also told
in Miss Ansell's published memoirs in connection with Camp Taylor.
There, however, one reads that Swamiji excused Mrs. Hansbrough
with the words, "Well, never mind; our Master said you could leave
meditation for service.")71
The morning meditation was not always held in Miss Bell's tent,
but sometimes in the redwood-grove chapel at the far end of the
camp. "I remember," Mrs. Roorbach later said, "that we each chose a
different little spot within this grove to meditate in."72
(Two other photographs that were taken at the camp after Swamiji
had left were presumably, though not certainly, taken in this
meditation grove. In both, Miss Lydia Bell is the central figure.
Surrounding her in the first picture are, from left to right, Mrs. Emily
Aspinall, a Mrs. Schultz, Ida Ansell, and Eloise Roorbach. The
second photograph does more justice, one imagines, to Miss Bell,
who does not seem to have come out too well in the first. Here Mrs.
Carl F. Petersen sits on her right and Mrs. Schultz, one of her
students, on her left. Neither of these two women visited the camp
when Swamiji was there. Mrs. Schultz drops out of the history of the
Vedanta movement in California altogether; Mrs. Petersen, however,
was among
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those who were to play an active and important part in the early
growth of the San Francisco Society.)

We learn a few details of Swamiji's morning talks from Miss

Ansell's memoirs, both published and unpublished, both written and
oral. "He had been invited to the camp to rest," she said, "but all
morning he would sit on a cot in Miss Bell's tent, and we sat on the
floor around him, and he talked all the morning. He would talk of
philosophy and religion, telling many stories, comparing Indian and
American customs and answering questions. He told of his hopes for
a better understanding of the East and the West and their mutual
benefit thereby. He told of his love for Thomas a Kempis and how he
had travelled all over India with two books, the Gita and The
Imitation of Christ."73
Of Swamiji's talks at Camp Taylor Mrs. Roorbach also told a
little: "He often said everything is one; Divine Mother is in
everything," she recalled; "and he insisted for one of his teachings
that we look upon every relation, whether brother or husband, or
father, or mother or sister, as Mother regardless of sex. We were to
tell ourselves that everyone we saw was Mother.
"You know," she continued, "in India they are more frank than
we are in the West and Swami was very open with us, almost
childlike in some of the things he said, and one day he said this
startling thing to us: `In my first speech in this country, in Chicago, I
addressed that audience as "Sisters and Brothers of America," and
you know that they all rose to their feet. You may wonder what made
them do this, you may wonder if I had some strange power. Let me
tell you that I did have a power and this is it-never once in my life did
I allow myself to have even one sexual thought. I trained my mind,
my thinking, and the powers that man usually uses along that line I
put into a higher channel, and it developed a force so strong that
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 "At another time he spoke of the regard we must have for all
approaches to worship, and he said this: `The primitive man worships
the idol (he said fetish), and he worships that for a long time, and he
looks at it and looks at it. One day he will be looking at it when
suddenly behind the idol will appear the spirit, and he will see that,
and thus the worship of the idol leads him to the sight of God.' "74
In speaking of Swamiji's most exalted moods, Mrs. Hansbrough
mentioned three occasions that stood out in her memory: There was
the special day on the hilltop in South Pasadena when he had talked
absorbedly for six hours until the air became "just vibrant with
spirituality"; there was the even more special day at the Alameda
Home of Truth when again he had talked for some six hours without
interruption; and there were unspecified times at Camp Taylor which,
according to her, surpassed the others. One indication of the special
luminosity of Swamiji's mood during his days at the camp is
contained in an answer he gave to a question or, rather, a statement of
Miss Bell's. The incident is told by both Miss Ansell and Mrs.
Hansbrough in almost identical language, and I give here the latter's
version, simply because it has not been heretofore published:
"One day after the meditation in Miss Bell's tent, Miss Bell
remarked, `This world is an old schoolhouse where we come to learn
our lessons.'
" `Who told you that?' Swamiji demanded. She could not
remember.
" `Well, I don't think so,' he declared. `I think this world is a circus
ring in which we are the clowns tumbling.'
" `Why do we tumble, Swami?' Miss Bell asked.
" `Because we like to tumble,' was his answer. `When we get tired,
we will quit.' "75
Throughout his San Francisco lectures Swamiji had reiterated the
theme that "the whole universe is a vast play." "Play! God Almighty
plays. That is all," he had cried in "The Goal." " . . . You are having
fun, playing with worlds and all that. . . . It is all fun. There is no
other purpose. . . . I am the man
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that is going to be hanged. I am all the wicked. I am getting punished
in hells. That also is fun."76 All this and more was contained in
Swamiji's brief reply to Miss Bell: "We are clowns tumbling." Only
from a high Advaitic viewpoint could such words be meaningful, and
it seems clear that in California and perhaps particularly during the
last two months of his stay, he was seeing men and women not as
captives in Maya, inching painfully toward freedom, but, literally, as
God Himself playing at joy and at misery for the sheer, wonderful
fun of it. Swamiji was himself consciously playing. "I have no aims,
no want, no purpose," he had said in "The Goal." "I come to your
country, and lecture just for fun. No other meaning." 77 And one is
reminded of his description of the activity of an illumined soul:
"After realization," he had said to an Indian disciple, "what is
ordinarily called work does not persist. It changes its character. The
work which the Jnani does only conduces to the well-being of the
world. . . . About the motive of the actions of such personages only
this can be said-`Everything they do like men, simply by way of
sport.' "78 But while Swamiji's hard work was by way of sport, he also
played in ways recognizable to the ordinary onlooker as play-though
of an uncommonly joyful kind. He did not spurn the little things;
rather, he made them shine.
"After the morning meditation and talk, he would be interested in
the preparations for dinner," Miss Ansell recounted. "Sometimes he
helped. He made curry for us and showed us how they grind spices in
India. He would sit on the floor in his tent with a hollow stone in his
lap. With another smooth, round stone he would grind the spices
much finer than we can do with a bowl and chopper. This would
make the curry quite hot enough for us, but Swami would augment it
by eating tiny red-hot peppers on the side. He would throw his head
back and toss them into his mouth with a great circular movement of
his arm. Once he handed me one of them, saying, `Eat it. It will do
you good.' One would eat poison if offered by Swamiji, so I obeyed,
with agonizing result, to his great
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amusement. At intervals all the afternoon he kept asking, `How is
your oven?' "79
Swamiji no doubt had his reasons for introducing a fire inside
Miss Ansell-it may have been his way of impressing her mind,
which, as she later admitted, had been lost in devotion to Miss Bell-
but he made it up to her by cooking rock candy especially for her,
remarking as he stood by the stove stirring it, "The longer you boil
the sugar, the whiter it becomes and all the impurities are removed."80
According to Mrs. Roorbach, he also made candy flavored with
sesame seeds, and Mrs. Hansbrough tells that often in the evenings or
late afternoons he would make chapatis, mixing flour with the pure
water of the stream and slapping the dough into big, flat, unleavened
patties that he would cook over the coals of the camp fire. Generally,
this would be a fire built on the tongue of sand that jutted into the
stream, where all Swamiji had to do for water was dip a ladle into the
crystal current. His fire would be small and efficient. "One day I built
a big fire," Mrs. Roorbach recalled. "Swami didn't like it. He said,
`All that wood is enough for a funeral pyre!' He undid it and built a
small one."81
The women did most of the cooking most of the time, and now
and then, they taught Swamiji a new trick. Mrs. Roorbach, who was a
good cook, once prepared some asparagus (that favorite of the Home
of Truth) and made some mayonnaise to go with it. This last, Swamiji
liked. "Show me mayonnaise," she quoted him as having asked her,
and of course she showed him. "We were tickled almost to death to
do anything for him," she said. "He was so like a child that we took
complete care of him and made his full plans for the camp and
cooked for him. He was sick there once, not the time he was very
sick, but just slightly sick, and he said, `I must have swallowed a fly.'
We laughed a little at him, because we knew he didn't really know
what was going on in his stomach any more than he knew the time or
the value of money."82
But to return to the meals at the camp, they were "jolly
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and informal, with no end of jokes and stories," Ida Ansell recalled.
She went on to say that at breakfast one morning Swamiji, himself
free from convention and pleased with Mrs. Hansbrough's carefree
spirit, reached over and took a little food from her plate. "It is fitting
that we should eat from the same plate," he said; "we are two
vagabonds." And, according to Miss Ansell, it was during one of the
meals at Camp Taylor that he remarked to Mrs. Aspinall that if she
had lived on the highest mountain she would have had to come down
to take care of him. With which she agreed. 83
(One learns very little about Emily Aspinall from the memoirs of
this period, and nothing at all has come down to us from her own pen.
Yet she was by Swamiji's side during almost his entire stay in
northern California: she had greeted him at the Pine Street Home of
Truth when he had arrived in San Francisco from Los Angeles; she
had helped keep house for him at the Turk Street flat; she had served
him in any way she could at the Alameda Home of Truth, and now,
under the rough and simple conditions of the camp, she was again
taking care of him. Later, she was to see him in San Francisco at least
once before he left for the East Coast. Quiet and serious, she was
simply there to serve him, as though indeed destiny had so ordained.)
In the afternoons Swamiji and some of the women would go on
long walks through the woods. "We would walk along the road,"
Mrs. Roorbach recalled, "and then we would take trails leading off
from it and walk back into the hills. We didn't talk much on the
walks; we just quietly went along here and there. There were
woodchoppers in that vicinity, and it was said that they were not a
very good type of people, but I was so convinced that I was in the
presence of the Lord that nothing bothered me. There were
rattlesnakes-even that didn't bother me. Not far away was a small
hotel; we would go there once in a while for supplies. But Swamiji
didn't go with us often; he was very quiet. He wanted to be quiet. The
railroad track crossed the road north of the camp and then
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crossed the stream over a high trestle. Sometimes on the way to the
hotel we would walk over the trestle with Swamiji, but he didn't like
to do that, so we generally walked underneath the trestle."84
In 1900 this hotel, together with adjacent camping and picnic
grounds, all of which were located about three-quarters of a mile
downstream from Swamiji's camp, comprised Camp Taylor. Included
in this book is a photograph taken of the hotel in August of 1900. It
was possibly from the footbridge shown here that Swamiji, taking a
gun from a group of young men who were unsuccessfully shooting at
a number of eggshells strung together and bobbing about in the
current of the stream, hit a dozen or so with as many shots. Returning
the gun to the astonished young men, who had challenged him to try
his hand at this difficult sport, he assured them that he had never
before handled firearms. The secret of his unerring aim lay, he told
them, in the concentration of his mind. 85 The locale of this incident,
which is narrated in the Life, is not certain, but shooting at bobbing
eggshells was just the sort of thing young men would be doing at
Camp Taylor in 1900.
The guests at the resort could not have failed to note and ponder
the occasional appearance of a majestic, dark-skinned Hindu in an
English hunting suit. It is not surprising therefore that strangers
sometimes wandered into Swamiji's camp, curious to see what
manner of place it was. Eloise Roorbach tells of a woman who thus
"turned up one day." "Swamiji," she said, "took one look at her, and
was so horrified by what he saw that he backed into his tent and
disappeared." Mrs. Roorbach told another story relating to a stranger
at the camp: "We were all walking toward the meditation clump of
trees," she said, "when Swamiji stooped and picked up a little comb,
a woman's comb, and asked, `Does this belong to any of you ladies?'
We each examined it and said `No not mine.' `What!' he exclaimed,
`it doesn't belong to any of you?' Whereupon he dropped it like a hot
coal."86
(One might ask here, as I have asked, why it was that
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Swamiji, who saw only God in all beings, was so horrified by the
woman and so repelled by a stranger's comb. I asked this question of
a senior swami of the Ramakrishna Order, and he replied: "To one
who lives on so high a plane as Swamiji, sometimes the vision is of
God and sometimes it is a clear vision, through and through, of the
superficial person. As for the comb, Swamiji would have picked up
the comb as an act of service; but sannyasins never touch such things
as a woman's comb. So when he found that it didn't belong to any of
the women there, he just dropped it.")
Returning from their walks, the campers would soon prepare the
evening meal, Swamiji often helping. After eating, they would
sometimes stroll near the camp in the twilight. "I remember climbing
up the little embankment," Eloise Roorbach said, "and we would
walk up and down the track with him." But soon it would grow dark
and chilly, and they would sit around a blazing campfire. "The
wonderful things he talked to us in the evenings!" Mrs. Roorbach
exclaimed. She did not, however, elaborate, and it is only from Ida
Ansell that one learns a little, though very little, of those evenings by
the fire.
"The grand climax of the day's activities was the evening fire-side
talk and the following meditation," she wrote in her published
memoirs. "After telling stories and answering questions [and, Mrs.
Hansbrough adds, "insisting that each of us tell a story"],87 Swamiji
would give us a subject for meditation such as `Firm and Fearless'
before beginning to chant. One morning he inspired us with a talk on
`Absolute Truth, Unity, Freedom' and the subject for the evening
meditation was `I am All Existence, Bliss and Knowledge.' "88 And
thus, the camgers meditating with Swamiji under the trees in the
moonlight, the only sounds the stream singing to itself and owls
solemnly conversing, the day would come to a close.
"At the weekends there were visitors," Mrs. Allan wrote in her
notes on Camp Taylor. She was making a firsthand observation, for
she and Mr. Allan were present on both weekends
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(there were only two). Who the other visitors were, she does not say.
But while, on the one hand, visitors came to the camp on weekends,
on the other hand, two of the regular campers left. Early on Saturday
mornings Miss Bell and Miss Ansell would board the train for San
Francisco, where Miss Ansell would give a music lesson on Saturday
afternoons and Miss Bell would deliver a lecture at the California
Street Home of Truth on Sunday mornings, her young devotee
happily taking shorthand notes. Sunday afternoons they would return
to the camp. On the second and last weekend of Swamiji's stay Miss
Bell entrained for the city on Friday, leaving Ida to follow the next
day.
"When I was getting ready to take the train as usual, Miss Ansell
recorded in her published memoirs, "Swamiji said to me, `Why do
you go?' `I have to go, Swami,' I replied, `I have to give a lesson.' I
have always regretted the answer " she continued, "for the dollar I
received for the lesson was not the motive for going. The real motive
was Miss Bell's lecture: ' Characteristically, Swamiji did not press her
to stay nor question the reason she gave for going. "Then go," he
said, "and make half a million dollars and send it to me for my work
in India."
"He took me up the steep steps to the railroad track and flagged
the train for me," she recounted. "There was no station and the train
stopped only on signal. Swamiji's carriage was magnificent. His eyes
were always turned skyward, never down. Someone said of him that
he never saw anything lower than a telegraph pole. When the engine
passed us, as the train slowed down, I heard the fireman say to the
engineer, `Hellow! Who is this sky pilot?' I had never heard the ex-
pression and was puzzled at first as to its meaning. Then I realized
that it must mean a religious leader, and that it was evident to any one
who saw him that Swamiji was such a leader." Then saying goodbye
to him, she boarded the train.89
That had been on May 12. Only a few more days remained
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to be with Swamiji in the deep quiet of the woods, to listen to his
marvelous talk, to eat his curries and chapatis, to joke and laugh with
him, to hear him chanting in the early morning, to sit near him when
he meditated, to be carried as on a great wave into a realm of joy and
peace that one could not otherwise have even imagined.
The exact date on which he left the camp is not known. We do
know, however, through a letter to Nivedita that he was in San
Francisco on May 17, thus he and Mrs. Hansbrough must have
flagged down a southbound train on the sixteenth or seventeenth of
May and, boarding it with the two cumbersome telescope baskets,
have headed for Sausalito and the ferryboat that would take them
back across the Bay to the city. Swamiji had lived under the
redwoods by Paper Mill Creek for at least two weeks, and, as Mrs.
Hansbrough said, "He really enjoyed his stay."

But much as Swamiji had enjoyed camping under the redwoods,

two weeks of rest were not enough to fully restore his health, which
had suffered so bad a relapse at the end of April. Returning to San
Francisco, he went at once to visit his friend Dr. Milburn H. Logan,
who, with his family, lived at 770 Oak Street in a large, three-story
frame house on the northeast corner of Oak and Steiner streets-a
location in the same district of the city, broadly speaking, as that of
the Turk Street flat. The house (today numbered 510 Steiner) still
stands, but has been divided up into apartments, its exterior defaced
in the process. Luckily, a snapshot, which is here reproduced, was
taken before this remodeling took place; it shows the house as it had
been when Swamiji stayed there and when, in 1901 and 1902, it was
the meeting place of the Vedanta Society of San Francisco.
It was from this house that Swamiji wrote on May 17 to Nivedita,
who was then in Chicago. His letter read in part:
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 Dear Margot
I am sorry I cannot come to Chicago yet for a few days. The
Doctor (Dr Logan) says-I must not undertake a journey till
completely strong. He is bent on making me strong. My stomach
is very very good & nerves fine -I am getting on-a few days
more & I will be all right. . . .
I will write you soon an introduction to Mrs. Huntington.
This affair should be private.l

The following day Swamiji wrote to Mrs. Bull, who was in

London setting people's minds at rest regarding the disposition of
their donations to his Indian work, which had, they were glad to
learn, been strictly accounted for. His letter was in reply to a long one
of hers, in which she had assured him of freedom from all financial
burdens and obligations and had given him, as well, a good deal of
grave, motherly counsel concerning the direction of his life. Always
meaning so very well, she had written:

I would advise you now to have no further dealings with

money expenditure either for buildings or gifts or for any
purpose whatsoever. But to hold in strict economy what remains
in addition to your earnings, spending only the income of these
except for necessities. This seems to me beyond doubt the only
right way for you now. We will hope that your lawsuits may
soon be disposed of and your worried expenditure for these be
determined. . . . Now I see the time has come for you indeed to
be the free sannyasin, blessed by our Guru and the peace that
comes of that blessing. If at this point you choose the
permanent-the spiritual-making no attempt to build upon
material foundations, but look like a child for the daily influx of
love and joy that shall flood your own life and the lives of all
those who love you, all will be well. I say this not from any
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 but after a patient study of you, your gurubhais, and the
environment of all. It seems to me a very critical time -where
the choice is made possible to you now. . . . Now that you are
standing with a clean record as regards your obligations for
work undertaken and carried out, and have added your good
efforts for which you have received a modest return in
California, it would be a tragedy were you not to choose the
freedom of the sannyasin and be done with organization and
ambition.2

Swamiji let it pass. His reply, not heretofore published, read:

San Francisco
18th May 1900

My dear Mother, Many thanks for Joe's and your letters. I

have again a bad relapse-and struggling out of it this time I am
perfectly certain that with me all diseases are nervous. I want
rest for 2, 3 years-and not the least bit of work between. I will
take rest with the Seviers in the Himalayas.
Mrs. Sevier gave me 6000 Rs. for family-this was distributed
between my cousin, aunt &c. [8,000 Rs.? See Swamiji's letter of
August 6, 1899, to Mrs. Bull, chapter two.] The 5000 Rs. for
buying the house was borrowed from the Math funds. Do not
stop the remittance you send to my cousin, whatever
Saradananda may say to the contrary: Of course I do not know
what he says.
I have long given up the idea of a little house on the Ganges-
as I have not the money.
But I have got some in Cal [Calcutta] and some with the
Leggetts and if you give a thousand more that will be a fund for
my own personal expenses, as you know I never took Math
money, as well as for my Mother. Kindly write to Saradananda
from yourself to give up
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 the little house plan. I am not going to write any more for weeks
yet, till I completely recover. I hope to get over [to Europe] in a
few weeks from now-it was a terrible relapse. I am with a
Doctor friend and he is taking every care of me.
Tell Joe that going amongst different people with message
also does not belong to the Sannyasin-for a Sannyasin is quiet &
retirement scarcely seeing the face of man.
I am now ripe for that physically at least-if I can't go into
retirement nature will force me to it. Many thanks that temporal
things have been so well arranged by you.
With all love to Joe and yourself
Your Son3
Vivekananda

(In the Pacific Vedantin, and in the Life, it is said that a Dr.
William Foster also took care of Swamiji at this time. The name has
no meaning to us today, except as an indication that another
physician was called in. According to the San Francisco Directory for
1900, Dr. Foster's offices were at 1510 Market Street. This tells us
that he was not one of Dr. Logan's assistants; but beyond that
negative bit of information, we know at present nothing about him.)
Swamiji's visit to California was drawing to a close. Yet, as he
wrote in another heretofore unpublished letter from Dr. Logan's
house, a number of things still detained him. Perhaps, in addition to
his poor health, not the least of these was his desire to speak before
the young Vedanta Society of San Francisco, which had been
earnestly and faithfully holding its meetings. His letter, which was
addressed to Swami Abhedananda and which I give in full below,
bears no date, but there is a note on the original which reads:
"Rep[lied] 23/5/1900." For the letter to have arrived in New York by
May 23, Swamiji must have written it by May 19 at the latest. It
reads:
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 770 Oak Street
San Francisco, Cal.
c/o Dr. Logan, M.D.
My Dear Abhedananda

I am very very glad to hear about the new home of the

Vedanta Society-As things stand I will have to come to New
York direct from here-without stoppage-but it will be two or
three weeks yet I am afraid. Things are coming up so fast that I
can not but change my plans and stop a few more days.
I am trying my best to get one of you for a flying visit to this
Coast-it is a great country for Vedanta
Get all my books and clothes etc. in your home-I am coming
soon-My love to Mrs. Crane. Is she still living on beefsteak and
hot water? Miss Waldo and Mrs. Coulston write about the
publication of a new edition of Karma Yoga. I have written to
Miss Waldo all about it -The money in hand from the sale of
books ought to be spent of course.
Do you see my books and clothes all safe there. They were
with Mrs. Bull in Boston.
With all love4 Vivekananda

Back in San Francisco, Mrs. Hansbrough again felt drawn to

South Pasadena, where her small daughter awaited her. This time
there was no counter-pull in her mind, for her service to Swamiji was
now done. "After returning from Camp Taylor," she related, "I stayed
with a brother-in-law of mine, Jack Hansbrough, for about three days
and then went back to Los Angeles. I saw Swamiji every day before I
left, and twice the last day. Then he was ill in bed. I stood at the foot
of the bed and said good-bye to him. `Come and shake hands,' he
said. `I never make a fuss over people even when I have known them
many years.' I assured him that I had certainly not expected him to
make any fuss over me. `The Lord bless you and keep you,' he said.
And I departed."#

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 That should have been the end; but Mrs. Hansbrough spoiled the
elegance of that farewell by characteristically leaving behind a
suitcase. She did not, at least, go back for it. "After all the false starts
for Camp Taylor, I was not going back for that; so I asked Mrs.
Aspinall to get it when she had an opportunity and send it on to me.
She told me later that when she went for it, Swamiji remarked, `So
she left that, did she? Take it out of here!' and he gave it a push with
his foot."5
"After I had left San Francisco," Mrs. Hansbrough continued,
"Swamiji took another brief vacation trip somewhere outside the city
with a Dr. Miller before he left for the East Coast." Here again the
similarity of the names Miller and Hiller gives us trouble. One finds
in the memoirs of Mrs. Clinton French (quoted from earlier) a
mention that Dr. Albert Hiller, concerned over Swamiji's health, took
him away to his cabin in the Mount Shasta region for a few days of
complete rest. Most probably, this is the vacation trip that Mrs. Hans-
brough, meaning Hiller by Miller, had in mind; for there seems to
have been no other time during which Dr. Hiller could have taken
Swamiji away from the Bay Area. Beyond these two scanty
references, we know nothing about this trip to Mount Shasta, except
that Swamiji must have taken it (if he took it at all) between May 18
and 24. He was, we know, in San Francisco on May 18 (writing to
Mrs. Bull), and on May 24 he was also in the city, writing on that
day a letter to Sister Nivedita (in which he answered a number of
questions pertaining to Hindu mythology) and on that evening
lecturing to the Vedanta Society. At the most, therefore, he could
have spent five full days in the Mount Shasta region-a wild,
extensive, and beautiful mountainous area in the northernmost part of
California.
But whether or not Swamiji went to Mount Shasta for a few days'
rest, he seems to have made Dr. Logan's home his headquarters
during the last two weeks of May. "Dr. Logan was a man of middle
age at that time," Mrs. Hansbrough once said,
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"and was apparently devoted to Swamiji. He was very helpful to
him:6 Just when the doctor began attending Swamiji's San Francisco
lectures we do not know. He first stepped into our view at the
inaugural meeting of the Vedanta Society, already filled with
enthusiasm for the ideals of Vedanta and happy to be able to provide
the newborn society with a meeting place. He was at this time an
energetic and vital man of forty-four who had made his way in the
world with such admirable speed and diligence that eight years earlier
he had been written up at unusual length in a book of biographical
sketches of prominent, or at least outstanding, men of the Bay Area.
"We have entered somewhat more fully into his biography than is
customary," the editors of this book wrote in 1892, "for the reason
that the history of Dr. Logan is of great value, especially to the
young, as showing what may be accomplished, even at an early age,
by energy and application, when combined with natural talent."7 A
brief story of Dr. Logan's early life will not be out of place here, for
Swamiji stayed many days in his home, under his medical care.
When he was eight years old, Milburn Hill Logan came with his
parents, James and Unity Logan, from Centralia, Illinois, to
California. There were at the time four children in the family: the
eldest was a boy of thirteen, the youngest an infant. Arriving in
California, they settled for a time in Oakland, where, in a manner not
made clear by the biographers, Mr. Logan was robbed of nearly all he
possessed. The family then moved to Napa County and with their
remaining money bought a fifty-acre farm on the outskirts of the
town of Saint Helena. Mr. Logan soon became a prominent citizen.
By trade both a carpenter and an undertaker, he shortly built up, it
was said, "one of the leading furniture and undertaking houses of the
county." In the meanwhile young Milburn attended school at Saint
Helena and in his eighteenth and nineteenth years took private
instruction in physics, hygiene, physiology, and the principles and
practice of homeopathy. While it seems clear that he leaned at an
early age toward the study of medicine,
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his choice of career was not yet made. In 1875 he entered the
University of California in Berkeley, then an institution of under
three hundred students. After studying in the College of Chemistry
for two years, he was temporarily blinded during a vacation by the
untimely explosion of a large can of blasting powder. This adversity,
which put a stop to his studies for nearly two years, filled him with
determination rather than despair. Regaining his eyesight toward the
end of 1879, he at once decided upon medicine as a career. In order
to lose no more time, he abandoned the idea of completing his
university course and forthwith entered the California Medical
College in Oakland. In those days, one could become a licensed
physician without a university degree and after only two years of
medical study. Milburn Logan reduced the time to a year and a half,
his previous courses in chemistry giving him a six months' advantage.
In 1881 he graduated with honors, married and opened an office in
San Francisco. The science of medicine being what it was in the
1880s, independence of mind, perseverance, flexibility, and
imagination were a doctor's greatest assets, and all these Dr. Logan
had to a degree. He did not follow the beaten and not particularly
rewarding path; rather, he was "an eclectic physician conscientiously
selecting or choosing from any or all schools the methods and
treatment best adapted to particular cases." Rapidly he built up "a
very large and lucrative practice," which within ten years "neces-
sitated the employment of several assistants."8
Dr. Logan's energy, zest, and ambition extended far beyond his
medical practice. He somehow found time to return to the University
of California and graduate in pharmacy. Shortly thereafter, he was
elected Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Toxicology in the
Medical College and two years later, in 1883, was promoted to the
chair of that department. He also became a graduate of the
Chautauqua Scientific and Literary Circle, a four-year home-reading
course that covered a wide field of history and social culture. Further,
he wrote two medical textbooks, studied archaeology, and was an
ardent collector of
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coins, rocks, shells, and petrifactions. In addition, he had traveled
widely in Europe and the British Isles, "visiting the famous hospitals
and seats of learning, especially at Edinburgh, London, Berlin,
Vienna, Paris, Italy, as well as other parts."9
Dr. Logan's only known biography-the short sketch in the Bay
Area book-ends with 1892. Of the period between that year and 1900
we can only say that he continued to pursue his studies and to build
up his medical practice. By the time we meet him, he was not only an
M.D. and a Ph.D. (Graduate in Pharmacy), but an M.A. In the years
between 1892 and 1900 he had also built his fine house at 770 Oak
Street, where he, his wife, and their two young sons lived, together
with one of his sisters and a Dr. Roscoe L. Logan, who may have
been a nephew.
It is small wonder that Swamiji liked this man who was so full of
life and so interested in a world of subjects, who was able to talk on
many topics and apparently able to listen and to learn as well. Above
all, Dr. Logan appreciated spiritual idealism; he was not merely an
ambitious, energetic, and vigorous minded man of the world.
Although there is nothing explicit in the sketch of his life to indicate
a tendency toward spirituality, he may have leaned in that direction
from an early age. In 1878, after his accident with the blasting
powder, he became, for instance, an active and prominent member of
the Knights of Pythias and thereafter joined at least seven other secret
societies, such as the Scottish Rite and the Egyptian Rite of
Freemasonry, all of which had a mystical doctrine at their core.
Whether his membership in these societies resulted from or created
his interest in metaphysics one cannot say; but it is clear that his
interest was genuine and his desire to ally himself with and to serve
Swamiji's work was-as far as can be understood-sincere.

In 1900 Dr. Logan's downtown office suite was the best he could
offer the Vedanta Society for a meeting place. According to Mrs.
French's memoirs neither his wife nor his sister,
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171
shared his enthusiasm for Vedanta. "Both were openly opposed to his
renovating and altering of the ground floor plan of his house-used
formerly by his two children as playrooms-to meet the needs of the
growing society," Mrs. French wrote. "No member of his family ever
appeared at any class or other occasion, and in spite of the Doctor's
cordial welcome, each of the Swamis in turn felt under restraint while
guest in his home, due to this opposition."10 (It must have been Dr.
Logan's sister who chilled the air during the stays of Swami
Turiyananda, Swami Abhedananda, and Swami Trigunatita; for only
after Mrs. Logan had died in January of 1901 did Dr. Logan feel free
to offer the use of his house to the Vedanta Society. He then lost no
time in doing so: from January 31, 1901, to January 22, 1903, the
Society made 770 Oak Street its headquarters, and at various times
during that period the Swamis -Swami Turiyananda, Swami
Abhedananda, and Swami Trigunatita-made it their residence.)
One may wonder why Swamiji stayed for so many days in a
household where he was not wholly welcome. The answer lies
perhaps in the devotion of Dr. Logan himself and in Swamiji's
fondness for him. A document attesting to the warm relation between
Swamiji and Dr. Logan is an open letter the doctor wrote to Swami
Abhedananta in 1902. The letter has been published in Vivekananda
and His Work by Swami Abhedananda, and I quote it here, for
although it was written at a date beyond our present story, it reflects
Dr. Logan's attitude when Swamiji was a guest in his house:

Many are the moments of sadness since the Swamijee has

gone away. It seems that all the gods had left us, for his Divine
presence spread peace and tranquility wherever he went; the
tumult of uncertainty departed from my soul at the sound of his
magic voice. His very form and every mood were those of
tender compassion and sympathy. None knew him but to love
him; those of us who have had the royal good fortune to have
met him in the flesh will
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 some day realize that we have met the true Incarnation of the
divine One.
To me he is "The Christ," than whom a greater one has never
come; his great and liberal soul outshines all other things; his
mighty spirit was as free and liberal as the great sun, or the air
of heaven.
No being lived so mean or low, be it a man or a beast, that he
would not salute. His was not only an appeal to the poor and
lowly but to kings and princes and mighty rulers of the earth, to
grand masters of learning, of finances, of art and of the sciences,
to leaders of thought on all its higher lines. Great teachers
bowed reverently at his feet, the humble followed reverently to
kiss the hem of his garments; no other single human being was
reverenced more during his life than was Vivekananda.
In the few short weeks that I was with him few could know
him better than I. At first I attended him through a severe spell
of sickness, then he sat with me partly through a paralytic
stroke; he would charm me to sleep and enchant me awake. So
passed the sublimest part of my life, and now that sweet
memory lingers and sustains me ever and always. 11
On Thursday, May 24, 1900, Swamiji was well enough to attend a
regular meeting of the Vedanta Society at Dr. Logan's offices at 6-8-
10 Geary Street, a building that stood on the north side of the street
near the triangular intersection of Geary, Kearny, and Market. Since
April 14, when Swamiji had founded the Society, its members had
been meeting there regularly every Thursday evening. At these
meetings, which, to judge from their Minutes, had not been
particularly eventful, Mr. Charles Neilson, an honorary member of
the Class, had read each time from the Gita and had answered
questions. The only business of moment that had come before the
membership involved the determination of the dues. After a lengthy
discussion, during which "many expressed their views on the
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subject," it had been decided that "there be no limit placed upon the
amount of dues to be required from the members or those wishing to
join the class."12 Aside from this curious decision, the only event of
note had taken place on May 17, when Miss Mizener had resigned as
secretary and Mr. Albert S. Wollberg had been chosen for that office,
which he was to hold for many years thereafter.
It was the next meeting of the Vedanta Society-the seventh since
its founding-that Swamiji attended. The Minutes of this only known
occasion when he addressed a regular meeting of the Society were as
dry and skeletal as when Mr. Neilson gave his usual readings.
Nonetheless, they are worth quoting in full:

May 24th 1900 Thursday

The Class met at Dr. Logan's offices, No. 10 Geary St

at 8 P.M.
The Swami Vivekananda delivered an address on the
Bhagavad Gita.
Thereupon a business meeting ensued at which Dr. Plumb
notified the Class that the Swami would deliver a course of
three lectures at Dr. Logan's residence, 770 Oak Street.

The evenings determined on, after taking a vote, were

Saturday, Monday and Tuesday, the lecture to be held at 8
P.M.
Tickets For the series to be $1 for the three and 50c for
each separate lecture.
The meeting then adjourned.13

But that is not our only record of this historic occasion. It so

happened that Frank Rhodehamel was among those present and
that he took notes of Swamiji's talk, or, at least, of some of it,
placing quotation marks around sentences that were entirely
verbatim. Heretofore unpublished, his notes read as follows:
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 The Gita is the gist of the Vedas. It is not our Bible, the
Upanishads are our Bible. It is the gist of the Upanishads, and
harmonizes the many contradictory parts of the Upanishads. The
Upanishads are divided into two portions-the work portion and
the knowledge portion. The work portion contains ceremonials,
rules as to eating, living, doing charitable work, etc. The
knowledge came afterwards and was enunciated by kings. The
work portion was exclusively in the hands of the priests, and
pertained entirely to the sense life. It taught to do good works
that one might go to heaven and enjoy eternal happiness.
Anything, in fact, that one might want could be provided for
him by the work or ceremonials. It provided for all classes of
people good & bad. Nothing could be obtained through the
ceremonials except by the intercession of the priests. So if one
wanted anything, even if it was to have an enemy killed, all he
had to do was to pay the priest and the priest through these
ceremonials would procure the desired results. It was therefore
in the interests of the priests that the ceremonial portion of the
Vedas should be preserved. By it they had their living. They
consequently did all in their power to preserve that portion
intact. Many of these ceremonials were very complicated, and it
took years to perform some of them.
The knowledge portion came afterwards and was pro-
mulgated exclusively by kings. It was called the Knowledge of
Kings. The great kings had no use for the work portion with all
its frauds and superstitions and did all in their power to destroy
it. This knowledge consisted of a knowledge of God, the soul,
the universe, etc. These kings had no use for the ceremonials of
the priests, their magical works, etc. They pronounced it all
humbug; and when the priests came to them for gifts, they
questioned the priests about God, the soul, etc., and as the
priests could not answer such questions they were sent away.
The priests went back to their fathers to enquire about
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 the things the kings asked them, but could learn nothing from
them, so they came back again to the kings and became their
disciples. Very little of the ceremonials are followed today.
They have been mostly done away with, and only a few of the
more simple ones are followed today. Then in the Upanishads
there is the doctrine of Karma. Karma is the law of causation
applied to conduct. According to this doctrine, we must work
forever, and the only way to get rid of pain is to do good works
and thus to enjoy the good effects, and after living a life of good
works die and go to Heaven and live forever in happiness. Even
in Heaven we could not be free from Karma, only it would be
good Karma, not bad.
The philosophical portion denounces all work however good,
and all pleasure as loving and kissing wife, husband or children,
as useless. According to this doctrine all good works and
pleasures are nothing but foolishness and in their very nature
impermanent. "All this must come to an end sometimes, so end
it now; it is vain." So says the philosophical portion of the
Upanishads. It claims all the pain in the world is caused by
ignorance, therefore the cure is knowledge. This idea of one
being held down fast by past Karma, or work, is all nonsense.
No matter how dense one may be, or how bad, one ray of light
will dissipate it all. A bale of cotton, however large, will be
utterly destroyed by a spark. If a room has been dark for untold
ages a lamp will end it all. So with each soul, however
benighted he may be, he is not absolutely bound down by his
past Karma to work for ages to come. "One ray of Divine Light
will free him, reveal to him his true nature."
Well, the Gita harmonizes all these conflicting doctrines. As
to Krishna, whether or not He ever lived, I do not know. "A
great many stories are told of Him but I do not believe them." "I
doubt very much that He ever lived, and think it would be a
good thing if He never did. There would have been one less god
in the world."14
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 Frank Rhodehamel had evidently fully appreciated that last
scandalous observation, capturing it verbatim and marking it as such,
hearing behind it, perhaps, the lion-roar of Advaita to which Swamiji
had given voice again and again in California: "Stand on your own
feet! Help yourself!"
This talk on the Gita before the Vedanta Society at Dr. Logan's
office was in a sense introductory to the three formal lectures he was
to give at the doctor's home, of which we have two sets of notes-Ida
Ansell's and Frank Rhodehamel's. "I did not go home (from Camp
Taylor) until June 16th," Miss Ansell was to write to Mr. Allan in
1932, "so missed (Swamiji's) Gita talks, which I think were given at
Dr. Logan's."15 Happily, she was much mistaken: she had not only
attended the Gita talks (very likely all the campers had returned to
San Francisco for the purpose), but had taken excellent notes, which
she later discovered and which, together with Frank Rhodehamel's
notes which he took on May 26 and May 29, constitute a fairly
complete record of Swamiji's farewell talks in California.
These notes of his three lectures on the Gita are particularly
valuable, for while there are many references to the Gita scattered
through the Complete Works, one finds few talks devoted exclusively
to this subject. Swamiji no doubt held a number of Gita classes at the
Math in India, both before going to the West the second time and
after his return, but the only published record of such classes is of one
held in 1897 when the Math was still located at Alambazar, near
Calcutta. A summary of this class was entered into the Math Diary
and subsequently translated for publication in the Complete Works
(volume four) under the title "Thoughts on the Gita." In addition to
this, one finds in volume five of the Complete Works the translated
notes of a talk on the Gita entitled "Work without Motive," delivered
by Swamiji in Calcutta before a meeting of the Ramakrishna Mission
on March 20, 1898. If we add a portion of his lecture "The Sages of
India," delivered in Madras in 1897, to his published Indian
discourses on the
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Gita, then we find that the Complete Works contain three such
discourses, which, considering Swamiji's lifelong regard for this
book, is not a great many. Of his talks on the Gita in the West, Ida
Ansell's notes, the second transcripts of which have been published in
volume one of the Complete Works, and Frank Rhodehamel's
heretofore unpublished notes, together with his invaluable memories,
are the only records we possess.
As is well known, one of the great contributions Swamiji made to
the religious culture of the world was to give the pure truths of the
Upanishads to the people in a form that could be understood by
everyone. "If you look," he once said to Sister Nivedita, "you will
find that I have never quoted anything hut the Upanishads. And of the
Upanishads, it is only that one idea strength. The quintessence of
Vedas and Vedanta and all lies in that one word."16 But Swamiji did
not thereby slight the Gita; indeed he looked upon the Gita as the
best possible commentary on the Upanishads. The book was with him
always, not only in the sense that he carried it with him everywhere,
but in the less literal sense that its verses seem to have been ever on
the tip of his tongue, ready to highlight some teaching or observation
of his own.
As a prelude to Swamiji's classes at Dr. Logan's, it may be
worthwhile to discuss here his other discourses, as well as his
scattered comments, on the Gita, or at least to mention the primary
points he made in regard to this great book which he held in such
high esteem. I am aware, however, that such a discussion may not be
of interest to every reader, and thus it is only fair to say at once that
the following section can be skipped without doing violence to the
story of Swamiji's life in California.

In discussing Swamiji's talks and comments on the Gita, it will be

best, I believe, to use his class at the Alambazar Math as a sort of
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178
in the Complete Works, seems to have been Swamiji's first Gita class
at the Monastery. He gave it for the benefit of his young disciples,
and he began by raising a number of scholarly questions.
"To understand the Gita properly," he is quoted in the Math Diary
as having said, "several things are very important to know. First,
whether it formed a part of the Mahabharata, i.e., whether the
authorship attributed to Veda-Vyasa was true, or if it was merely
interpolated within the great epic; secondly, whether there was any
historical personality of the name of Krishna; thirdly, whether the
great war of Kurukshetra as mentioned in the Gita actually took
place; and fourthly, whether Arjuna and others were real historical
persons."17 Swamiji went on to explain that there were valid grounds
for asking such questions and for subjecting the historicity of the Gita
to the researches and probings of higher criticism. We need not
discuss those grounds for inquiry here, but need only give Swamiji's
conclusions as found both in his Math class and elsewhere.
As for the date of the Gita, he was definite in not placing it later
than that of the Mahabharata. "Many are of opinion," he said in his
talk before the Ramakrishna Mission, "that the Gita was not written
at the time of the Mahabharata. This is not correct. The special
teachings of the Gita are to be found in every part of the
Mahabhatata."18 In a somewhat more scholarly talk given in the late
summer of 1900 before the Paris Congress of Religions, Swamiji
again discussed the date of the Gita. "[He] said that the worship of Sri
Krishna is much older than that of Buddha," the report of his talk
reads, "and if the Gita be not of the same date as the Mahabharata, it
is surely much earlier, and by no means later. The style of language
of the Gita is the same as that of the Mahabharata. . . . Again, the
line of thought in the Gita is the same as in the Mahabharata; and
when the Gita notices the doctrines of all the religious sects of the
time, why does it not ever mention the name of Buddhism?"19
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 It is quite probable, Swamiji said at Alambazar Math in
connection with the historical position of the Gita, that it was the
scripture of a sect that later ceased to exist but that "had embodied its
high and noble ideas in this sacred book."20 Again, during the course
of his talk before the Ramakrishna Mission, he expressed the view
that the Gita represented the solution to, or synthesis of, two clashing
views of religion. "When the Gita was first preached," he said, "there
was then going on a great controversy between two sects. One party
considered the Vedic Yajnas and animal sacrifices and such Karmas
[rituals] to constitute the whole of religion. The other preached that
the killing of numberless horses and cattle cannot be called religion.
The people belonging to the latter party were mostly Sannyasins and
followers of Jnana. They believed that the giving up of all work and
the gaining of the knowledge of the Self was the only path to
Moksha. By the preaching of His great doctrine of work without
motive, the Author of the Gita set at rest the dispute of these two
antagonistic sects."21
In his "Reply to the Maharaja of Khetri," written in the spring of
1895, Swamiji gave a more political interpretation of the struggle
between the two clashing sects. "Ancient India," he wrote, "had for
centuries been the battlefield for the ambitious projects of two of her
foremost classes-the Brahmins and the Kshatriyas.
"On the one hand, the priesthood stood between the lawless social
tyranny of the princes over the masses, whom the Kshatriyas declared
to be their legal food. On the other hand, the Kshatriya power was the
one potent force which struggled with any success against the
spiritual tyranny of the priesthood and the ever-increasing chain of
ceremonials, which they were forging to bind down the people with.
"The tug of war began in the earliest periods of the history of our
race, and throughout the Shrutis it can be distinctly traced. A
momentary lull came when Sri Krishna, leading the faction of
Kshatriya power and of Jnana, showed the way to
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reconciliation. The result was the teachings of the Gita-the essence of
philosophy, of liberality, of religion. . . . "22

As for the historicity of Sri Krishna, Swamiji looked upon much

of the mythology that centered around him as simply that-mythology.
"It is human nature to build round the real character of a great man all
sorts of imaginary superhuman attributes," he said at Alambazar
Math. "As regards Krishna . the same must have happened, but it
seems quite probable that he was a king. Quite probable I say,
because it was chiefly the kings who exerted themselves most in the
preaching of Brahma Jnana.‖23
In his lecture "The Sages of India" Swamiji declared that there
must indeed have lived a supremely great soul known by the name of
Krishna-not alone because of the teachings of the Gita, but also
because of that "great landmark in the history of religions"-the
teaching of Divine Love contained in the Bhagavatam, the story of
the Cowherd of Vrindavan. "Taking the life of any other sage or
prophet," Swamiji said, "we find that that prophet is only the
evolution of what had gone before him, we find that that prophet is
only preaching the ideas that had been scattered about his own
country even in his own times. Great doubts may exist even as to
whether that prophet existed or not. But here, I challenge any one to
show whether these things, these ideals-work for work's sake, love
for love's sake, duty For duty's sake, were not original ideas with
Krishna, and as such, there must have been someone with whom
these ideas originated. They could not have been borrowed from
anybody else. They were not floating about in the atmosphere when
Krishna was born. But the Lord Krishna was the first preacher of this;
his disciple Vyasa took it up and preached it unto mankind."24
In regard to the Kurukshetra War, Swamiji stated at Alambazar
Math that there was no doubt that a war was fought between the
Kurus and the Panchalas [Pandavas]. But did Sri Krishna actually
deliver the whole of the Gita when the two great armies were facing
each other, poised to fight? And if
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this improbable event did indeed take place, "was any shorthand
writer present there to note down every word spoken between
Krishna and Arjuna in the din and turmoil of the battlefield?" There
was room here for doubt. "According to some," Swamiji said, "this
Kurukshetra War is only an allegory. When we sum up its esoteric
significance, it means the war which is constantly going on within
man between the tendencies of good and evil."25
On other occasions, also, Swamiji mentioned that the Gita could
be taken as allegorical. Having come to class one morning at
Thousand Island Park with a Gita in his hand, he thus interpreted the
first discourse: "Krishna, the `Lord of souls,' talks to Arjuna, or
Gudakesha, `Lord of sleep' (he who has conquered sleep). The `field
of virtue' (the battle-field) is this world; the five brothers
(representing righteousness) fight the hundred other brothers (all that
we love and have to contend against); the most heroic brother, Arjuna
(the awakened soul), is the general. We have to fight all sense-
delights, the things to which we are most attached, to kill them. We
have to stand alone; we are Brahman, all other ideas must be merged
in this one."26
Yet Swamiji did not labor this allegorical interpretation of the
Gita. To him the setting of the Kurukshetra War was more
representative than allegorical. The battle Arjuna must fight
represents the intense external activity that life demands from the
average man. That each must perform the action allotted to him
without flinching, with full vigor, and, above all, with perfect inner
serenity was, to Swamiji's mind, the Gita's essential message, and no
place could have been more appropriate than the battlefield for the
deliverance of such a teaching. Historical or not, the setting served to
heighten the central theme and was, in this respect, a consummate
stroke of art. Indeed, when through Swamiji's eyes one sees the
divine scene taking place, the setting becomes a teaching in itself.
In a conversation in Calcutta with a Hindu gentleman, Swamiji
described his own conception of that immortal event,
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himself posing as the divine charioteer teaching the path of dharma
to Arjuna. "The central idea of the Gita should radiate from His
whole form," he said. " . . . Look here, thus does lie hold the bridle of
the horses-so tight that they are brought to their haunches, with their
forelegs fighting the air and their mouths gaping. This will show a
tremendous play of action in the figure of Sri Krishna. His friend, the
world-renowned hero, casting aside his bow and arrows, has sunk
down like a coward on the chariot, in the midst of the two armies.
And Sri Krishna, whip in one hand and tightening the reins with the
other, has turned himself towards Arjuna, with his childlike face
beaming with unworldly love and sympathy, and a calm and serene
look-and is delivering the message of the Gita to his beloved
comrade. Now, tell me," Swamiji asked his friend, "what idea this
picture of the Preacher of the Gita conveys, to you?"
"Activity combined with firmness and serenity," the friend
replied.
"Aye," Swamiji exclaimed, "that's it!-Intense action in the whole
body, and withal a face expressing the profound calmness and
serenity of the blue sky! This is the central idea of the Gita -to be
calm and steadfast in all circumstances, with one's body, mind, and
soul centered at His hallowed Feet!"27
What need that this scene be historical? As for Arjuna and other
heroes of the Mahabharata, Swamiji pointed out at Alambazar Math
the scholarly grounds for doubting that such persons had actually
lived. Thus, step by step and with his characteristic regard for truth,
he blasted some irreparable holes in the historical foundations of the
Gita. But having done so, he at once reminded his young disciples
that "there is no connection between these historical researches and
our real aim [of study], which is the knowledge that leads to the
acquirement of Dharma. . . . Even if the historicity of the whole thing
is proved to be absolutely false today, it will not in the least be any
loss to us."
"Now," Swamiji continued at the Math, "it is for us to see what
there is in the Gita." Here, with the help of one of those
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beautiful, clarifying analogies .that seem to have been always at his
service, he evaluated the Gita in relation to the Upanishads. "If we
study the Upanishads," he said, "we notice, in wandering through the
mazes of many irrelevant subjects, the sudden introduction of the
discussion of a great truth, just as in the midst of a huge wilderness a
traveller unexpectedly comes across here and there an exquisitely
beautiful rose, with its leaves, thorns, roots, all entangled. [In the
Gita, on the other hand, one finds] these truths beautifully arranged . .
. in their proper places-like a fine garland or a bouquet of the choicest
flowers."28
In London in 1896 Swamiji had expressed somewhat the same
idea when he compared the Gita to the older Upanishads. In the
Chhandogya Upanishad, for instance, "one has to wade sometimes
through quite a mass of unnecessary things to get at the essential
doctrines"; whereas in the Gita, which he said could be looked upon
as the last of the Upanishads, one finds "the beautiful flowers of
spiritual truths"29 collected and brought into one place. For this very
reason, however, one cannot study in the Gita, as one can in the very
old Upanishads, the development of spiritual ideas, nor can one trace
those ideas to their source.
But while the Gita may not serve as an archive of India's
millennia of spiritual thought, it has served as the greatest
commentary on that thought. Again and again throughout the
Complete Works one finds Swamiji praising the Gita as "the best
authority on Vedanta," "the best commentary we have on the Vedanta
philosophy;" or again, the best "commentary on the Vedas [that] has
been written or can be written." He also spoke of the Gita as "the
divine commentary of the Vedanta," meaning that it was literally of
divine origin. And in Madras in 1897 he said unequivocally, "The
only commentary, the authoritative commentary on the Vedas, has
been made once and for all by Him who inspired the Vedas by
Krishna in the Gita."30
Swamiji recommended the study of the Gita to all: house-
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holder or monk, Indian or Westerner. "Please read the Gita every day
to the best of your opportunity,"31 he wrote in May of 1893 to Srimati
Indumati Mitra, who, together with her husband, Haripada Mitra, had
become his disciple in Belgaum in what was then the province of
Bombay. We know that at Thousand Island Park he taught from the
Gita, surely advising his students to read it. And again, in Pasadena
during the course of his lecture on the Mahabharata, he advised those
in his audience who had not already read the Gita to do so. "If you
only knew how much it has influenced your own country even!" he
exclaimed. "If you want to know the source of Emeison's inspiration,
it is this book, the Gita. He went to see Carlyle, and Carlyle made
him a present of the Gita; and that little book is responsible for the
Concord movement. All the broad movements in America, in one
way or other, are indebted to the Concord party."32 Swamiji must also
have advised his San Francisco audiences to study the Gita, and
perhaps it was because of his specific instructions that the newborn
Vedanta Society read and discussed this work at its weekly meetings.
At the Math Swamiji insisted upon the study of the scriptures,
among them the Gita. "Sir," his disciple Chakravarty once said (in
November of 1898), "talking with you and listening to your
realisations, I feel no necessity for the study of scriptures." "No!"
Swamiji exploded. "Scriptures have to be studied also. For the
attainment of Jnana, study of scriptures is essential. I shall soon open
classes in the Math for them. The Vedas, Upanishads, the Gita and
Bhagavata should be studied in the classes, and I shall teach the
Panini Ashtadhyayi (Sanskrit grammar)."33
"Now," said Swamiji at Alambazar, having discussed the
historicity of the Gita and its place among Hindu scriptures, "let us
see some of the main points discussed in the Gita. Wherein lies the
originality of the Gita which distinguishes it from all preceding
scriptures? It is this: Though before its advent, Yoga, Jnana, Bhakti,
etc. had each its strong adherents, they all quarrelled among
themselves, each claiming superiority
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for his own chosen path; no one ever tried to seek for reconciliation
among these different paths. It was the author of the Gita who for the
first time tried to harmonise these. He took the best from what all the
sects then existing had to offer and threaded them in the Gita."34
Swamiji elaborated elsewhere upon the universality of the Gita, in
which were reconciled the various clashing sects, all of which
purported to be based upon the Upanishads. "The essence of the
Srutis, or of the Upanishads, is hard to be understood, seeing that
here are so many commentators, each one trying to interpret in his
own way," he said in "The Sages of India." "Then the Lord Himself
comes, He who is the inspirer of the Srutis, to show us the meaning
of them, as the preacher of the Gita, and today India wants nothing
better, the world wants nothing better than that method of inter-
pretation."
In this particular passage, Swamiji went on to say that the modern
commentator twists and tortures Upanishadic texts "to bring them all
to a meaning of his own"-be it monistic, qualified monistic, or
dualistic. "But you find in the Gita, there is no attempt at torturing
any one of them. They are all right, says the Lord: for slowly and
gradually the human soul rises up and up, step after step, from the
gross to the fine, from the fine to the finer, until it reaches the
Absolute, the goal. That is what is in the Gita. Even the Karma
Kanda [the ritualistic portion of the Vedas] is taken up, and it is
shown that although it cannot give salvation direct, but only
indirectly, yet that is also valid; images are valid indirectly;
ceremonies, forms, everything is valid-only with one condition,
purity of the heart. . . . "35
Nor did Sri Krishna bar the lower castes from a path to liberation.
"In the Gita," Swamiji wrote in 1894 to his orthodox Madrasi disciple
"Kidi," "the way is laid open to all men and women, to all caste and
colour, but Vyasa tries to put meanings upon the Vedas to cheat the
poor Shudras. Is God a nervous fool like you," he continued, "that the
flow of His river of
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mercy would be dammed up by a piece of meat? If such be He, His
value is not a pie!"36
In his catholicity and in his many-sidedness Sri Krishna, in
Swamiji's opinion, stood greater than all other Incarnations of the
past. "As a character Buddha was the greatest the world has ever
seen; next to him Christ," he said at Thousand Island Park. "But the
teachings of Krishna as taught by the Gita are the grandest the world
has ever known. He who wrote that wonderful poem was one of those
rare souls whose lives send a wave of regeneration through the world.
The human race will never again see such a brain as his who wrote
the Gita."37 It is not strange, he said in "The Sages of India," that Sri
Krishna was called in the Bhagavatam not only an Incarnation of the
Lord, but the Lord Himself. "He was the most wonderful Sannyasin,
and the most wonderful householder in one; he had the most
wonderful amount of Rajas, power, and was at the same time living
in the midst of the most wonderful renunciation. . . . Krishna, the
preacher of the Gita, was all his life the embodiment of that Song
Celestial."38
True, Lord Buddha, in his vastness of heart, also opened the doors
of religion to all-and this with even greater effect. "As disciple of
himself, as it were, the same Krishna came to show how to make his
theories practical," Swamiji said in the same Madras lecture. "There
comes once again the same voice that in the Gita preached, `Even the
least bit done of this religion saves from great fear.' `Women, or
Vaishyas, or even Shudras, all reach the highest goal.' . . . As it were
to give a living example of this preaching, as it were to make at least
one part of it practical, the preacher himself came in another form,
and this was Shakyamuni [Buddha], the preacher to the poor and the
miserable, he who rejected even the language of the gods to speak in
the language of the people, so that he might reach the hearts of the
people; he who gave up a throne to live with beggars, and the poor,
and the downcast, he who pressed the Pariah to his breast like a
second Rama."39
Yet, as Swamiji often pointed out, Buddha's work had one
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great defect for which India was still suffering. "Buddha made the
fatal mistake," he once said, "of thinking that the whole world could
be lifted to the height of the Upanishads. And self interest spoiled all.
Krishna was wiser, because He was more politic."40 "The good for
him who desires Moksha [Liberation] is one," he wrote in "The East
and the West," "and the good for him who wants Dharma [here the
word dharma is used to mean that which makes man seek for
happiness in this world or the next] is another. This is the great truth
which the Lord Sri Krishna, the revealer of the Gita, has tried therein
to explain."41 "The Buddhist command [`Realise all this as illusion'],"
he said at another time, "could only be carried out through
monasticism; the Hindu [`Realise that within the illusion is the Real']
might be fulfilled through any state of life." 42
"Why this attempt to compel the whole world to follow the same
path to Moksha [Liberation] ?" he wrote in regard to Buddhism in
"The East and the West." " `Can beauty be manufactured by rubbing
and scrubbing? Can anybody's love be won by threat or force?' What
does Buddha or Christ prescribe for the man who neither wants
Moksha nor is fit to receive it? Nothing! Either you must have
Moksha or you are doomed to destruction-these are the only two
ways held forth by them, and there is no middle course. You are tied
hand and foot in the matter of trying for anything other than Moksha.
There is no way shown how you may enjoy the world a little for a
time; not only all openings to that are hermetically sealed to you, but,
in addition, there are obstructions put at every step. . . . Buddha
ruined us, and so did Christ ruin Greece and Rome!"43
(One here anticipates a class Swamiji was to give on the Gita in
New York in the summer of 1900, which was attended by Sister
Nivedita. "There was an implication throughout the talk," she wrote,
"that Christ and Buddha were inferior to Krishna-in the grasp of
problems-inasmuch as they preached the highest ethics as a world-
path, whereas Krishna saw the
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right of the whole, in all its parts-to its own differing ideals. But
perhaps no one not familiar with his thought would have realized that
this lay behind his exclamation, `The Sermon on the Mount has only
become another bondage for the soul of man!' ") 44
Yet the Western world was not so greatly hampered by the
teaching of a path too idealistic and otherworldly for the generality of
people as was India, for as Swamiji pointed out in "The East and the
West," "the Europeans never took the words of Jesus Christ
seriously." "Always of active habits," he wrote, "being possessed of a
tremendous Rajasika nature, they are gathering with great enterprise
and youthful ardour the comforts and luxuries of the different
countries of the world, and enjoying them to their hearts' content."
Conversely the, Hindus, to their long misery, had never taken the
words of Sri Krishna seriously: "We are sitting in a corner, with our
bag and baggage, pondering on death day and night, and singing,
`Very tremulous and unsteady is the water on the lotus-leaf; so is the
life of man frail and transient.' . . . Who are following the teachings of
the Gita?-the Europeans! And who are acting according to the will of
Jesus Christ?-the descendants of Sri Krishna!45
Even as India had not taken seriously the path of karma yoga as
taught by Sri Krishna, neither had she grasped his attempted
reconciliation of the various sects. Hindu commentators tortured the
texts of the Gita, even as they did those of the Upanishads, cramming
them into the philosophical pigeonholes of their choice. The task of
reconciliation remained for Sri Ramakrishna and for Swamiji
himself.
"Where Sri Krishna failed to show a complete reconciliation
(Samanvaya) among these warring sects," Swamiji said at the
Alambazar Math, "it was fully accomplished by Ramakrishna
Paramahamsa in this nineteenth century."46 "The time was ripe," he
declared in "The Sages of India," "for one to be born who in one
body would have the brilliant intellect of Shankara and the
wonderfully expansive, infinite heart of
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Chaitanya; one who would see in every sect the same spirit working,
the same God; one who would see God in every being, one whose
heart would weep for the poor, for the weak, for the outcast, for the
downtrodden, for every one in this world, inside India or outside
India; and at the same time whose grand brilliant intellect would
conceive of such noble thoughts as would harmonise all conflicting
sects, not only in India but outside of India, and bring a marvellous
harmony, the universal religion of head and heart into existence. Such
a man was born," Swamiji continued, "and I had the good fortune to
sit at his feet for years."47
It was for Swamiji not only to spread Sri Ramakrishna's message
of harmony to the world at large but to give it philosophical form.
"Hitherto," Sister Nivedita pointed out in her book The Master As I
Saw Him, "the three philosophic systems . . . had been regarded as
offering to the soul three different ideals of liberation. No attempt had
ever before been made to reconcile these schools. On reaching
Madras, however, in 1897, Vivekananda boldly claimed, that even
the utmost realisations of Dualism and Modified Unism [Qualified
Monism], were but stages on the way to Unism [Monism] itself; and
the final bliss, for all alike, was the mergence in One without a
second. It is said," Sister Nivedita continued "that at one of his
midday, question-classes [at Madras], a member of his audience
asked him why, if this was the truth, it had never before been men-
tioned by any of the Masters. . . . The great gathering was startled, on
this occasion, to hear the reply [given in both English and Sanskrit]:
`-Because I was born for this and it was left for me to do.‖‖ 48
Again, in Calcutta Swamiji said during the course of his lecture
"The Vedanta in All Its Phases": "The time requires that a better
interpretation should be given to this underlying harmony of the
Upanishadic texts, whether they are dualistic, or non-dualistic, quasi-
dualistic, or so forth. That has to be shown before the world at large;
and this work is required as much-in India as outside of India; and I,
through the grace of
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God, had the great good fortune to sit at the feet of one whose whole
life was such an interpretation, whose life, a thousandfold more than
whose teaching, was a living commentary on the texts of the
Upanishads, was in fact the spirit of the Upanishads living in a
human form. Perhaps I have got a little of that harmony; I do not
know whether I shall be able to express it or not. But this is my
attempt, my mission in life, to show that the Vedantic schools are not
contradictory, that they all necessitate each other, all fulfil each other,
and one, as it were, is the stepping-stone to the others, until the goal,
the Advaita, the Tat Tvam Asi, is reached."49
It was for Swamiji also to revive and restate Sri Krishna's,
teaching of karma yoga, the path of action in which work was
combined with and illumined by Advaita Vedanta. In a passage that
has become famous, he spoke in one breath of the Upanishads, Sri
Krishna's teaching, and his own message. "Let me tell you," he cried
to the people of Madras in 1897, "strength, strength is what we want.
And the first step in getting strength is to uphold the Upanishads and
believe - I am the Soul.' . . .
". . . But the Upanishads," he continued, "were in the hands of the
Sannyasin; he went into the forest! . . . [In the Gita these ideas are
there] for everyone in every occupation of life. These conceptions of
the Vedanta must come out, must remain not only in the forest, not
only in the cave, but they must come out to work at the Bar and the
Bench, in the Pulpit, and in the cottage of the poor man, with the
fishermen that are catching fish, and with the students that are
studying. They call to every man, woman and child whatever be their
occupation, wherever they may be. . . . Even the least thing well done
brings marvellous results; therefore let every one do what little he
can. If the fisherman thinks that he is the Spirit, he will be a better
fisherman; if the student thinks he is the Spirit, he will be a better
student. If the lawyer thinks that he is the Spirit, he will be a better
lawyer. . . ."50
Thus, without asking anyone to renounce his hereditary or
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chosen way of life, Swamiji preached the divinity of the Self to all.
He did ask, however, that everyone make his everyday activity a
ladder to the highest goal.
How? What was the way for the fisherman, say, to avoid
entangling himself in his own net of action? "My son," Swamiji once
said to his disciple Chakravarty, "such are the intricacies of work,
that even great' saints are caught in them and become attached.
Therefore work has to be done without any desire for results. This is
the teaching of the Gita."51
While the reconciliation of various paths and philosophies was the
first special characteristic of the Gita that Swamiji discussed during
the course of his class at the Alambazar Math, work without desire or
attachment was the second. Nonattachment was also, of course, the
primary subject of his discourse "Work without Motive" before the
Ramakrishna Mission.
He found it necessary to uproot many false conceptions of the
doctrine of nonattachment. "People nowadays understand what is
meant by [Nishkama Karma, or work without desire or attachment] in
various ways," he said at the Alambazar Math. "Some say what is
implied by being unattached is to become purposeless. If that were its
real meaning, then heartless brutes and the walls would be the best
exponents of the performance of Nishkama. Karma. . . . No! The true
Nishkama Karmi is neither to be like a brute, nor to be inert, nor
heartless. He is not Tamasika but of pure Sattva. His heart is so full
of love and sympathy that he can embrace the whole world with his
love."52
Again, at the meeting of the Ramakrishna Mission, Swamiji said,
"Many understand [work without motive] in the sense that one is to
work in such a way that neither pleasure nor pain touches his mind. If
this be its real meaning, then the animals might be said to work
without motive. Some animals devour their own offspring, and they
do not feel any pangs at all in doing so. . . .
"[The] Gita teaches Karma-Yoga," Swamiji continued. "We
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should work through Yoga (concentration). In such concentration in
action, there is no consciousness of the lower ego present. . . . The
Western people do not understand this. They say that if there be no
consciousness of ego, if this ego is gone, how then can a man work?
But when one works with concentration, losing all consciousness of
oneself, the work that is done will be infinitely better; and this
everyone may have experienced in his own life. [The artist, for
instance, loses himself in his art.] . . . The Gita teaches that all works
should be done thus. . . . Those who work without any consciousness
of their lower ego are not affected with evil, for they work for the
good of the world. To work without motive, to work unattached,
brings the highest bliss and freedom. This secret of Karma-Yoga is
taught by the Lord Sri Krishna in the Gita. "53
Work without motive was anything but work in cold blood. It is
interesting in this connection to notice again (as we noticed in the
chapter on Los Angeles) that during this second visit to the West
Swamiji laid less stress on nonattachment, a word open to
misinterpretation, than on the power of attachment combined with the
power of detachment. Writing of the period following his return to
India in 1897, Sister Nivedita commented in The Master As I Saw
Him that Swamiji had once "told some of us that he had now realised
that the power to attach oneself was quite as important as that of
detachment."54 One cannot, of course, suppose from this that the
realization had not been complete with Swamiji years before, but
only that, for one reason or another, it had come to the forefront of
his mind. The ability to love, to feel deeply and intensely, was
always, in his view, one of the criteria of manliness and of successful
service. Nor did devotion to the individual stand in contradiction to
his teaching of monism. "You must be able to sympathise fully with
each particular," he had said at Thousand Island Park, "then at once
to jump back to the highest monism. After having perfected yourself,
you limit yourself voluntarily. Take the whole power into each
action.
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Be able to become a dualist for the time being and forget Advaita, yet
be able to take it up again at will."55
We do not find, however, that Swamiji stressed the perfect
balance between attachment and detachment as pointedly during his
first visit to the West-in his classes on Karma Yoga, for instance-as
he did during his second visit. There had been in the interim, perhaps,
something to heighten in his mind the importance of this particular
teaching to the modern world. Thus we found him in Los Angeles
emphasizing the necessity for total involvement in service combined
with complete serenity. "That soul has not been awakened that never
feels weakness, never feels misery," he said in his Los Angeles
lecture "Work and Its Secret." "That is a callous state. We do not
want that. At the same time, we not only want this mighty power of
love, this mighty power of attachment, the power of throwing our
whole soul upon a single object, losing ourselves and letting
ourselves be annihilated, as it were, For other souls -which is the
power of the gods-but we want to be higher even than the gods. The
perfect man can put his whole soul upon that one point of love, yet he
is unattached."56 In a small way-according to his capacity-each man
must be like the World Teacher himself: he must be both intensely
human and immovably divine.
In San Francisco Swamiji again pointed to the need for attachment
as well as for detachment and stressed the element of power
necessary to both. "It is the power of concentration and attachment as
well as the power of detachment that we must develop," he said in his
lecture on "The Science of Breathing." "If the man is equally
powerful in both-that man has attained manhood."57 And in a letter
from San Francisco dated March 28, he wrote, "Both attachment and
detachment perfectly developed make a man great and happy." 58
Swamiji's emphasis on attachment, in the sense of dedication, is
implicit in his interpretation of the Gita as a call to active, forthright
resistance of evil. He saw nothing in the sacred scriptures of his
motherland to sanction passive resistance as
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a way of life for the householder or as a policy of action for a nation.
Both before and since Swamiji's time interpreters of the Gita,
including Mahatma Gandhi, have explained away Sri Krishna's
exhortation to Arjuna as being in the nature of an allegory. While
Swamiji did not, as we have seen, repudiate the allegorical
interpretation, he did not thereby discard the literal interpretation, for
therein he saw a message of greater import. During his class talk at
the Alambazar Math, he read the first three verses from the second
chapter of the Gita and devoted the remainder of his talk to the third
of these verses: "Yield not to unmanliness, O son of Pritha! Ill doth it
become thee. Cast off this mean faint-heartedness and arise, O
scorcher of thine enemies!"59
Why, Swamiji asked, is Sri Krishna goading Arjuna to fight?
Because, he replied, Arjuna's disinclination to fight did not arise out
of the overwhelming predominance of pure sattva guna, but out of
tamas. "It was all Tamas that brought on this unwillingness. . . .
Arjuna was afraid, he was overwhelmed with pity. That he had the
instinct and inclination to fight is proved by the simple fact that he
came to the battlefield with no other purpose than that. Frequently in
our lives also such things are seen to happen. Many people think they
are Sattvika by nature, but they are really nothing but Tamasika. . . .
The Tamoguna loves very much to array itself in the garb of the
Sattva. Here, in Arjuna, the mighty warrior, it has come under the
guise of Daya (pity)."60
In his motherland, Swamiji spoke again and again of the
predominance of tamas (or inertia) that had settled over the country
like a miasmal fog. He often spoke tauntingly to his countrymen,
even as Sri Krishna had spoken to Arjuna, in order to stir up a blaze
of activity in a basically heroic heart. "Mark you," he wrote in "The
East and the West," "those things which you see in pusillanimous,
effeminate folk who speak in a nasal tone chewing every syllable,
whose voice is as thin as of one who has been starving for a week,
who are like a tattered wet rag, who never protest or are moved even
if
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kicked by anybody-those are the signs of the lowest Tamas, those are
the signs of death, not of Sattva-all corruption and stench. It is
because Arjuna was going to fall into the ranks of these men that the
Lord is explaining matters to him so elaborately in the Gita. . . .
Coming under the influence of the Jains, Buddhists, and others, we
have joined the lines of those Tamasika people. During these last
thousand years, the whole country is filling the air with the name of
the Lord and is sending its prayers to Him; and the Lord is never
lending His ears to them. And why should He? When even man never
hears the cries of the fool, do you think God will? Now the only way
out is to listen to the words of the Lord in the Gita, `Yield not to
unmanliness O Partha! . . . ' "61
There was a lesson here for Westerners, who were prone to
mouth the highest of ideals, as well as for Indians. "In reading the
Bhagavad Gita," Swamiji said in 1896 in a New York class on karma
yoga, "many of you in Western countries may have felt astonished at
the second chapter, wherein Sri Krishna calls Arjuna a hypocrite and
a coward because of his refusal to fight or offer resistance on account
of his adversaries being his friends and relatives, making the plea that
non-resistance was the highest ideal of love. This is a great lesson for
us all to learn, that in all matters the two extremes are alike. The
extreme positive and the extreme negative are always similar. When
the vibrations of light are too slow, we do not see them, nor do we
see them when they are too rapid. So with sound, when very low in
pitch, we do not hear it; when very high, we do not hear it either. Of
like nature is the difference between resistance and non-resistance.
One man does not resist because he is weak, lazy, and cannot, not
because he will not; the other man knows that he can strike an
irresistible blow if he likes; yet he not only does not strike, but
blesses his enemies. The one who from weakness resists not commits
a sin, and as such cannot receive any benefit from the non-resistance;
while the other would commit a sin by offering resistance. . . . So we
must always be careful about what we really mean when
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we speak of this non-resistance and ideal love.. . .
"The Karma Yogi," Swamiji continued, "is the man who
understands that the highest ideal is non-resistance, and who also
knows that this non-resistance is the highest manifestation of power
in actual possession, and also what is called the resisting of evil is
but a step on the way towards the manifestation of this highest power,
namely non-resistance. Before reaching this highest ideal, man's duty
is to resist evil; let him work, let him fight, let him strike straight
from the shoulder. Then only, when he has gained the power to resist,
will non-resistance be a virtue."62
(In a Gita class in New York, only a few words of which have
come down to us through a letter of Sister Nivedita's, Swamiji was to
speak in 1900 even more strongly and more graphically on the
difference between resistance and non-resistance. "Nonresistance " he
said, "is not for the man who thinks the replacing ,of the maggot in
the wound by the leprous saint with, `Eat, brother!' disgusting and
horrible. Non-resistance is practised by a mother's love towards an
angry child. It is a travesty in the mouth of a coward or in the face of
a lion.")63
But whence does one derive the strength, first, to detect, and
second, to overcome the cowardice that is disguised as love and
rationalized as the highest idealism? In Sri Krishna's answer to this,
Swamiji found the chief glory of the Gita. "In order to remove this
delusion which had overtaken Arjuna, what did the Bhagavan say?"
he asked at the Alambazar Math, and continued with his own as well
as Sri Krishna's answer: "As I always preach that you should not
decry a man by calling him a sinner but that you should draw his
attention to the omnipotent power that is in him, in the same way
does the Bhagavan speak to Arjuna. `It doth not befit thee!' `Thou art
Atman imperishable, beyond all evil. Having forgotten thy real
nature, thou hast, by thinking thyself a sinner, as one afflicted with
bodily evils and mental grief, thou hast made thyself so-this doth not
befit thee!'-so says the Bhagavan; `Yield not to unmanliness, O son of
Pritha.' " #

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 "If you, my sons, can proclaim this message to the world,"
Swamiji said to the young monks gathered around him at the Math,
"then all this disease, grief, sin, and sorrow will vanish from off the
face of the earth in three days. All these ideas of weakness will be
nowhere. Now it is everywhere-this current of the vibration of fear.
Reverse the current; bring in the opposite vibration, and behold the
magic transformation! . . . Proclaim to the whole world with trumpet
voice, `There is no sin in thee, there is no misery in thee; thou art the
reservoir of omnipotent power. Arise, awake, and manifest the
Divinity within!' "64
In the call to the invincible glory of the Atman lay, to Swamiji's
mind, the essential teaching of the Gita. "If one reads this one
Shloka-`Yield not to unmanliness, O son of Pritha' etc. one gets all
the merits of reading the entire Gita," he said at the conclusion of his
class at the Math; "for in this one Shloka lies imbedded the whole
Message of the Gita."65 Fundamentally, it was a teaching of jnana
yoga. Although Swamiji found bhakti, or devotion, highly developed
in the Gita (as it was not in the Upanishads), he did not consider, as
have some commentators, that Sri Krishna stressed this path. "Sri
Krishna spoke the Gita, establishing Himself in the Atman," he said
to his disciple Chakravarty. "Those passages of the Gita where
references to the word `I' occur, invariably indicate the Atman: `Take
refuge in Me alone' means, `Be established in the Atman.' This
knowledge of the Atman is the highest aim of the Gita. The
references to Yoga, etc. are but incidental to this realisation of the
Atman. Those who have not this knowledge of the Atman are
`suicides.' `They kill themselves by the clinging to the unreal'; they
lose their life in the noose of sense-pleasures. . . . The human soul,
represented by Arjuna, was touched with fear. Therefore Bhagavan
Sri Krishna, established in the Atman, spoke to him the teachings of
the Gita. Still his fear would not leave him. Later, when Arjuna saw
the Universal Form of the Lord, and became established. in the
Atman, then with all bondages of Karma burnt .by the fire of
knowledge, he fought the battle."66 #

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 On other occasions also, Swamiji declared that the essential
teaching of the Gita was Advaita Vedanta. "Jnana is taught very
clearly by Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita," he said in 1895 during a
discourse in New York. " . . . Through chapter after chapter, Krishna
teaches the higher truths of philosophy and religion to Arjuna. It is
these teachings which make this poem so wonderful; practically the
whole of the Vedanta philosophy is included in them. The Vedas
teach that the soul is infinite and in no way affected by the death of
the body."67 Again, during a lecture in south India he cried to his
countrymen, "Teach yourselves, teach every one his real nature, call
upon the sleeping soul and see how it awakes. . . . Ay, if there is
anything in the Gita that I like, it is these two verses, coming out
strong as the very gist, the very essence, of Krishna's teaching-`He
who sees the Supreme Lord dwelling alike in all beings, the
Imperishable in things that perish, he sees indeed. For seeing the
Lord as the same, everywhere present, he does not destroy the Self by
the self, and thus he goes to the highest goal.' "68
It was always the Sri Krishna "roaring the Gita out with the voice
of a lion" that Swamiji taught to the modern world, never the flute-
playing Sri Krishna of Vrindavan. Not that he found the Krishna of
the Gita greater than the Krishna of the Bhagavatam. On the
contrary, the madness of the love of the Gopis is "the very essence of
the Krishna Incarnation," he said in "The Sages of India." "Even the
Gita, the great philosophy itself, does not compare with that madness,
for in the Gita the disciple is taught slowly how to walk towards the
goal, but here is the madness of enjoyment, the drunkenness of love,
where disciples and teachers and teachings and books and all these
things have become one; even the ideas of fear, and God, and heaven-
everything has been thrown away. What remains is the madness of
love. . . . That was the great Krishna!"69
But this divine madness was not for the generality of people; nor
was it for the modern age in which each man is to work for all and
none is to be left behind in darkness. "Only contemplat-
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ing the Krishna of Vrindaban with His flute won't do nowadays,"
Swamiji said to Chakravarty in 1897, "-that will not bring salvation to
men. Now is needed the worship of Sri Krishna uttering forth the
lion-roar of the Gita, of Rama with His bow and arrows, of Mahavira,
of Mother Kali. Then only will the people grow strong by going to
work with great energy and will."70
Even as the path of Divine Love was not for the modern man,
neither was the path of jnana yoga as it was generally taught. "The
tidal wave of Western civilization is now rushing over the length and
breadth of the country," Swamiji said at another time to Chakravarty.
"It won't do now simply to sit in meditation on mountain tops without
realising in the least its usefulness. Now is wanted-as said in the Gita
by the Lord -intense Karma-Yoga, with unbounded courage and
indomitable strength in the heart. Then only will the people of the
country be roused, otherwise they will continue to be as much in the
dark as you are."71
(Chakravarty, it must be said, was at times as confused by
Swamiji's teachings as was Arjuna by those of Sri Krishna, "Sir," he
said at one point in his conversation with Swamiji, "now you are
speaking of Jnana; but sometimes you proclaim the superiority of
Bhakti, sometimes of Karma, and sometimes of Yoga. This confuses
our understanding."
"Well," Swamiji replied, "the truth is this, the knowledge of
Brahman is the ultimate goal-the highest destiny of man. But man
cannot remain absorbed in Brahman all the time. When he comes out
of It he must have something to engage himself. At that time he
should do such work as will contribute to the real well-being of
people. Therefore do I urge you in the service of Jivas in a spirit of
oneness."72 Indeed, the karma yoga Swamiji taught and which he
found in the Gita was rooted in jnana yoga, or in Advaita Vedanta; it
was essentially the "worship of the Spirit by the Spirit," and this in
the marketplaces of the world.)
To Swamiji the Gita was as much a teaching for the West
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as for India, not only because of its doctrine of the Self-"The restless
Western atheist or agnostic finds in the Gita or in the Dhammapada
the only place where his soul can anchor "73, he said in his 1894
"Reply to the Madras Address"-but also because of its spiritualization
of activity. If India needed to move from tamas to rajas, the Western
world needed to move from rajas to sattva. "Do you expect in view of
the Rajas in the Westerners that they will gradually become
sattvika?" Chakravarty asked Swamiji somewhat dubiously.
"Certainly," Swamiji replied. "Possessed of a plenitude of Rajas, they
have now reached the culmination of Bhoga, or enjoyment. Do you
think that it is not they but you," he added scathingly, "who are going
to achieve Yoga-you who hang about for the sake of your bellies?"74
One might be inclined to say that Swamiji was premature in
thinking that the Western people had in 1897 reached a culmination
of enjoyment. But one must remember that in his vast mind, from
which flowed teachings profound and diverse enough to last all of
humanity for the next fifteen hundred years (as he himself was heard
to say), a century swung by like a decade, and his "now" could mean,
and often meant, "this epoch." By the close of the nineteenth century
the seeds of the modern age had been sown-including those sown by
Swamiji himself-and as Prophets always do, he read the times in their
latent form; he observed and taught on the causal plane from which
history slowly emerges and unfolds itself bit by bit.
Whether or not Western man was on the whole ready in 1900 to
turn from sense-enjoyment to renunciation, it was high time, in
Swamiji's view of time, for the great rajasika energy and genius of
Western civilization to move forward along a new and shining path.
Failing this, it would inevitably destroy itself-perhaps totally and
forever. "If your ideal is mortal, if your ideal is of this earth, so shalt
thou be," he warned in Pasadena when contrasting the proud, self
congratulatory and eminently smug materialism of the Western
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world with the all-enduring spirituality of the East. "If your ideal is
matter, matter shalt thou be."75 The secular "dogoodism" of the Social
Gospel which, in its farthest vision, looked toward the goal of a
materialistic (and impossible) heaven on earth, would not, as he
pointed out in San Francisco, serve to spiritualize Western
civilization. Wanted was the genuine sattvika activity as taught in the
Gita and extended in this modern era by Swamiji himself-the
concentrated, self forgetful, wholehearted service of every man,
woman, and child as a divine being, nay, as the Divine Lord. Let
Western man draw from deep within himself the power to resist all
weakness; let him assert and eventually realize himself as pure Spirit,
lacking nothing, fearing nothing, loving all, serving all. This was in
part the counsel Swamiji gave to the people of California, and it is
not too surprising to find that in his lectures on the Gita at Dr.
Logan's house the call for strength sounded forth like a grand finale
that contained the essence of all that had gone before.

Before we discuss these San Francisco Gita lectures, it should be

mentioned that Swamiji's earlier Sunday afternoon lecture "Sri
Krishna's Message to the World" dealt almost wholly with the
teachings of the Gita and can be counted among his talks on this
subject. (Indeed, the small volume Thoughts on the Gita by Swami
Vivekananda, compiled and published by Advaita Ashrama, includes
"Sri Krishna's Message to the World.") Since we have already
discussed this lecture in its chronological place, we need not dwell on
it again. It is interesting to remember, however, that one of the
themes that wove through Swamiji's second visit to the West here
mingled with one of the Gita's primary teachings, giving it added
luminosity. Even as Swamiji had freed the teaching of work-with-
nonattachment from any imputation of callousness, so he divested it
of the puritanical grimness with which, in England and America,
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the very word "duty" had been cloaked. (One remembers how at
Thousand Island Park Swamiji's Methodist hostess, Miss Dutcher,
took to her bed in shock after he had said in class, "The idea of duty
is the midday sun of misery scorching the very soul!" As Sister
Christine tells it, "his rebellion against the idea that anyone should
dare bind with fetters the soul of man" gave Miss Dutcher such a turn
that she was not seen again for some days.)76
"Work day and night . . . without any idea of duty," Swamiji cried
in "Sri Krishna's Message." " . . . This world is a play. You are His
playmates. Go on and work, without any sorrow, without any misery!
. . . Serve the living God! . . . Then work is no more slavery. It
becomes a play and joy itself!"77
As has been said, the three Gita lectures at Dr. Logan's house were
given on the evenings of Saturday, May 26; Monday, May 28; and
Tuesday, May 29. They were, in a sense, public lectures, for
admission was charged and, presumably, whoever happened to learn
that Swami Vivekananda was to deliver a lecture could, for fifty
cents, come to hear him. On the other hand, the lectures were not
advertised in the newspapers, and thus, except for members of the
Vedanta Society and the Homes of Truth, few people were apt to
learn of them. In this respect they were private, almost invitational.
Yet the audiences were not small; indeed according to the Minutes of
the Vedanta Society, they were "large," and whatever "large" may
have meant in terms of numbers (we do not know the seating capacity
of Dr. Logan's house), it surely indicated that the attendance matched
and perhaps exceeded expectations. According to Mr. Rhodehamel,
who wrote of Swamiji's Gita classes in his memoirs as published in
Prabuddha Bharata, "these lectures were attended mainly by
students who had followed the Swami through all or most of his
discourses and classes in San Francisco, Oakland and Alameda, and
were in character as well as in point of time the culmination of all his
platform and class work. They were his
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final words of advice and admonition to his students and devotees."78
In his first lecture Swamiji dealt primarily with the historical
background of the Gita. He did not, as he had in India, cast doubt on
the historicity of the circumstances under which Sri Krishna
delivered his teaching, for such scholarly considerations were of little
concern to the Western layman. He did, however, speak of the
ancient and long conflict between the priests and title kings, between
the religion of the ritualistic portion of the Vedas and that of the
philosophical portion, which "came From the brains of kings." He
pointed out the economic basis of this fierce conflict. "There runs an
economic struggle through every religious struggle," he said. "If there
is an economical background," Miss Ansell's first transcript reads,
"and you have the most hideous nonsense to preach, you can find the
whole country [will follow you]."79 "Whenever any religion succeeds
it must have economic value. Thousands of similar sects will be
struggling for power, but only those that meet the real economic
problem will have it. Man is guided by his stomach. He walks and the
stomach goes first and the head afterwards. Have you not seen that? It
will take ages for the head to go first."80 It is not the priests, Swamiji
pointed out, who are so much to blame for holding the minds of the
people in a state of bondage; it is, rather, the people themselves who
employ the priests to appease their hunger with promises.
There is evidence in Ida Ansell's first transcript that Swamiji
discussed in this lecture the economic aspect of the struggle between
the Brahmins and the Kshatriyas at considerable length, pointing out
parallels in other great religions and dealing in some detail with the
significance of the conflict to India. Unfortunately, however, this
portion of the transcript is so shreddy that one cannot reconstruct
Swamiji's train of thought. The second (published) transcript was
evidently as deficient in this respect as the first, and thus we lack an
important part of the lecture-a part evidently so interesting that Miss
Ansell was too absorbed to take intelligible notes.
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However, it is clear from fragmentary sentences in her first transcript
that Swamiji analyzed one of India's recurrent problems-the conflict
between an enslaving religion of superstition and priestcraft and a
liberating religion of supreme spiritual knowledge. In resolving it,
"the whole secret," he said, "is to find out the proper place for
everything"; and this, Sri Krishna did. "He is the most rounded man I
know of, wonderfully developed equally in brain and heart and hand.
Every moment of his is alive with activity, either as a gentleman,
warrior, minister, or something else. Great as a gentleman, as a
scholar, as a poet. . . . Just think what an influence this man has over
the whole world, whether you know it or not. My regard for him is
for his perfect sanity. No cobwebs in that brain, no superstition. He
knows the use of everything, and when it is necessary to assign a
place to each, he is there."81
Frank Rhodehamel's notes of this lecture are not nearly as full as
Ida Ansell's, nor do they seem always to be verbatim or even
unmixed with notes of other classes. Still, they are clear and in places
supply a word or phrase that Miss Ansell missed or could not make
out. They read in full:

The Gita is to the Hindus what the New Testament is to the

Christians. It is about 5000 years old, and the day of religious
celebration with the Hindus is the anniversary of the Battle of
Kurukshetra about 5000 years ago. As I said the Upanishads are
divided into two great divisions the philosophical and the Karma
Kanda, or work portions. Between the kings who promulgated
the philosophic portion and the priests a great conflict arose.
The priests had the people on their side because they had all the
utility which appealed to the popular mind. The kings had all the
spirituality and none of the economic element; but as they were
powerful and the rulers of the nation, the struggle was a hard
and bitter one. The kings gradually gained a little ground, but
their ideas were too elevated
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for the masses, so the ceremonial or work portion, always had
the mass of the people. Always remember this, that whenever a
religious system gains ground with the people at large it has a
strong economic side to it. It is the economic side of a religion
that finds lodgement with the people at large and never its
spiritual or philosophic side. If you should preach the grandest
philosophy in the streets for a year you would not have a
handful of followers. But you could preach the most arrant
nonsense, and if it had an economic element, you would have
the whole people with you.
None knows by whom the Vedas were written, they are so
ancient. According to the orthodox Hindus the Vedas arc not the
written words at all, but they consist of the words themselves
orally spoken with the exact enunciation and intonation. This
vast mass of religion has been written and consists of thousands
upon thousands of volumes. Anyone who knows the precise
pronunciation and intonation knows the Vedas and no one else.
In ancient times certain royal families were the custodians of
certain parts of the Vedas. The head of the family could repeat
every word of every volume he had without missing a word or
an intonation. These men had giant intellects, wonderful
memories.
The strictly orthodox believers in the Vedas, the Karma
Kanda, did not believe in God, the soul or anything of the sort,
but that we as we are were the only beings in the universe
material or spiritual. When they were asked what the many
allusions to God in the Vedas mean, they say that they mean
nothing at all; that the words properly articulated have a magical
power, a power to create certain results. Aside from that they
have no meaning.
Whenever you suppress a thought you simply press it down
out of sight in a coil like a spring only to spring out again at a
moment's notice with all the pent up force as the result of the
suppression, and do in a few moments
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 what it would have done in a much longer period.
Every ounce of pleasure brings its pound of pain. It is the
same energy that at one time manifests itself as pleasure and at
another time as pain. As soon as one set of sensations stops,
another begins. But in some cases, in more advanced persons,
one may have two, yes, or even a hundred different thoughts
enter into active operation at the same time. When one thought
is suppressed, it is merely coiled up ready to spring forth with
pent up fury at any time.
"Mind is of its own nature. Mind activity means creation.
The thought is followed by the word, and the word by the form.
All of this creating will have to stop, both mental and physical,
before the mind can reflect the soul."
"My old master could not write his own name without
making a mistake. He made three mistakes, in spelling, in
writing his own name." "Yet that is the kind of man at whose
feet I sat."
"You will break the law of nature but once, and it will be the
last time. Nature will then be nothing to you: ' 82
In his next lecture Swamiji took up the whole of the second
chapter of the Gita almost verse for verse, mingling his free
translations and his commentaries in so smooth a flow of thought and
language that one can scarcely tell where translation leaves off and
commentary begins. Again, his commentary on one verse leads with
perfect naturalness into his translation of the next. In Miss Ansell's
first transcript one finds blended into the almost seamless flow of
Swamiji's discourse, which he apparently did not often interrupt with
Sanskrit, his free translation of forty-two verses, not all of which
have been included, or noted, in the published version. But even the
first transcript does not give us everything that Swamiji's lecture
actually contained. Those who have read the published version in the
Complete Works may have wondered why he skipped over some of
the most beautiful and important verses
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of this second chapter of the Gita-verses 19 through 27, in which Sri
Krishna describes the indestructibility and immutability of the Self or
Atman.
The key to this mystery is to be found in Ida Ansell's first
transcript. There, on the bottom of page 10 one finds a portion of
what is clearly verse 19: "He who thinks that he can kill and that he . .
. " Below this line of typing one detects that a notation had been
written in pencil and erased. Held in the proper light, the following
message in Miss Ansell's hand becomes legible: "A page of
shorthand was lost at this point." Why this intelligence was erased is
not clear, for the lost page of shorthand, which had undoubtedly
contained Swamiji's translation of and commentary on some of the
most well-known and well-loved verses of the Gita, was not found.
At least, when Miss Ansell made her second set of transcripts, verses
19 through 27 were still missing. (There are no ellipsis points in the
published transcript to indicate this sad loss. They should come
between the paragraph ending "You are all the world. Who can help
you?" and that beginning " `Beings are unknown to our human senses
before birth and after death. . . . ' ")83
Unfortunately Frank Rhodehamel's notes of this second Gita
lecture no longer exist (if they ever did), and thus we cannot turn to
them for help. But despite the irreparable hole in Miss Ansell's notes,
Swamiji's lecture as she took it down is a masterpiece of fluidity and
vitality. I need not here describe it paragraph for paragraph, for it is
readily available in the Complete Works; nor does the second
transcript differ in any appreciable or noteworthy degree from the
first. I shall, however, quote those passages in which Swamiji seems
to have become particularly eloquent and forceful, as though wishing
to imbue his listeners and perhaps impregnate the very air with the
heroic spirit of his subject. He no doubt saw that Western man was
entering an age in which, on the one hand, he would require, for his
very survival, to become more and more active, more and more
altruistic, more and more rational, more and more idealistic, but in
which, on the other hand, he
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would find that all his old values, traditions, and faiths, including a
faith in his own fundamental goodness and rationality, would be, as it
were, yanked from under his feet, leaving him sprawled in fear, moral
uncertainty, spiritual aridity, and self doubt. To an age in which the
individual must be strong but in which the old safeguards against
moral erosion had themselves eroded, Swamiji emphasized the Gita's
bracing philosophy of the Self, and, like Sri Krishna, he cried to the
individual, "Stand up and fight!"
"One great theme," Mr. Rhodehamel wrote in recalling Swamiji's
Gita lectures, "was carried through all the Swami's teaching, and that
was the necessity for spiritual self reliance. `Religion is for the
strong,' he shouted again and again. So in conclusion he took up the
Gita, dwelling on the error of Arjuna in confounding his spiritual
welfare with the disinclination to tread the stern path of duty as it was
laid out for him by the energies of his nature which had not yet been
neutralized by spiritual culture. He made it clear, however, that
Arjuna really did know his duty, but that his eyes were temporarily
blinded by his moral weakness in facing the supreme crisis of his life
because apparently it led into the jaws of death. He further brought
out the point that Arjuna fortified his position by spiritual
sophistry."84
Although Rhodehamel apparently took no notes of the second
Gita class, one finds in his notebook a page or so of disconnected
sentences headed "Remarks from Various Lectures." Most of these
pertain clearly to chapter two of the Gita, and it would seem that they
belong just here. They were written in the following order:

"Spirituality can never be attained until materiality is

gone."
The first discourse in the Gita can be taken
allegorically.
"The Vedas only teach of things in nature, only teach of
nature."
We are always letting sentiment usurp the place of #

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 duty, and flattering ourselves that we are acting in response to
true love.
We must get beyond emotionalism if we would be able to
renounce. Emotion belongs to the animals. They are creatures of
emotion entirely.
It is not sacrifice of a high order to die for one's young. The
animals do that, and just as readily as any human mother ever
did. It is no sign of real love to do that; merely blind emotion.
We are forever trying to make our weakness look like
strength, our sentiment like love, our cowardice like courage,
etc.
Say to your soul in regard to vanities, weaknesses, etc., "This
does not befit thee. This does not befit thee."85

Never before, as far as we know, had Swamiji brought out this

particular message of Sri Krishna's with such intensity as in these
classes: weakness by whatever name was death. "Not one step back,
that is the idea," he thundered. (I quote this paragraph from Miss
Ansell's first transcript.) "No bending the knee. Always stiffening the
backbone. Fight it out, whatever comes. Let the stars move from the
spheres, the whole world stand against us. Death means only a
change of garment. What more? Thus fight thou. You gain nothing
by becoming cowards, come what may. Either there is a God that
wills everything, and in that case we cannot fight, or it is our own
[karma]. Taking one step backward, we do not avoid any misfortune.
We have cried to all the gods in the worlds. Has misery ceased? The
masses of India cry to sixty million gods. Dying like dogs. Where are
these gods? Gods come to help you when you have succeeded.... So
what is the use of [crying]? Die game. Stand up and die game, come
what may. There is a beautiful mythological story. There were two
angels in God's Paradise. They did something wrong and were cursed
that they should fall and become man. When falling, they cried,
`Lord, is there no mercy for us? How many births shall we
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have?' The Lord said, `Seven births as worshippers, but only three as
enemies.' They [chose to be enemies of] the gods and got out quick.
The more you cling to superstitions and priests and [fear] you make
the hell here. Hell is here. There is no other place. This impotence
does not befit thee. Awake and rise. It does not befit thee, this
weakness, this bending the knee to superstitions, this selling
yourselves to your own minds. Because we are infinite spirits, it does
not befit thee to be the slave in the battle of nerves, to be the slave to
superstition. . . . No weakness in thee. Stand up and fight. Die if you
must. Die game. There is none to help you. Thou art all the world.
Who helps thee?"86
As he had done many times before in San Francisco, Swamiji
stressed the teaching that "spirituality can never be attained unless all
material ideas are given up." "We have identified ourselves with our
bodies," he said in this second Gita lecture. " . . . All this chain of
misery, imagination, animals, gods and demons, everything, the
whole world-all this comes from the identification of our selves with
the body. I am spirit. Why do I jump if you pinch me? . . , Look at the
slavery of it. Are you not ashamed? We are religious! We are
philosophies! We are sages! Lord bless us! What are we? Living
hells, that is what we are. Lunatics, that is what we are!" And with
one of his jolting metaphors, he cried, "Our ideas are burial grounds.
When we leave the body we are bound by thousands of elements to
those ideas." "The oceanlike heart of the sage knows no disturbance,
knows no fear," he concluded. "Let miseries come in millions of
rivers and happiness in hundreds! I am no slave to misery! I am no
slave to happiness!"87
In his next lecture, delivered on May 29, Swamiji discussed the
third chapter of the Gita and a part of the fourth, again translating
many verses, commenting upon them, and giving his own teachings
in one powerful, unbroken flow. Again he stressed the all-important
goal of identification with the Spirit. "You may be the greatest
philosopher," he said, "but as long as you have the idea that you are
the body, you are no better
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than the little worm crawling under your foot! No excuse for you! So
much the worse for you, that you know all the philosophies and at the
same time think you are the body! Body-gods, that is what you are! Is
that religion? Religion is the realisation of spirit as spirit "88
He explained the meaning behind the doctrine of nonattachment,
bringing in here a good deal of Sankhya philosophy; and again he
explained the rationale and wisdom behind Sri Krishna's teaching that
it is "better to die in your own path than attempt the path of another."
He related this directly to the necessity for religious independence.
"We must not lose sight of this doctrine," he said. "It is all a matter of
growth. Wait and grow, and you attain everything; otherwise there
will be great spiritual danger. Here is the fundamental secret of
teaching religion. . . . The true teacher will be able to find out for you
what your, own nature is. . . . He ought to know by a glance at your
face and put you on your path. . . . Then die in that path rather than
giving it up and taking hold of another. Instead, we start a religion
and make a set of dogmas and betray the goal of mankind and treat
everyone as having the same nature. No two persons have the same
mind or the same body. No two persons have the same religion."89
Here Swamiji cried, as he had done many times before in San
Francisco, "Enter not the gate of any organized religions. They do a
hundred times more evil than good, because they stop the growth of
each one's individual development. Study everything, but keep your
own seat firm. If you take my advice, do not put your neck into the
trap."90
His commentary upon verse II of chapter four is particularly
Swamiji-like. " `But know, Arjuna, none can ever swerve from My
path.' "91 Generally this is interpreted to mean that all ways of
worship are acceptable to God and that He fulfills the desires of each
man, whether it be for worldly gain or for Liberation. Swamiji went
further: There is no way of being, no way of conduct, that is not
within God's law and acceptable to Him. "None swerves from His
path." Transgression is
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impossible. "If it is a law," he pointed out, "it cannot be broken. . . .
The moment a law is broken, no more universe exists. There will
come a time when you will break the law, and that moment your
consciousness, mind, and body will melt away."92 You will, in other
words, have attained moksha. But until then only imperfect, man-
made rules are broken, not Divine Law. Following his own nature,
the thief, for instance, is moving through one experience after another
toward God. According to an even higher view, the thief is God
Himself. He is perfectly playing a part in the infinitely diversified,
endlessly burgeoning universe. "There is a man stealing there,"
Swamiji said. "Why does he steal? You punish him. Why can you not
make room for him and put his energy to work? You say, `You are a
sinner,' and many will say he has broken the law. All this herd of
mankind is forced into uniformity and hence all this trouble, sin, and
weakness. . . . The world is not as bad as you think. It is we fools who
have made it evil. . . . God made the heaven, and man made the hell
for himself."93
To judge from the arrangement of Frank Rhodehamel's notes of
this lecture, he was so absorbed in Swamiji's words that he wrote
down only key sentences, very likely verbatim, and later numbered
them and enlarged upon them from his memory, which seems to have
been excellent. I give his notes here exactly as they appear in his
notebook:

"If you know everything, disturb not the childlike faith of the
innocent."
"Religion is , the realization of Spirit as Spirit. Not spirit as
matter."
"You are spirit. Realize yourselves as spirit. Do it any way
you can."
4 "Religion is a growth": each one must experience it
himself.
5 "Everyone thinks `my method is the best.' That is so, but it
is the best for you."
6 "Spirit must stand revealed as spirit."#

213
 7 "There never was a time when spirit could be identified
with matter."
8 "What is real in nature is the spirit."
9 "Action is in nature."
10 " `In the beginning there was That Existence. He looked
and everything was created."'
11 "Everyone works according to his own nature."
12"You are not bound by law. That is in your nature. The
mind is in nature and is bound by law."
13 "If you want to be religious, keep out of religious
arguments."
14 "Governments, societies etc. are evils."
"All societies are based on bad generalizations."
"A law is that which cannot be broken."
15 "Better never love, if that love makes us hate others."
16 "The sign of death is weakness; the sign of life is
strength."
[The following numbered paragraphs are correlated with the
above numbered sentences.]
4 The Christian believes that Jesus Christ died to save him.
With you it is belief in a doctrine, and this belief constitutes
your salvation. With us, doctrine has nothing whatever to do
with salvation. Each one may believe in whatever doctrine he
likes or in no doctrine. With us realization is religion, not
doctrine. What difference does it make to you whether Jesus
Christ lived at a certain time? What has it to do with you that
Moses saw God in a burning bush? The fact that Moses saw
God in the burning bush does not constitute your seeing Him,
does it? If it does, then the fact that Moses ate is enough for you;
you ought to stop eating. One is just as sensible as the other.
Records of great spiritual men of the past do us no good
whatever except that they urge us onward to do the same, to
experience religion ourselves. Whatever Christ, or Moses or
anybody else did does not help us in the least except to urge us
on.#

214
 5 Each one has a special nature peculiar to himself which he
must follow and through which he will find his way to freedom.
Your teacher should be able to tell you what your particular path
in nature is and to put you in it. He should know by your face
where you belong and should be able to indicate it to you. We
should never try to follow another's path for that is his way, not
yours. When that path is found you have nothing to do but fold
your arms and the tide will carry you to freedom. Therefore
when you find it never swerve from it. Your way is the best for
you, but that is no sign it is the best for another.
6 The truly spiritual see spirit as spirit not as matter. Spirit as
such, can never become matter, though matter is spirit at a low
rate of vibration. It is spirit that makes nature move; it is the
Reality in nature, so action is in nature but not in the spirit.
Spirit is always the same, changeless, eternal. Spirit and matter
are in reality the same, but spirit, as such, never becomes matter,
and matter, as such, never becomes spirit. Matter, as such, never
becomes spirit as such, for it is simply a mode of spirit, or spirit
at a low rate of vibration. You take food and it becomes mind,
and mind in turn becomes the body. Thus mind and body, spirit
and matter are distinct though either may give place to the other;
but they are not to be identified.
8 "What is real in nature is the Spirit." The spirit is the life in
all action in nature. It is the spirit that gives nature its reality and
power of action.
9 "Action is in nature." "The spirit never acts. Why should
it?" It merely is, and that is sufficient. It is pure existence
absolute and has no need of action.
12 All nature is bound by law, the law of its own action; and
this law can never be broken. If you could break a law of nature,
all nature would come to an end in an instant. There would be
no more nature. He who attains freedom breaks the law of
nature and for him nature
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 fades away and has no more power over him. Each one will
break the law but once and forever and that will end his trouble
with nature. "You are not bound by law. That is in your nature.
The mind is in nature and is bound by law."
14 The moment you form yourselves into an organization,
you begin to hate everybody outside of that organization. When
you join an organization you are putting bonds upon yourself,
you are limiting your own freedom. Why should you form
yourselves into an order having rules and regulations thus
limiting every one as to his independent action? If one breaks a
law of an order or society he is hated by the rest. What right has
anyone to lay down rules and laws governing others? Such laws
are not laws at all. If it were a law it could not be broken. The
fact that these so-called laws are broken shows clearly they are
not laws.94

That is as far as Frank Rhodehamel got, and one can well imagine
why. Swamiji concluded his last lecture on the Gita (and his last
lecture in California) with a resounding call, which Ida Ansell caught
with her shorthand, while Rhodehamel (who can doubt?) sat
enthralled. Miss Ansell's notes will bear repeating here, at least in
part:

Naked 1 came out of my mother's womb and naked I return.

Helpless I came and helpless I go. Helpless I am now. And we
do not know the goal. It is terrible for us to think about it. We
get such odd ideas! We go to a medium and see if the ghost can
help us. Think of the weakness! Ghosts, devils, gods, anybody-
come on! And all the priests, all the charlatans! That is just the
time they get hold of us, the moment we are weak. Then they
bring in all the gods. . . . Help, anyone! But we are helpless.
There is no help from anyone. That is the truth. There have been
more gods than human beings; and yet
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no help. We die like dogs-no help. Everywhere beastliness,
famine, disease, misery, evil! And all are crying for help. But no
help. And yet, hoping against hope, we are still screaming for
help. Oh, the miserable condition! Oh, the terror of it! Look into
your own heart! One half of the trouble is not our fault, but the
fault of our parents. Born with this weakness, more and more of
it was put into our heads. Step by step we go beyond it.
It is a tremendous error to feel helpless. Do not seek help
from anyone. We are our own help. If we cannot help ourselves,
there is none to help us. "Thou thyself art thy only friend, thou
thyself thy only enemy. There is no other enemy but this self of
mine, no other friend but myself." This is the last and greatest
lesson, and oh, what a time it takes to learn it! We seem to get
hold of it, and the next moment the old wave comes. The
backbone breaks. We weaken and again grasp for that
superstition and help. Just think of that huge mass of misery,
and all caused by this false idea of going to seek for help! . . .
There is only one sin. That is weakness. When I was a boy I
read Milton's Paradise Lost. The only good man I had any
respect for was Satan. The only saint is that soul that never
weakens, faces everything, and determines to die game. Stand
up and die game! Do not add one lunacy to another. Do not add
your weakness to the evil that is going to come. That is all I
have to say to the world. Be strong!
You believe in God. If you do, believe in the real God. "Thou
art the man, thou the woman, thou the young man walking in the
strength of youth, thou the old man tottering with his stick."
Thou art weakness. Thou art fear. Thou art heaven, and thou art
hell. Thou art the serpent that would sting. Come thou as fear!
Come thou as death! Come thou as misery!
All weakness, all bondage is imagination. Speak one word to
it, it must vanish. Do not weaken! There is no
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217
other way out. Stand up and be strong! No fear. No superstition.
Face the truth as it is! If death comes-that is the worst of our
miseries-let it come! We are determined to die game. That is all
the religion I know. I have not attained to it, but I am struggling
to do it. I may not, but you may. Go on. 95

This was Swamiji's last word in San Francisco and its impact
was tremendous. Eighteen years later Mr. Rhodehamel was to
write of the Gita classes as though they had been held only the
day before. "He stood before us arrayed in his Sannyasin garb,"
he recalled, "reading from the original Sanskrit, translating and
expounding. With a few prefatory remarks on the first chapter
he launched into the second chapter. The great point he brought
out was the attitude of mind one should assume in meeting the
real problems of life. The greatest obstacle to the right attitude
of mind, he said, was fear of the difficult. So he said, `Be brave!
Be strong! Be fearless! Once you have taken up the spiritual life,
fight as long as there is any life in you. Even though you know
you are going to be killed, fight till you are killed. Don't die of
fright. Die fighting. Don't go down till you are knocked down.'
Then with his right arm extended he thundered, `Die game! Die
game! Die game!' That one sentence rang through those last
lectures, `Die game! Die game! Die game!' They were his
farewell words to his disciples, his goodbye."96

"The Swami Vivekananda delivered his 3rd and last lecture

on the Bhagavad-Gita before a most interested audience at Dr.
Logan's residence . . . ," the Minutes of the Vedanta Society for
May 29 read, and continue:
After a most instructive and impressive lecture, he answered
as usual many questions.
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218
Dr. Logan then announced that Swami Vivekananda had
received a call to lecture at the Paris Exposition, and that he was
going to leave the following morning, Wednesday, May 30th,
for Paris.
Dr. Plumb then presented the Swami with the money
collected from his lectures, for which the Swami thanked most
heartily.
The Swami then told the people present that he would send
them a most spiritual Swami by name of Swami Turiyananda.
He then bid them all good-bye. 97
("He left us with these humble words," Mr. Rhodehamel
wrote of Swamiji's farewell to the Vedanta Class: `I will send
you another, a greater than I, one who lives what I talk about. I
will send you Swami Turiyananda.' ")98
The following morning Swamiji crossed the Bay for the last
time and boarded the Southern Pacific's Overland Limited at the
Oakland mole. Many of his friends must have seen him off, but
none knew this was to be their final parting. Even Mrs. Hans-
brough had not understood that at Dr. Logan's she had seen
Swamiji for the last time. "He took the greatest interest in the
people and in `the movement' and in whom he would send to
carry on after he left the Pacific Coast," she later said. "I am sure
that if his health had permitted, he would have come to the West
a third time."99 Mrs. Allan had also been certain he would
return. "I shall come back,"100 Swamiji had told her, and he had,
of course, meant it. He liked California, finding it a "great field"
for Vedanta. Californians, in turn, liked Swamiji. Those who
knew him, who followed him and looked upon him as their
spiritual teacher and master adored him. How deeply they did so
is reflected in a tribute by the "San Francisco Class of Vedanta
Philosophy" to its "Great Leader" when word of Swamiji's death
in July of 1902 reached America. Addressed to his "Brother
Sannyasins at the Math in India," it was published in the Pacific
Vedantin of August 1902 and two months later in the
Brahmavadin. It read in part as follows: #

219
 . . . Our beloved has followed Him for whom his favorite
theme was "My Master." Never has man written sweeter things
of one he loved. As he loved and revered his Master, so we will
love and cherish his sacred memory. He was one of the greatest
souls that has visited the earth for many centuries. An
incarnation of his Master, of Krishna, Buddha, Christ and all
other great souls. He came fitted to fill the needs of the times as
they are now. His was a twin soul to that of his Master, who
represented the whole philosophy of all religions be they ancient
or modern. Vivekananda has shaken the whole world with his
sublime thoughts, and they will echo down through the halls of
time until time shall be no more. To him all people and all
creeds were one. He had the patience of Christ and the
generosity of the sun that shines and the air of heaven. To him a
child could talk, a beggar, a prince, a slave or harlot. He said:
"They are all of one family, I can see myself in all of them and
they in me. The world is one family, and its parent an Infinite
Ocean of Reality, Brahman."
Nature had given him a physique beautiful to look upon, with
features of an Apollo. But nature had not woven the warp and
woof of his mortal frame so that it might withstand the wear and
tear of a tremendous will within and the urgent calls from
without. For he gave himself to a waiting world. Coming to this
country as he did, a young man, a stranger in a foreign land, and
meeting with the modern world's choicest divines, and holding
those great and critical audiences of the World's Congress of
Religions in reverential awe, with his high Spiritual Philosophy
and sublime oratory, was an unusual strain for one so young. No
other person stood out with such magnificent individuality; no
creed or dogma could so stand. No other one had a message of
such magnitude. Professors of our great universities listened
with profound respect. "Compared to whose gigantic intellect
these were as mere children," "This great Hindoo Cyclone has#

220
 shaken the world;" this was said after he passed through Detroit,
Mich. No tongue was foreign to him, no people and no clime
were strange. The whole world was his field of labor. . . .
. . . He is to us what Jesus Christ is to many devout
Christians. . . . We consider that we were exceedingly fortunate
to have known him in the flesh, to have communed with him in
person and to have felt the sweet influence of his Divine
presence. . . .
. . . RESOLVE, That this expression of our love and
affection for our dear departed Master be spread upon the
records of the Class, and that copies thereof be forwarded to his
fellow Sannyasins at the Math in India and elsewhere. 101

The above was signed on behalf of the Vedanta Society by the

president; Milburn H. Logan; the vice-president, Carl F. Petersen;
and the secretary, Albert S. Wollberg.
Even those who knew Swamiji less well, those who attended his
lectures but who did not become students of Vedanta or members of
the Society--even they held him in profound esteem and affection.
One such Californian-the young woman from the San Francisco
Chronicle who had interviewed him in March and who had evidently
attended his lectures with more than journalistic interest, took the
trouble to speak for her fellow citizens in appreciation of this
extraordinary visitor from India. While Swamiji was resting at Camp
Taylor, his public work finished, Blanche Partington wrote a heartfelt
letter, dated May 9, 1900, to the editor of Prabuddha Bharata. It was
published in the June issue and later, in part, in the first edition of the
Life (to be subsequently dropped). I quote it here in full as it first
appeared:
To the Editor, Prabuddha Bharata,
From the West, to you, greeting!
If we may presume a comparative interest in California,
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221
in the land towards which our attention has recently been so
forcefully turned, the land which has given us the master-
thinker, and teacher, Swami Vivekananda, then will the
following small account of the Vedanta work in California
prove not uninteresting to your readers.
The Swami Vivekananda came to the "Golden State" some
five months ago now, a stranger in a strange land, and, except to
those fortunate few who heard him at the World's Fair, Chicago,
entirely unknown. For some weeks he remained in Los Angeles,
in the southern part of the state, teaching in the "City of Angels"
amidst much quiet enthusiasm, and with happy results, and from
thence he came to San Francisco, capital [principal] city of Cali-
fornia. Here his success was immediate. The first audience
which greeted him, on February 18th [25th], at the First
Unitarian Church, Oakland, numbered over two thousand
people, who listened to his words with keenest attention, and
enthusiastic sympathy. Since that time, between forty and fifty
lectures have been delivered by the Swami, in San Francisco,
Oakland, and Alameda, on the various phases of the Vedanta
Philosophy, and conditions and life in India. His teaching has
aroused a widespread attention here, and will undoubtedly have
a strong influence upon the religious thought of California.
Three classes, for the further study of the Vedanta Philosophy,
have been formed, in San Francisco, Oakland and Alameda, and
it is possible that if the conditions are favourable, the Swami
Vivekananda will send out to us another teacher. He himself
regards California as a country peculiarly well-suited to the
development of Oriental Philosophies, its climatic conditions
especially kind, its strange intermixtures of races a fruitful soil
wherein to plant this new-old thought, its youth a promise and
potency of growth.
The impression made by the Swami's teaching has been most
profound, the impress of his brilliant and distinguished
personality; what he is, not less, but even
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222
 deeper than his spoken word, strange and electrifying to us to
see, the face of the warrior-thinker leap like a sword from its
scabbard as the child-likeness of the master's countenance falls
away under the power of the spirit! Dear and beautiful to see his
absolute kindliness to all with whom he comes in contact, his
admirable simplicity of manner, his charming humility, and
strange and lovely to our unaccustomed ears the music of his
words, his wonderful eloquence in a foreign tongue, for the
Swami Vivekananda is more than teacher, master, philosopher,
he is a poet from the land of poetry!
The Swami is still among us, though he is living in
retirement with some good friends. The end of the lecture course
found him much exhausted, but at last hearing, he was much
better, and on the high road to recovery. From here he goes to
New York, and from thence to Paris, remaining with us,
however, for some few weeks longer.102

About the same time, Miss Partington wrote also to the

Brahmavadin. Her letter to this magazine was published in its July
1900 issue and, like the above, was later printed in the first edition of
the Life. As the Brahmavadin letter was somewhat repetitious of that
in Prabudda Bharata, I shall give it here only in part:

All hail the Light of Asia! [she began]. Thus, poet, sage, and
devotee in speaking of the advent of the Swami Vivekananda
upon our Western shores! It were not difficult to you who know
him, to understand the vivid and profound impression made by
this brilliant and charming personality upon all those with whom
he comes in contact, and the temptation to extravagance in
speaking of him and his work. But we will attempt such sweet
reasonableness as is possible to us, in this little appreciation of
one of the deepest thinkers and finest spirits who has yet visited
among us for our blessing and delight.
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 To some extent, California was prepared for the simple--
subtle teaching of this Oriental sage. First came to us, some
years ago, the white-robed Brahmacharin with his message [I do
not know to whom Miss Partington refers], then Dharmapala of
the imperial yellow garb, and there has been here for some time
a Buddhist church, and much thought along theosophical lines,
besides all the usual orthodox developments, each in its place,
lower steps of the temple to which the latest and greatest of
these, the Vedanta Philosophy, is leading. . . .
The interest in [Swami Vivekananda's] doctrine has been
steadily increasing,-even reaching the hopeful limit of a mild
martyrdom of pulpit denunciation!-and, though it is yet early to
prophesy results, it seems safe to say that the enthusiasm thus
awakened is of a permanent character....
Had we been able to claim for our climate a perfect kindness
to the Swami Vivekananda, our measure of content had been
Full, and it is perhaps rather owing to his lavish gift of his
strength in our service, than to the climate, that the later days of
his lectures here found him somewhat seriously indisposed. But
the last word from him, he is now in retirement with some good
friends in the country, tells of renewed strength and vigor, and
we shall surely send him to his next stopping place, New York,
in perfect health again.
Greeting to all our good friends in India, think sometimes of
the new children of your thought in California. 103

One may, I think, look upon Miss Partington as a spokesman for

the generality of those who attended Swamiji's lectures in northern
California. She was not a close student of religion; she was a member
of the California public, one of those open-minded, generous, and
appreciative people who had led Swamiji to believe that California
was a great field. He had held that view in the early days of his visit;
he still held it after #

224
he left. "Swami Vivekananda had at one time or another visited all
parts of the United States," Swami Abhedananda told a member of
the San Francisco Vedanta Society many years later. "But when he
came back to New York from California, he asked me to go there.
`California' he told me, `is the place where Vedanta will grow.' " And
Swami Abhedananda had himself added, "The people there are
sympathetic and open."104
There is no doubt that during the six months Swamiji had lived
and worked in California a close bond had grown up between him
and the many people who knew him-the indissoluble bond between
guru and disciple; and it is no wonder that when his train pulled out
from the Oakland mole, no one could think that he would not return.
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 NOTES FOR CHAPTER NINE
p.123 *In the Complete Works Frank Rhodehamel‘s notes entitled
―The Practice of Religion‖ are wrongly dated ―Wednesday,
March 18, 1900.‖ This mistake originated with Rhodehamel
himself. The actual date was Wednesday, April 18, 1900.

p.132 *In the Himalayas near Dalhouise there is a lake where

mountain spirits and other supernatural beings are said to
dwell. Called Dain Kund, or the ―Magic Pool,‖ it is set like a
jewel in a wide stretch of velvety green turf, inviting the
passerby. (See ―Hill Resorts of India,‖ India News, 26 July
1968.) It may have been this lake that Swamiji had in mind,
for it is a most likely habitat for the old water demon of his
story.

p.147 *Mr. Allan‘s memory of the dining room at Camp Irving

differs from Ida Ansell‘s. In his unpublished notes (VSNC),
Mr. Allan wrote of the ―Improvised, canvas-walled dining
room and kitchen‖ that existed during Swamiji‘s stay at the
camp. Miss Ansell‘s memory may have been the clearer on
this point.
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 CHAPTER TEN

A WORLD MISSION DRAWS TO A CLOSE-II

Swamiji did indeed intend to return to California; yet as things

turned out, his departure on May 30, 1900, was his farewell. It also
marked the close of his intensive and prolonged public platform work
in the West. It is true, as we shall see a little later, that he was to
deliver four Sunday lectures and hold several classes in New York,
but these were all semipublic talks given at weekly intervals during
the hot and slack summer-vacation month of June. Again as we shall
see, he was to lecture twice before the Paris Congress of Religions-
speaking on strictly technical and scholarly subjects. Valuable these
post-California talks surely were, but his California lectures and
classes, to which he gave so much of his concentrated energy for so
long and steady a time, constituted, as I see it, the heart of his work
during this period of his life.
A question that naturally arises at this point is whether there was
any significant difference between the teachings of his second visit to
the West, as judged by what we know of his many California talks,
and the teachings of his first visit. I have tried to answer this question
somewhat prematurely and thus only in half measure in an earlier
chapter. I shall try to answer it here more fully, for I believe it is an
important one.
First of all, we must review, in a very general way, what Swamiji
taught and did during his first visit to the Western world-the visit that
extended from the end of July, 1893, to the middle of December,
1896, in which he lectured and held classes in both America and
England. One can divide this visit into two parts, each of which can
be further divided in
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two. There was, first, the period between his arrival in Chicago and
the end of 1894, and second, that between the beginning of 1895 and
his departure for India at the close of 1896. The first period falls into
two uneven parts: the days before the Parliament of Religions, which
opened in Chicago on September 11 , 1893, and the days, or rather
months, extending from his first address at the Parliament (which at
once brought him into the widened eye of the American public) to the
close of 1894. The second period can be divided (roughly) into 1895
and 1896.
During the six weeks or so prior to the Parliament of Religions,
Swamiji's purpose, with which he had come to America and upon
which he had set his mind and heart, was to explain to the people of
the United States that the Hindus desperately required not religion, of
which they had plenty and to spare, but bread and a technological
education. Still full of faith in the generosity and idealism of the
American people, he believed that a direct and simple explanation of
India's real need would be enough and that rich Americans, learning
the facts, would readily respond with help. With this purpose and this
faith in mind, Swamiji lectured when possible before small New
England audiences on the subject of his motherland, telling of his
plan to start a technological college for monks, who would, in turn,
give a practical education to villagers throughout the country. It was
not long before he discovered the fruitlessness of this procedure. If
not earlier than the Parliament of Religions, then certainly during it, it
became unmistakably clear to him that America's ignorance of India
had, on the whole, a positive quality about it: it was rock-hard, layers
deep, and characterized by an obdurate distrust of and contempt for
anything Hindu. It was, moreover, fortified continually through the
sensational denigration of India by less-than-loving Christian
missionaries and by the eagerness of the parishioners at home to
listen and believe.
After the Parliament of Religions, Swamiji, now famous,
determined to earn the money that he needed for his Indian
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work by lecturing throughout the United States and, by means of his
lectures, to give Americans a true picture of Hindu culture and
religion. This last was not a matter of merely supplying information;
it was a matter also of first blasting away boulders of solidified
ignorance, and this, by the very force of his personality, Swamiji
accomplished to a great extent. He was, as he wrote to a disciple in
India, "the one man who dared defend his country." "And I have
given them such ideas," he added, "as they never expected from a
Hindu."1 Swamiji's very appearance, his majesty of bearing
combined with a childlike simplicity and friendliness, his perfect
command of English, his brilliance of intellect, his apparently
unending wealth of knowledge, his lofty idealism, which, as many
admitted, towered over the highest reaches of Western thought, his
manifest spiritual eminence and greatness of heart-all these, as well
as his inspiring lectures on his motherland, gave the lie in undeniable
terms to almost everything concerning India that the American
people had been led to believe and that had theretofore gone
uncontradicted and unchallenged.
Thousands of Americans heard this phenomenal Hindu monk and
applauded him-and inevitably that applause brought down upon him
the enmity of every zealous bigot in the country. The story of the hue
and cry that arose around Swamiji's heels, of the viciousness with
which he was attacked -and this not only by Americans but,
incredibly, by some of his own countrymen as well-has been told in
some detail in the first volume of this series-Prophetic Mission -I-and
need not be repeated here. Suffice it to say that partly by the
information he gave, partly by simply standing as living testimony to
the greatness of his parent culture, and partly by the tremendous
spiritual power that radiated from him, Swamiji silenced his
opponents and strengthened the forces of tolerance and understanding
in America.
The battle he thus fought and won on behalf of his countrymen
constituted one of the primary aspects of his work during the months
following the Parliament of Religions. During this
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period, however, he did more than exonerate his country from the
charge of benighted heathenism. He was quick to see, as he toured
through the United States, the need of the American people for
spiritual sustenance. If India required a technical education, America
required with as much urgency a spiritual one. He began to give it.
He pointed out the underlying unity of all religions, spreading his
Master's teaching in this regard; he taught the essential meaning and
purpose of religion itself and declared each religion and creed to
represent a valid step in the soul's progress toward the highest
spiritual attainment. We also find that during this period he lectured
many times on Buddhism, possibly because there was in America a
growing interest in and appreciation of Gautama Buddha, but more
probably because he was keenly aware that the full development of
self reliance, rationality, and compassion as taught and exemplified
by this great Teacher would be essential to man's success in the world
of the future. Swamiji also spoke many times throughout this period
of the unselfish nature of true Divine Love. He scathingly berated
average churchgoing Christians for their "shopkeeping" brand of
devotion: "Christians are so selfish in their love," he said in Detroit,
"that they are continually asking God to give them something,
including all manner of selfish things. Modern religion is, therefore,
nothing but a mere hobby and fashion and people flock to church like
a lot of sheep."2 He thundered against the degrading concept that
human beings are "miserable sinners," and spoke with electrifying
eloquence and power of the eternal, unchanging divinity of the
individual soul and the divine unity of all men.
Further as he toured through the United States, meeting thousands
of people, visiting uncounted towns and cities, Swamiji sowed the
seeds of spirituality in another and deeper sense. On a level that
defies the tools of research but that we nonetheless know exists, he
played the role of World Teacher and Prophet, silently setting in
motion a new current of thought in thc collective mind of the nation-a
current, the beneficent
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effects of which will become visible on the surface of human affairs
only slowly, but the reality of which we cannot doubt, for the
spiritual stature of Swami Vivekananda was such that he could not
live among men without altering, enriching, and illumining the very
texture of world thought. Indeed, to ignite men's minds not for a
brief, passing moment but on deep, subliminal levels and,
consequently, for long sweeps of time is surely the primary function
and meaning of that marvelous phenomenon, divine prophethood,
that miracle by which humanity has many times been set aglow in its
long history and which has thereby many times lifted that history out
of its otherwise violent, humdrum, and more or less predictable
course.
There is a good deal of evidence, which we need not go into here
(it has been set forth and discussed at some length in Prophetic
Mission - 2), that in the latter part of 1894 Swamiji's thought was
coming to grips with the immensely complex and multifarious
problems of the modern age and formulating root-destroying
solutions to them for the Western world. It was, indeed, on the last
day but one of 1894 that he made the highly significant and startling
statement: "I have a message to the West as Buddha had a message to
the East."3 At the beginning of 1895 he settled down in one place to
give that message in all its extraordinary comprehensiveness and
diversity. Earlier he had scattered broadcast the seeds of Vedanta; he
now delivered his teachings in concentrated, though infinitely varied,
form, developing a permanent center from which they would spread
outward like waves of force.
During the first five months of 1895, Swamiji lived in New York
in unfashionably located rooms where he held free classes twice
daily, supporting them (For most of his students were poor, and he
wished to be independent of those who were rich and inclined to be
bossy) by delivering from time to time pay public lectures. After a
brief rest in June at the New Hampshire summer camp of his friend
Mr. Francis Leggett (who was not yet married to Miss MacLeod's
sister, Betty Sturges), he
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spent some six weeks at Thousand Island Park in the secluded home
of one of his students. Here, surrounded by a few selected disciples
(twelve in all), he taught Vedanta with even greater intensity than he
had in New York, for his hope at this time was to "manufacture a few
`Yogis' out of the materials of the [New York] classes," 4 or, as he
also put it, to "make several Sannyasins, . . . leaving the work to
them."5
During the latter part of 1895, Swamiji spent a large part of his
time in London, where, laying the foundation for future work, he held
classes, gave talks in private houses, and delivered one public lecture.
At the beginning of December he returned to New York for his
second season of class work and lecturing in the United States.
Although Swamiji's activity in 1895 comprised an untold number
of classes and unquestionably forms a part of his main teaching
mission in the West, very little of what he taught during this year has
come down to us in printed form. Indeed, with the notable exception
of the slim but invaluable book Inspired Talks, which contains notes
of his informal classes at Thousand Island Park, little effort seems to
have been made to preserve Swamiji's classes and lectures of this
period. A number of references scattered here and there (as well as an
undated sheaf of jnana yoga notes), however, leave very little doubt
that in his New York classes he dealt with the four yogas, or paths:
jnana, raja, bhakti, and karma. That lie taught these yogas in his
London classes is also very likely. As for his New York lectures of
this period, only the titles of five are known to us, but those five tell
us much. They are: "The Vedanta Philosophy," "The Science of
Religion," "The Rationale of Yoga," "What is Vedanta?" and "What
is Yoga?" Clearly, Swamiji had started to give the great body of
teachings on the philosophy and practice of Vedanta which acquired
permanent form during the following season of his work. The title of
his one public lecture in London-"Self Knowledge" -is as revealing.
The year of 1896 (or, to be exact, the period extending from
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December 9, 1895, to December 16, 1896) was the year of golden
harvest. During this period Swamiji produced almost all the works
that, together, form the primary message of his first visit to the West.
The priceless heritage that has come down to us from this period
includes the books Karma Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, Raja Yoga, and ,Jnana
Yoga. In addition one finds in the Complete Works many important
lectures and class talks delivered in 1896 in America and London.
There are, for instance, some eight lectures on Sankhya and Vedanta,
given as New York jnana yoga classes and later published in book
form under the title The Science and Philosophy of Religion; the
important Harvard lecture "The Vedanta Philosophy"; a number of
lectures delivered in London, such as "Vedanta and Privilege," which
are not included in ,Jnana Yoga; and two lectures on Sri Ramakrishna
(combined in the Complete Works into one, under the title "My
Master").
This list does not exhaust our inherited treasure of 1896 but will
serve to show the importance of that year. (One might take the view
that the reason 1896 was so fruitful was not because Swamiji's
message was more ripe by that time than it had been earlier, but
because Josiah J. Goodwin was then by his side, faithfully taking
shorthand notes and transcribing them. It is true that without Mr.
Goodwin's labor we would know as little of Swamiji's lectures and
classes of 1896 as we know about those of 1895. But one is inclined
to believe that in the rhythmical nature of Swamiji's mission Mr.
Goodwin appeared on the scene exactly when he began to give the
lectures he wished to publish in permanent book form-and not before.
However, this is a point we cannot settle here.)
Volumes three and four of this series-The World Teacher, parts
one and two-deal with Swamiji's life during this period of 1895 and
1896, and an attempt is made there to explore his teachings in detail.
But what concerns us at present is the message, in general, that he
gave during this last part of his first visit to the West. Fortunately-for
it is difficult and risky to try to condense into a few sentences the
substance of his
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teachings during any period of his mission-he himself has done this
for us. In the front of his book Raja Yoga one finds as a sort of
summary of his teaching the well-known lines, taken from his
commentary on aphorism 25 of chapter two of the Yoga Aphorisms of
Patanjali: "Each soul is potentially divine. The goal is to manifest this
divinity within by controlling nature: external and internal. Do this
either by work, or worship, or psychic control or philosophy-by one,
or more, or all of these-and be free. This is the whole of religion.
Doctrines, or dogmas, or rituals, or books, or temples, or forms are
but secondary details."6
Later in the year Swamiji put his teaching even more succinctly.
In a letter to Sister Nivedita (then Margaret Noble) he wrote, "My
ideal indeed can be put into a few words and that is: to preach unto
mankind their divinity, and how to make it manifest in every
movement of life."7 Throughout his mission this ideal-to preach unto
mankind their divinity was central to Swamiji's mission. It was
indeed more than central; it was the ground in which all else was
rooted and the light toward which all else aspired. During his first
visit he taught a wide variety of ways by which people of all tempera-
ments and stages of spiritual advancement could move toward the
realization of their own divine nature. He taught, further, that these
ways, singly or combined, represented the different forms or
expressions of the world's religious beliefs and practices. Each had
the same goal, each was inspired by the same human yearning for and
struggle toward divine infinitude.
He taught the four primary paths or yogas, giving them, it would
appear, equal attention. He explained the three main philosophies of
Vedanta: dualism, qualified monism, and monism, showing that the
first two (which are more theologies than philosophies) were
necessary steps in mankind's upward journey to the third, monism,
beyond which no greater truth could be known or conceived. He
taught the utmost tolerance for-or, rather, acceptance of-all religious
forms, showing that each had its place in the soul's progress from
"lower
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truth to higher truth," that none should be condemned.
In addition, he taught how monistic Vedanta could stand as the
broad basis for lasting harmony between the rich and jostling variety
of peoples, races, cultures, religions, and ideologies of which human
society is, and must ever be, composed. He explained the
cosmologies of Vedanta and Sankhya and the psychology of Yoga,
and he showed how these, as well as the philosophy of Advaita
Vedanta, reconcile the apparently contradictory findings and attitudes
of science and religion, reason and mysticism, everyday life and
spiritual practice. He showed how Vedanta answers the big, ever-
recurrent, and often anguished questions of whither, why, and
whence, which Western philosophy, mired in an essentially
materialistic outlook, was in a few years to pronounce unanswerable.
He enlarged man's concept of God, of the world, and of himself,
expanding them, indeed, to Infinity. He transformed human life itself,
turning it into a grand concentrated worship in which every man's
occupation and profession, however secular, could become as
fulfilling, as direct, and as conscious a way to God realization as the
cloistered path of an absorbed monk or nun. He showed that all
religious paths were valid when sincerely followed, for they took a
man gently toward God along the lines of his own natural bent.
Indeed Swamiji's expansion of religion to embrace all of human life
and his transformation of human life into a continual, joyful, and self
rewarding means of realizing one's own divine nature and the divinity
of all men-of all beings and things-was one of the primary teachings
of this period of his mission.
Considering that the main body of his message (as we know it)
was given over a period of barely a year (he did not teach continually
in 1896, but spent some weeks traveling in Europe), it was incredibly
full and comprehensive. Perhaps this was inevitably so; for during
this period he was giving the Western world, for all its uses and
needs, its first meaningful and complete knowledge of Vedanta. It is
true that for centuries India's philosophy had had an unnamed, if not
untraceable
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influence in the West. In recent times, moreover, a knowledge of
Vedanta had come to America and England through the often
crackling-dry scholarship of nineteenth-century Orientalists as well
as through the more popular, though esoteric, teachings of
Theosophy. In addition, a good deal of Indian philosophy was mixed
into the idealistic flights of Transcendentalism. But to the majority of
Westerners at the close of the century, Vedanta was a new, very
unaccustomed teaching, and since it was to the majority that Swamiji
wished to speak, he gave much time to explaining it in detail. He held
it up in full view, as it were, and revolved it again and again so that
all its sides were clearly revealed and understood, so that its different
lights could fall on the collective problems of contemporary man and
its diverse aspects could fill diverse needs. In his inimitable way, he
made this highly intricate, many faceted, and abstruse philosophy
course through his lectures and classes like some life-giving elixir-
not vital merely, but vitality itself. Never before had this been done in
the Western world.
Before leaving Swamiji's first visit to the West we should mention
one aspect of his activity which, in respect to his world mission, was
of much importance. Absorbed as he may have become in
formulating and delivering a message to the Western people, he never
forgot his motherland or relegated her to the background of his
thought. Not for a moment did his heartache over her misery or his
longing to relieve the suffering of her people diminish in fervor; nor
did he postpone his work of bringing about her regeneration.
Throughout his first visit to the West his mind, as is clearly
evidenced by his many letters to his brother monks and his
householder disciples and friends, continually dwelt on India's
problems and reviewed again and again the best means of solving
them. As is well known, his idea, conceived at Cape Comorin at the
end of 1892, was that India's hope lay in channeling "the tremendous
power in the hands of the roving Sannyasins" 8 into the dedicated
service and elevation of her downtrodden masses. Thenceforth, his
mind
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dealt with the ways and means of building up and organizing the
Ramakrishna Order into a body of monks whose spiritual practice
would lie not only in meditation and other traditional methods but in
the dedicated service of man as God, and whose goal would be not
only their own liberation but also the welfare of the world. In the
tradition of Hindu monasticism, the concept was revolutionary, and
in practice, it involved changes and innovations that would have
bearing on every aspect of the Order.
"In those early days we did not know the thoughts that were
seething in Swamiji's mind, day and night," Sister Christine wrote in
her memoirs. " `The work! the work!' he cried. `How to begin the
work in India! The way, the means!' The form it would take was
evolved gradually. Certainly before he left America, the way, the
means, and the method were clear in every detail." 9
Indeed, Swamiji's letters written from America and England in
which he set forth his ideas, his plans, and his hopes, in which he laid
down rules, directed the beginnings of the work, exhorted,
encouraged, scolded, and poured out so much energy that even the
printed words seem vibrant, constitute almost as important a part of
his Indian mission as do the lectures he gave in India upon his return
to that country in 1897. They constitute, as well, an important part of
his activity during his stay in the West. One cannot, in fact, form a
true picture of Swamiji's first visit in America without recognizing
that, in addition to all else, it was a germination period of his Indian
mission-a period during which that mission took shape in the white
heat of his thought and began to glow with an immense nation-
moving vitality.*

Let us turn now to Swamiji's second visit to the West, which we

have reviewed in much detail in the pages of this book. The reader
who has come thus far, and who has read thc transcripts of Swamiji's
California lectures as published in the Complete Works as well as the
lectures of his first visit, will be aware that
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there was a pronounced difference both in message and in mood
between his first visit and his second. The mood of Swamiji's second
visit has, I think, been so apparent throughout the present narrative
that we need not dwell at length upon it here. Suffice it to say that
fiery as his California lectures often were-particularly those given in
northern California-he could not by any stretch of the imagination
have been called "the cyclonic monk." While he spoke more than
ever in the manner of a Prophet-uttering, one after the other, directly
perceived truths, seldom pausing to provide philosophical reasons-he
was, in some respects, less intent on delivering a message, less driven
by the shortness of his days, less apt to cry in exasperation, as he had
in 1895, "I have no time to give my manners a finish. I cannot find
time enough to deliver my message."10
His battle against the Western maligners of his country had long
since been fought and won; he had held up to the world the spiritual
depth and moral grandeur of India's culture, religion, and philosophy;
his teaching of Vedanta in all its aspects and implications had been
given. Further, his "machine" for the regeneration of his motherland
had been set in motion, and his message to the Hindu people had
been delivered. In short, by the time Swamiji left India in 1899, the
substance of his mission on earth had been accomplished and the
tremendous tension of his work had lessened.
It is true that for some months after leaving India Swamiji, physically
and nervously exhausted, was filled with a sense of dissatisfaction
and impatience with the progress of his Indian work. Yet as he rested
at Ridgely Manor and, later, as he earned money in Los Angeles to
defray the Math's expenses and, in San Francisco, received
heartening letters from his brothers at Belur, his mind gradually lifted
into the total peace that was so natural to it. Indeed, so complete and
transcendental did Swamiji's serenity become toward the close of his
California visit that those who loved him might have guessed
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that the gossamer-thin veil of Maya, without which work would have
been impossible to him, had been rent and that his remaining days on
earth were few.
We do not find, then, in California the same drive, the same sense
of urgency that had characterized his earlier years. Instead, there
prevails a relaxed mood, sometimes playful, sometimes lyric. This is
not to say that he was not at times deeply withdrawn and grave in
California, or that he did not, as always, give his utmost to his
mission; nor is it to say that during his first visit he was not at times
playful and relaxed. It is to say only that the dominant moods of the
two visits can be contrasted one with the other: the first heroic, the
second idyllic. But one should add that if Swamiji's life was more
quiet in California than it had been at an earlier time, it was not
thereby less powerful or effective. His power seems to have been
more that of a wide, deep river flowing smoothly and freely to a
waiting sea, rather than that of a rushing torrent; but there was always
a radiance of presence, a continuous shining of God-consciousness,
such as constitutes the very essence of prophet-hood. Further, if his
mood in California was not that of the warrior, his message,
paradoxically, was more heroic, more uncompromising, and more
demanding of man's best effort than ever before.
As far as we can know, Swamiji had not set forth from India the
second time with a definite idea of giving a message to the West. Yet
this does not mean that no message stirred within his mind. World
Teacher that he was and his mission still in the outward swing of its
cycle, he inevitably had a wealth of teaching still to give. It was not
surprising, therefore, that in June of 1899, as his ship was piloted
down the Hooghly River toward the Bay of Bengal, he spoke to
Sister Nivedita of a "new gospel." And, as the reader will remember,
Miss MacLeod wrote from Ridgely Manor to Mrs. Bull, "Swamiji is
blessed and has his new message ready-that all there is in life is
character. . . . [He said that] in one's greatest hour of need one stands
alone. Buddhas and Christs do more harm than
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good-for mankind is trying to imitate them instead of developing its
own character!"11
One remembers also that as Miss MacLeod drove off from
Ridgely Manor to hurry to California to the side of her brother,
Swamiji called after her, "Get up some classes, and I will come." 12
He who had been born to teach others, who had come to earth to help
mankind could not rest for long, could not but grow weary of the
drawn-out house party at Ridgely Manor. He had a message, and that
message had a compelling life of its own; it was bound to find full
expression.
One cannot but think that Swamiji's new message was born from,
or at least intensified by, what had been, on the whole, his
disheartening experience in India. Even those of his countrymen who
did not oppose him but flocked about him in genuine reverence and
who nodded enthusiastic assent to his every word failed to respond to
his message in deed. Rather, they continued to live and to think as
they had been living and thinking for centuries past, following the old
ways and traditions which, manifestly, led only deeper into
degradation. There was no sign, and Swamiji was a past master at
detecting signs, that his countrymen had heard him with more than
half an ear.
"You have talked of reforms, of ideals, and all these things for the
past hundred years," he thundered in Madras; "but when it comes to
practice, you are not to be found anywhere -till you have disgusted
the whole world, and the very name of reform is a thing of ridicule!
And what is the cause? . . . The only cause is that you are weak,
weak, weak; your body is weak, your mind is weak, you have no faith
in yourselves! Centuries and centuries, a thousand years of crushing
tyranny of castes and kings and foreigners and your own people have
taken out all your strength, my brethren. Your backbone is broken,
you arc like downtrodden worms. Who will give you strength? . . .
The first step in getting strength is to uphold the Upanishads, and
believe-`I am the Soul.' . . . I wish that faith [of Nachiketa] would
come to each of you; and every one
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of you would stand up a giant, a world-mover with a gigantic
intellect-an infinite God in every respect. That is what I want you to
become. This is the strength that you get from the Upanishads, this is
the faith that you get from there."13
And in Calcutta he had taunted the Brahmins, proud in their rigid,
formal orthodoxy: "You are Vedantists, you are very orthodox, are
you not? You are great Hindus, and very orthodox. Ay, what I want
to do is to make you more orthodox. The more orthodox you are, the
more sensible; and the more you think of modern orthodoxy, the
more foolish you are. Go back to your old orthodoxy, for in those
days every sound that came from these books, every pulsation, was
out of a strong, steady, and sincere heart; every note was true.. . . Go
back, go back to the old days, when there was strength and vitality.
Be strong once more, drink deep of this fountain of yore, and that is
the only condition of life in India."14
But at the time nothing much came of Swamiji's fiery exhortations
to his countrymen; as pointed out in an earlier chapter, there was not
the nationwide response that he had hoped for; there were no inward
stirrings of life in the heart of the country, no efforts toward self
regeneration. He was like one who had brought a large and
nourishing feast to a starving man and found him too weak, too
debilitated to eat. There can be little doubt that as he attempted to
rouse his all-but unrousable motherland he soon came to the
conclusion-by the beginning, at least, of 1899-that only men and
women who were strong in the first place could accept the undiluted,
leonine religion of the Upanishads. One must first build up men and
women of strength on every level of human activity and in every
social stratum and condition of life. One must infuse India's oldest,
highest, and broadest truths back into the very blood of the people.
"I am born to proclaim to them that fearless message--Arise!
Awake!"' he declared, and urged his disciples: "Be you my helpers in
this work. Go over from village to village, from one portion of the
country to another, and preach this
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message of fearlessness to all, from the Brahmana to the Chandala.
Tell each and all that infinite power resides within there, that they are
sharers of immortal Bliss. Thus rouse up the Rajas within them-make
them fit for the struggle for existence, and then speak to them about
salvation. First make people of the country stand on their feet by
rousing their inner power, first let them learn to have good food and
clothes and plenty of enjoyment. . . . Laziness, meanness and
hypocrisy have covered the whole length and breadth of the country. .
. . Does it not bring tears to the eyes? Madras, Bombay, Punjab,
Bengal-whichever way I look, I see no signs of life."15
It did not appear that the dualistic teachings the Hindu people had
been following for centuries had been producing men ready to live in
accordance with the strong, bracing truths of Advaita Vedanta or that
they had been of much benefit to the country as a whole. On the
contrary: "You . . . are made lunatics by these evil teachings,"
Swamiji cried in Lahore. "I have seen, all the world over, the bad
effects of these weak teachings of humility destroying the human
race. Our children are brought up in this way, and is it a wonder that
they become semi-lunatics?"16 Everything associated with that which
was weakening Swamiji repudiated. "In every district and village . . .
you will find only the sound of the Khol and Kartal! . . . Hearing
from boyhood the sound of these effeminate forms of music and
listening to the Kirtan [devotional singing], the country is well-nigh
converted into a country of women. What more degradation can you
expect? . . . Through the thunder-roll of the dignified Vedic hymns,
life is to be brought back into the country. In everything the austere
spirit of heroic manhood is to be revived."17
Everywhere the great thunderclap of Advaita should resound. The
idea that each person should develop religiously along his or her
"own line of least resistance" (generally the line of supplication and
ritualism), moving gradually from "lower truth to higher truth"-an
idea that Swamiji had long held and had expressed in a Prabuddha
Bharata interview in
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December of 1898-was giving way to the idea, which he had also
long held, that everyone should start with the highest of truths, "I am
the Self, the Omniscient One," making this bedrock fact the
foundation of his total mental outlook. Three short excerpts from
Sister Nivedita's letters as first published in Prabuddha Bharata of
1935 and later and less fully in Reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda
stand as evidence of the change in emphasis that Swamiji's ideas had
undergone in this respect during his stay in India. (In quoting these
excerpts, I have taken them from Prabuddha Bharata and have added
a heretofore unpublished sentence from Nivedita's original letters.)
On the evening of March 11 of 1899 Sister Nivedita had gone to
the Belur Math to interview Swamiji for Prabuddha Bharata. "We
got there at 8 o'clock," she wrote to Miss MacLeod the following day.
"Swami had been sitting beside the fire under the tree, but I did not
get off my rug on the boat's roof, and he came to me there, as I felt
that it was a little late for a lady to visit monks." ("Time and place
were alike delightful," she wrote in the published interview itself.
"Overhead the stars, and around-the rolling Ganges; and on one aide
stood the dimly lighted building, with its background of palms and
lofty shade-trees.") "When I had interviewed him," she continued in
her letter, "he said, `I say-Margot, I have been thinking for days about
that line of least resistance. And it is a base fallacy! It is a
comparative thing. As for me, I am never going to think of it again.
The history of the world it the history of a few earnest men, and when
one man is in earnest the world must just come to his feet. I am not
going to water down my ideals, I am going to dictate terms.' This
gave me my freedom too," Nivedita continued apropos of her girls'
school; "and it is really to be a monastic order and not a series of
concessions to the feeble-hearted." "One [other] thing Swami said
last night," Nivedita wrote in this same letter, "was `We have not
seen Humanity yet-and when that era dawns there will be no line of
least resistance-for everyone will be free to do good.' . . . `My mission
is not Ramakrishna's
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nor Vedanta's-nor anything but simply to bring manhood to this
people.' "18
But as Swamiji interpreted the life of Sri Ramakrishna, man-
making was its greatest significance. In a letter of May 8, 1899, Sister
Nivedita quoted him as saying, " `It was not the words of
Ramakrishna but the life they lived with Him that [is] wanted, and
that [has] yet to be written.' After all (she went on, quoting
indirectly), this world was a series of pictures and man-making was
the great interest running through. We were all watching the making
of men and that alone... . Sri R. K. was always weeding out and
rejecting the old. He always chose the young for disciples." 19
A week earlier Nivedita had written to Miss MacLeod of
Swamiji's mood as he had revealed it to her: "His days were drawing
to an end; but even if they were not, he was going to give up
compromise. He would go to Almora and live there in meditation. He
would go out into the world and preach smashing truths. It had been
good fun for a while to go amongst men and tell lies about their being
in their right place and so on. But it was utterly untrue. Let them give
up, give up, give up. Then he said very quietly-`You won't
understand this now, Margot; but when you get further on you will.'
"20
One might ask why Swamiji did not lecture in India more than he
did, why he did not go about from place to place dictating terms,
preaching the divinity of man, instilling within the people the basic
faith in themselves which, he was convinced, could alone restore
their lost manhood, strength, and identity. His disciple Saratchandra
Chakravarty once asked a similar question: "How is it, Swamiji, that
you do not lecture in this country? You have stirred Europe and
America with your lectures, but coming back here you have kept
silence."
"In this country," Swamiji replied, "the ground should be prepared
first; and then if the seed is sown, the plant will come out best. The
ground in the West, in Europe and America, is very fertile and fit for
sowing seeds. There, they have reached the climax of Bhoga
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not either Bhoga or Yoga (renunciation). When one is satiated with
Bhoga, then it is that one will listen to and understand the teachings
on Yoga. What good will lectures do in a country like India which
has become the birthplace of disease, sorrow and affliction, and
where men are emaciated through starvation, and weak in mind? . . .
First of all, make the soil ready, and thousands of Vivekanandas will
in time be born into this world to deliver lectures on religion. You
needn't worry yourself about that!"21
As I mentioned earlier, as far as we can know, Swamiji did not
come to the West the second time with the intention of teaching; but
for whatever reason he came, he came with a conviction in his mind
and heart-a "new gospel," as he called it, dynamic with his sense of
its universal urgency and ready for full and vigorous expression.
Swamiji's "new gospel" was, of course, not new in the sense that
he had never taught it before. The Upanishadic mahavakya "Thou art
That!" had rung like an insistent refrain through his New York and
London lectures. "I do not believe at all that monistic ideas preached
to the world would produce immorality and weakness," he had said in
London. "On the contrary, I have reason to believe that it is the only
remedy there is. If this he the truth, why let people drink ditch water
when the stream of life is flowing by? If this be the truth, that they
are all pure, why not at this moment teach it to the whole world?
Why not teach it with the voice of thunder to every man that is born,
to saints and sinners, men, women and children, to the man on the
throne and to the man sweeping the streets? . . . We must teach them,
we must help them to rouse up their infinite nature. This is what I feel
to be absolutely necessary all over the world. . . . Let the world
resound with this idea and let superstition vanish. Tell it to men who
are weak and persist in telling it. You are the Pure One. . . . "22
One could multiply such quotations. Indeed, one cannot easily
turn the pages of Jnana Yoga without finding that during his first visit
to the West Swamiji had laid great stress on
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Advaita Vedanta. Yet when one considers his teachings in New York
and London as a whole, taking into account his classes as well as his
many public lectures, one finds (and many have found) that his
prevailing message was that there are diverse ways for man to realize
and manifest his potential divinity, that life itself is the "struggle
towards the great ideal, towards perfection," and that, as each works
out his own vision of this universe, according to his own ideas, all in
the long run will come to truth.
But the long run was long indeed, and in 1899 Swamiji was
markedly impatient on behalf of his love-humanity. The slow,
gradual, long-tried way had not been enough to set men free, nor had
it been enough to make the kind of men and women, East or West,
who could meet the unprecedented tumults and challenges of the
coming age. In his storming of the citadel Swamiji was by no means
going against the spirit of his Master. "I don't like the idea of `banat
banat ban jai --slowly and gradually it will come about,' " Sri
Ramakrishna had said. "I want: `Be up and doing now.' No `banat
banat,' but `today! this very moment!'-a dacoit like attitude."23
The slow, safe way was not for modern man; it was not his way in
science and technology; it must not be his way in religion. During his
second visit to the West Swamiji underscored with straight and bold
strokes the "smashing truth" that man is the Pure One here and now;
that he is this moment wholly divine, that he is replete, even now,
with the qualities of divinity, and that wherever he stands, whatever
he is doing, he can assert this truth. "Fill the mind with it day and
night," he cried in "The Soul and God" : " `I am It. I am the Lord of
the universe. Never was there any delusion.' Meditate upon it with all
the strength of the mind till you actually see these walls, houses,
everything, melt away-until body, everything, vanishes. `I will stand
alone. I am the One.' Struggle on!"24 There was no question here of
the long run, of waiting to realize this evershining, self evident fact at
some distant date. If one is Brahman, then one cannot at any time be
less than Brahman,
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nor can this fact fail to manifest itself, just as eternal light cannot at
any time fail to shine. It was no doubt to this teaching, which
resounded throughout his California lectures, reaching a climax of
expression and power in San Francisco, that Swamiji referred when
he said he had given his "highest teaching" in California.

Inevitably, this "new gospel" was reflected in many aspects of his

message and as inevitably altered their appearance, highlighting
some, throwing others into shadow. One effect of its pervasive
presence can be clearly seen in the kind of subjects he chose. In the
back of this book the reader will find a complete list of his California
lectures, a glance at which will show that in northern California, as in
southern California, he gave a proportionately large number of
lectures on the theory and practice of raja yoga. In addition, or,
rather, in correlation, peals of monistic thunder rolled over his
northern California audiences almost daily. Whereas in his first visit
he had given equal attention to all four primary paths or yogas and
had stressed the equal validity of each, he now emphasized that the
one essential attitude for all people was the affirmation of their
substantive divinity-not as a background philosophy or theory but as
a living, immediately relevant fact. He taught, that is, the bold,
positive assertions of jnana yoga. And in order that man could live up
to them and verify them through experience, he taught the practice of
raja yoga as the most effective method. The first (jnana yoga) gave
significance and direction to the latter; the latter (raja yoga) gave
power and speed to the first.
One should not conclude from this, however, that he neglected
bhakti or karma yoga, the paths, respectively, of devotion and selfless
action. In Los Angeles one of his most wonderful lectures, "Work
and Its Secret," was on the subject of karma yoga, and his lectures in
the series on "Divine Love" in San Francisco were among the most
beautiful he ever gave on that subject. Yet in the single lecture that he
devoted to karma yoga he emphasized the need for spiritual strength.
"We
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require super-divine power," he cried.. "Super-human power is not
strong enough. Super-divine strength is the only way, the one way
out "as Even in his series on devotion Swamiji stressed the
importance of asserting the self luminous Atman. "My ambition," he
said in "Formal Worship," "is to talk to men and women, not to
sheep. By men and women, I mean individuals. . . . Remember this
individualism at any cost? Think wrong if you will; no matter
whether you get truth or not. The whole point is to discipline the
mind. . . . All must struggle to be individuals-strong, standing on your
own feet, thinking your own thoughts, realizing your own Self." 26
Another difference in Swamiji's choice of subjects lay in his many
talks in California on the great Teachers (or Messengers) of the
world-a subject to which he had not earlier devoted a full lecture. His
bold effort to wean (or wrench) mankind from a false and weakening
dependence on Saviors and Prophets was, of course, directly
connected with his uncompromising demand that each individual
assert his own divinity here and now. One cannot but think that this
aspect of his new message motivated his Great Teacher talks. That he
had been thinking of the debilitating effect of man's abject
dependence upon World Saviors shortly before coming to the West is
clear from his essay written in Bengali for the Udbodhan of February
1899, "Knowledge: Its Source and Acquirement"
"If it is finally settled," he there wrote (I quote from the
translation as given in the Complete Works), "that the path of human
welfare is forever chalked out by these omniscient men, society
naturally fears its own destruction if the least deviation be made from
the boundary line of the path, and so it tries to compel all men
through rigid laws and threats of punishment to follow that path with
unconditional obedience. If society succeeds in imposing such
obedience to itself by confining all men within the narrow groove of
these paths, then the destiny of mankind becomes no better than that
of a machine. . . . In course of time, for want of proper use, all
activity is given up, all originality is lost, a sort of Tamasika dreamy
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248
hovers over the whole nation, and headlong it goes down and down.
The death of such a nation is not far to seek. . . . Each [path pointed
out by the great ones of the earth] has its place in the development of
the sum total of knowledge; and we must learn to estimate them
according to their respective merits. But, perhaps, being carried away
by their over-zealous and blind devotion to their Masters, the
successors and followers of these great ones sacrifice truth before the
altar of devotion and worship to them, and misrepresent the true
meaning of the purpose of those great lives by insisting on personal
worship, that is, they kill the principle for the person."27
In California this same theme wove through many of Swamiji's
lectures: "These great Teachers are the living Gods on this earth," he
said in Pasadena. "Whom else should we worship?"28 But in the same
lecture ("The Great Teachers of the World") he cried, "There is a
tendency in us to revert to old ideas in religion. Let us think
something new, even if it be wrong. It is better to do that. . . . Do
something! Think some thought! . ... Struggle Godward! Light must
come!"29
Those had been among Swamiji's last words to the people of
southern California. In San Francisco he urged man forward with
words even more forceful: "I fall down and worship [the Messengers
of God] ; I take the dust of their feet. But they are dead, dead as
doornails! and we are alive. We must go ahead! . . . Be not an
imitation of Jesus, but be Jesus! You are quite as great as Jesus,
Buddha, or anybody else."30
Shortly before Swamiji left southern California for San Francisco
Miss MacLeod wrote to Nivedita (who relayed the News to Sister
Christine), "Swamiji said today that he is beginning to see the needs
of humanity in quite a different light that he is already sure of the
principle that is to help but is spending hours every day in trying to
solve the methods. That what he had known hitherto is for men living
in a cave -alone-undisturbed-but now he will give Humanity some-
thing that will make for strength in the stress of daily life."31
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And in his San Francisco lectures one again and again sees him
giving his audiences a teaching and a practice by means of which
they could face whatever life might hold. He taught a way for the
uncloistered, a way to stand strong, self assured, and serene in the
midst of the external tumults of life-the victories and defeats, the
loves and griefs. Did he not foresee the need for such strong, Self
oriented men and women in the centuries to come-men and women
who could take part, even a leading part, in the life of the world and
yet remain free from it, uncorrupt and fearless, who might or might
not believe in a Personal God, but who had unwavering faith in their
own eternal union with the divine and unshakable love for the
divinity of all mankind? This was not a teaching of comfort; there
was no easy way for the modern man; but there was a strong way that
made no compromise with truth, and such a way was needed for the
active citizen of a new world, a world rich with promise and fraught
with peril and in continual crisis. Over and over again he thundered,
"Help thyself!" "It is a tremendous error to feel helpless. Do not seek
help from anyone. We are our own help. If we cannot help ourselves,
there is none to help us."32 Indeed, throughout Swamiji's lectures in
California several themes relating to his call for spiritual self reliance
resounded repeatedly and with increasing emphasis. It was as though
he had chosen from the abundantly faceted message of his first visit
the essential passages that he wished to impress deeply upon the
mind of humanity, envisioning its needs, as he said, in a different
light.
Goading the individual on to develop his own character, think his
own thoughts, rise to the infinite heights of his own greatness, he
repeatedly warned against the imprisoning and weakening doctrines,
beliefs, and myths of authoritarian religions. He did not hesitate to
cry: "Exit praying and laying flowers in the temples!" "If you take my
advice, you will never enter any church. Come out and go and wash
off. Wash yourself again and again until you are cleansed of all the
supersti-
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tions that have clung to you through the ages."33 And in another San
Francisco lecture: "There is only one sin. That is weakness. When I
was a boy I read Milton's Paradise Lost. The only good man I had
any respect for was Satan. The only saint is that soul that never
weakens, faces everything, and determines to die game. Stand up and
die game! . . . Do not add one lunacy to another. Do not add your
weakness to the evil that is going to come. That is all I have to say to
the world. Be strong!"34
Or expecting the best of man, looking upon him as God Himself,
he spoke much more often and with much greater emphasis than he
had in earlier years of the "divine play" of life. "Play!" he cried in his
lectures. "God Almighty plays. That is all. . . . You are the almighty
God playing."35 Seldom during this last period of his mission did he
speak of life as a "moral gymnasium." Indeed at Camp Taylor he had
categorically repudiated Miss Bell's idea of the world as "an old
schoolhouse." We are "tumbling," he told her, for the sheer joy of it.
This was anything but a doctrine of escape: it was precisely the
opposite. The fearless worship of the Terrible was essential to the
awareness of divine joy, and this theme, too, received from Swamiji
corresponding emphasis. "Who creates all evil?" he asked, and
answered, "God. There is no other way out. . . . How can such a God
be worshipped? . . . Turn around first of all and face the terrible. Tear
aside the mask and find the same God. . . . There is none else." 36 And
one remembers here his answer in Los Angeles to the question:
"Then you claim that all is good?"-- `By no means; my claim is that
all is not-only God is! That makes all the difference."37
These were some of the grand and bold themes to which Swamiji
returned again and again in California. Never before had he placed
them in such high relief or taught them with such unmistakable
emphasis, and one can only suppose that these were the truths he
wanted humanity to take most deeply to heart. "The people shall learn
the truth," he said during his lecture on Buddha in San Francisco.
"Some are afraid
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that if the full truth is given to all, it will hurt them. They should not
be given the unqualified truth-so they say. But the world is not much
better off by compromising truth. What worse can it be than it is
already? Bring truth out! If it is real, it will do good." 38 One
remembers his talk to the monks at Belur Math a month or so before
he set sail for the West: "Every man is capable of receiving
knowledge if it is imparted in his own language. . . . You must speak
out the truth without any fear that it will perturb the weak. Truth is
always truth. . . . Know ye for certain that this attempt at compromise
proceeds from arrant downright cowardice. . . . Therefore repeatedly I
say to you, be bold to speak out your convictions." And Swamiji
himself had no hesitation whatsoever in bringing out the "smashing
truths" that in 1899 he had told Sister Nivedita he was going
thenceforth to teach.

In considering the general differences between Swamiji's first and

second visits to the West, it seems clear that not only had his message
changed in its emphasis, but his conception of the Western Vedanta
movement had in some respects changed as well. At no time, it is
true, did he draw up a set of rules or write a detailed constitution for
the continuance of his Western work; characteristically, he wanted it
to take shape freely and in accordance with the customs and nature of
its environment. Yet he did have some definite ideas in regard to the
role Vedanta would play in the Western world and the general form it
would take; and it was these ideas, I believe, that underwent a
change.

As is well known, Swamiji often made it clear during his first visit
to the West that he did not want to establish anything like a Vedantic
religious organization or church. In the course of a newspaper
interview in London in 1895, for instance, he was asked if he
represented any sect or was connected with any sect or society,
"None whatever!" he replied, and continued, .. . Whatever in my
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252
that will be my reward. All religions have for their object the
teaching either of devotion, knowledge or Yoga, in a concrete form.
Now, the philosophy of Vedanta is the abstract science which
embraces all these methods, and this it is that I teach, leaving each
one to apply it to his own concrete form. . . . " "Then you do not
propose to form any society, Swami?" thc interviewer asked. "None,"
Swamiji replied; "no society whatever."39
The following year, when he had completed his work in America
and did not intend to return, he was interviewed in London by
another newspaperman, who remarked, "I gather that you did not
found anything like a church or new religion in America." "That is
true," Swamiji replied. "It is contrary to our principles to multiply
organisations, since in all conscience, there are enough of them."40
During the course of another interview he was asked if he had left
disciples in each of the American cities he had visited. "Yes," he said,
"disciples, but not organisations That is no part of my work." 41
As we know, Swamiji did, in fact, found a society in New York in
November of 1894-the same society of which Swami Abhedananda
was in charge in 1900. But in view of the above quotations, it would
seem clear that in 1895 Swamiji did not consider this society to be
anything like a church. And, to be sure, it was not. At its beginning,
one of the purposes for its existence was to handle his financial
affairs, which tended otherwise to get in a muddle. Another purpose
was to manage the details of his work itself-his lectures and classes
and so on. Later, in 1896, two overlapping committees were formed
within the Society to take care of all practical matters, including the
printing and distribution of his pamphlets and books. The Society
was also designed to carry on his work in his absence. But the
important thing to notice here is that in its early years this New York
Vedanta Society had no members: it had a president, a vice-president,
a secretary, a treasurer, and the workers on its two committees, but
beyond these functionaries, there were no members at all. This was
not because people
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did not want to join; it was simply because there was no membership
roll. There was nothing to become a member of.
When Swamiji left America in 1896, this type of unorganized,
memberless organization was in accord with the way he then felt his
work should develop. "My idea is for autonomic, independent groups
in different places," he had written to Mrs. Bull in December of 1895.
"Let them work on their own account and do the best they can. As for
myself, I do not want to entangle myself in any organisation."42
Originally, he had hoped that his American disciples would carry on
his work in America, spreading his message. To this end (at least in
part) he had trained a group of students at Thousand Island Park. "I
have got a few hundred followers," he wrote from there, "I shall
make several Sannyasins and then I go to India, leaving the work to
them."43 And to his disciples he said, "This message must be
preached by Indians in India, and by Americans in America."44 At
Thousand Islands he gave as mentioned earlier, final monastic vows
to a man and a woman, who thereby became, respectively, Swami
Kripananda and Swami Abhayananda. He authorized them to teach,
blessed them, and sent them forth. But in keeping with his
impassioned respect for individual freedom, he laid down no rules as
to what they should teach or how they should teach it. Indeed, in a
letter that he wrote at the end of 1895 to Swami Abhayananda (not to
Alasinga, as has been sometimes said), he made his wishes in regard
to both the nature of the New York Vedanta Society and work of his
disciples very clear. "We have no organization," he wrote, "nor want
to build any: Each one is quite independent to teach, quite free to
preach whatever he or she likes. If you have the spirit within you, you
will never fail to attract others. The theosophists' methods can never
be ours, for the very simple reason that they are an organized sect, we
are not. Individuality is my motto," he continued, "I have no ambition
beyond training individuals up."45 And in a letter to Swami
Kripananda, Mrs. Bull wrote in July of 1896, "Vivekananda asks
obedience of his students, only to those ideals they
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voluntarily assume, not to his teachings, if I understand him."46
But as it happened, neither Swami Kripananda nor Swami
Abhayananda was able to attract a substantial following, and it was
not long before it became clear to Swamiji that his American work,
as well as his Indian work, would have to be carried on by Indians.
(There is small doubt that he was disappointed by this. One indication
appears in a letter he wrote to his disciple Ellen Waldo in October of
1896, when the New York Vedanta Society was temporarily, but
fretfully, without a lecturer and a young Hindu had been suggested.
"Why do you not begin to teach?" he asked Miss Waldo. ". . . I will
be thousand times more pleased to see one of you start than any
number of Hindus securing success in America-even one of my
brethren. `Man wants Victory from everywhere, but defeat from his
own children.' . . . Make a blaze! Make a blaze!") 47 But even though
Swamiji never quite gave up hope that his American disciples would
make a blaze, he had begun at the end of 1895 to send to the Math for
swamis.
His overall plan for his work, however, remained the same. He
still hoped, that is, to see it carried on with a minimum of
organization. In the fall of 1896, after he had left America, a
prospectus was printed by his American friends outlining a plan For
work in accordance with "the wishes of the Swami Vivekananda for
cooperative work without an organization." The idea behind this (and
it met with Swamiji's approval) was that his friends in Boston
(notably Mrs. Bull) and New York should join forces and work
together. The plan involved renting a four-room flat in New York to
serve "as a permanent centre for the presentation of the Vedanta
Philosophy." Two of the rooms were to be devoted to the use of
Swami Saradananda and an assistant (Goodwin) ; the other two
rooms were to serve as a reading room and library. There were to be
fortnightly meetings for reading and discussion and, on alternate
weeks, lectures by "scholars of standing," including, of course,
Swami Saradananda. It was expected that money for
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rent would come from sympathizers, from admissions to the lectures,
and from the sale of Swamiji's book. 48 There would still be no
membership roll.
Through the agency of a loosely organized center of this sort
people could read and hear about the philosophy of Vedanta and
could then apply it in their lives and adapt it to the religious forms of
their choice. Although this plan never materialized, and the New
York Vedanta Society continued as before, it represents the way
Swamiji wanted his work to proceed. In addition, of course, he
wanted his brother monks to make and train disciples, including
monastic disciples. ("If it pleases the Lord," he wrote from America
in March of 1896, "yellow-garbed Sannyasins will be common here
and in England.")49 Further, he would have liked ashramas or retreats
to develop. "Here in America," he wrote regretfully in 1896, "there
are no Ashramas. Would there was one! How would I like it and what
an amount of good it would do to this country!"50 But although
Swamiji clearly recognized the practicality of having a center, even a
"Temple Universal," where Vedanta would be taught and from
which it would spread, he remained throughout his first visit to the
West opposed both to organization and to the founding of anything
like a self contained church. (It is true that in London, for a day or
two at least, he considered that it was, as he said, "absolutely
necessary to form some ritual and have a Church." "We must fix on
some ritual as fast as we can," he wrote with much enthusiasm to Mr.
.Sturdy. " . . . kindly bring the Upanishads. We will fix something
grand, from birth to death of a man. A mere loose system of
philosophy gets no hold on mankind."51 But within a day or two he
thought better of this idea, and we hear no more about it.)
Many years later Swami Abhedananda commented upon
Swamiji's dislike of organization. In March of 1915, during the
course of a talk to the Vedanta Society of San Francisco, he said: "I
know that when Swami Vivekananda started the work he did not
believe in organization. In fact, when he
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invited me to go to London and gave me the charge of his work, he
did not organize. And where is the London Society today? It has gone
to pieces. Then he started a Society in New York. He did not
organize; in fact, he could not organize. He did not put his force in
that line at all. He said that wherever there is organization, that is the
seed of discord and inharmony."52
Perhaps there were other reasons as well for Swamiji's early
refusal to organize. For instance, he wanted Vedanta to remain fluid.
It was not one religion among many, but was, as he so often said, "the
philosophy which can serve as a basis to every possible religion in
the world." It is the eternal thread on which all religions and all sects
are strung. He did not want to identify it with any particular form,
any particular person, any particular group of people. Further, the last
thing he wanted was to see it slowly strangled in a web of beliefs,
myths, rituals, traditions, and so on, such as seems invariably to be
woven around enchurched ideals.
But although Swamiji had not wanted organization, organization
had come. For financial and legal reasons, Swami Abhedananda, who
had come to America in 1897, found it practical to incorporate the
New York Vedanta Society under the laws of the State of New York.
This he did in October of 1898 when Swamiji was in India. Then, in
March of 1900, when Swamiji was in San Francisco, a membership
roll was opened by the trustees. In April of 1900 Swami
Abhedananda amended the bylaws, giving the Swami in charge of the
Society a necessary control over its activities. Thus, even before
Swamiji left California, the New York Vedanta Society had become a
full-fledged religious organization; one might even say it had become
a church.
By this time, however, Swamiji seems to have changed his views
to an appreciable degree in regard to both organization as such and
the establishment of a church. In connection with the former, one
recalls a passage in one of the lectures he gave in southern California
in January of 1900. "In England or
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America, if you want to preach religion," he said, "you will have to
work through political methods-make organizations, societies, with
voting, balloting, a president and so on, because that is the language,
the method of the Western race."53 As we have seen, he started
Vedanta societies in southern California and, in April of 1900, one in
San Francisco. The southern California societies, as such, died out,
but, as we of course know, the San Francisco Society thrived.
Although the latter was not to be legally incorporated for many years,
it began, as we have seen, with a body of members whom Swamiji
himself called Vedantins. Nor did he object to the organizational
developments in New York. "The only thing I see," he wrote to Miss
MacLeod in this connection, "is that in every country we have to
follow its own method."54 He suggested in this letter of April 10,
1900, that the members and sympathizers of the Society be asked
what they wanted in respect to organization. Whatever they wanted,
that should be done.
As for establishing a church, during his second visit to the West
Swamiji was unquestionably preaching Vedanta not only as a
philosophy "which can serve as a basis to every possible religion in
the world" but also, and it would seem primarily, as a religion in
itself which people could follow exclusively and with which they
could become identified. Nor did Swamiji hesitate to consider
publicly the possibility of Vedanta becoming the religion of the
future. In his lecture "Is Vedanta the Future Religion?" he laid down
the conditions under which it could become so.
While Swamiji had by no means discarded his former views
regarding the dangers of organizations (in San Francisco he pointedly
warned against them),55 he now saw, it would seen, its advantages as
well, indeed its inevitability. He saw too, perhaps, that if Vedanta
were to become the "man-making religion" he so strongly desired, it
not only must serve to unify and revivify other religions but must
become a religion in itself, holding its own principles inviolate,
protecting them from compromise, dilution, distortion, and offering
them in
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their pure form to whoever would seek them. Indeed, as was said in
an earlier chapter, it was necessary to his mission that he should
establish a living vessel in which the spiritual seeds he had so
liberally sown would take root and flourish. And such a living vessel
is, precisely, a church.
But is not a church almost bound to develop its own ceremonies,
temples, shrines, holy places and persons, sacred traditions, legends,
myths, scriptures, art forms-all those enchanting accompaniments of
religion that the human heart craves but which almost invariably
encroach upon the central truth, choking it, swamping it, and
eventually, displacing it, becoming themselves the all-important
center? Swamiji was, of course, keenly aware of this danger. Was this
not why he said in "Is Vedanta the Future Religion?" "There is a
chance of Vedanta becoming the religion of your country because of
democracy. But it can become so only if you can and do clearly
understand it, if you become real men and women, not people with
vague ideas and superstitions in your brains, and if you want to be
truly spiritual, since Vedanta is concerned only with spirituality." In
this same lecture he again and again pounded upon the conditions one
must fill to be a Vedantin: "No book, no person, no personal God. All
these must go. . . . Worship everything as God-every form is His
temple. All else is delusion. Always look within, never without. Such
is the God that Vedanta preaches, and such is His worship."56
Did this mean that Swamiji wanted no temples, no altars, no
rituals, no dualistic practices whatsoever in the Vedanta churches (or
societies) in the West? That is a question that deserves, I believe, to
be deeply considered by those who are carrying on Swamiji's work
today, establishing its patterns, creating its ambience. One can
venture to say here, however, that while Swamiji did not himself
introduce any of these things in the West, he did not specifically ban
them, as he did to his heart's delight at Mayavati. "Many people think
the ceremonial etc. help them in realising religion. I have no
objection," he wrote to Mary Hale in a letter dated June I7,
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1900. "Religion is that which does not depend upon books or teachers
or prophets or saviours, and that which does not make us dependent
in this or in any other lives upon others. In this sense Advaitism of
the Upanishads is the only religion. But saviours, books, prophets,
ceremonials, etc., have their places. They may help many, as Kali
worship helps me in my secular work. They are welcome."57
Nevertheless, it would seem eminently clear that in the Vedanta
societies that he founded in the West Swamiji very much wanted all
dualistic practices and beliefs to be kept to a minimum, subordinate
to the grand truths of his ministry, Yes, he was well aware, and
sometimes said, that the great majority of people could not
immediately follow a monistic religion, making it real and effective
in their lives; but he also was certain that many could and must. Nor,
to his mind, was the possibility altogether remote that Vedanta in its
dazzlingly pure form could become the future religion. To repeat his
closing words in his great lecture "Is Vedanta the Future Religion?"-a
lecture that can well serve as his manifesto to Western Vedantins:
"The hour comes when great men shall arise and cast off these
kindergartens of religion and shall make vivid and powerful the true
religion, the worship of the spirit by the spirit." 58 That was Swamiji's
vision, and the vision of a Swami Vivekananda can surely become
the reality of a future time.

The Southern Pacific's Overland Limited, made up largely of

Pullman Palace Cars, elegant with red plush and walnut paneling and
equipped with an opulent diner, was one of the most deluxe trains of
the era. It was also one of the fastest. But even so, its run between
San Francisco and Chicago-its double-headed laboring over the high
Sierra, its clattering across the endless sage deserts of Nevada and
Utah, through the wheat fields of south Wyoming and Nebraska and
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260
through Iowa and Illinois-took three full days and nights of what
Swamiji, well experienced in American train travel of the 1890s, had
known would be a "bone-breaking journey." One can be almost
certain that when the Overland Limited arrived in Chicago on the
morning of Saturday, June 2, he breathed a sigh of relief.
Almost nothing is known at present of Swamiji's stay in Chicago,
except that it could not have lasted for more than four days.
According to an account of his life in America by Sarah E. Waldo, he
also made a visit to Detroit at this time, 59but a recently published
letter, which he wrote to Sister Christine from New York on June 9,
1900, gives clear evidence that he did not do so. Thus Swamiji had
ample time in Chicago to see many of his old friends, and no doubt
he once again spent quiet hours with the Hales and McKindleys.
Since his visit to Chicago six months earlier there had been another
change in the Hale family: Mr. George Hale had died in early
February. Although Mrs. Hale kept her apartment at 10 Aster Street,
at which address the Clarence Woolleys also lived, the family was
now irrevocably scattered.
The only detail we have of Swamiji's Chicago visit is a brief
episode, which is recounted in Vivekananda: A Biography by Swami
Nikhilananda and which the Swami learned, he told me, from Miss
MacLeod. "On the morning of his departure," Swami Nikhilananda
writes, "Mary came to the Swami's room [in her mother's apartment]
and found him sad. His bed appeared to have been untouched, and on
being asked the reason, he confessed that he had spent the whole
night without sleep. `Oh,' he said, almost in a whisper, `it is so
difficult to break human bonds!' "60 As he knew, this was the last time
he was to see the family he loved above all others of his Western
friends. "All blessings on you and sisters and Mother," he had written
to Mary from San Francisco. "You have been always the sweetest
notes in my jarring and clashing life."61
Because of Swamiji's fondness for the Hales and because of
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the indispensable and loving part they played in his Western visits,
one likes to know, perhaps, how they fared after he was no longer a
visible part of their lives. At the present time I can relate only a few
bits and pieces gathered from various sources-primarily from
conversations with Louise Douglas Hyde, one of the daughters of a
third McKindley sister, and such will have to do for now. Shortly
after saying farewell to Swamiji, Mrs. Hale and Mary left their home
in Chicago and moved to Italy, where they took up residence in the
Anglo American Hotel in Florence. Soon Mary met a wealthy Italian,
many years her senior. It would seem that it was to this gentleman
that Swamiji referred when he wrote to her on July 5 of 1901, "So
you are enjoying Venice. The old man must be delicious; only Venice
was the home of old Shylock, was it not?" And a little further on in
this same letter, after telling her of the Raja of Khetri's fatal fall
"from a high tower at Secundra, the tomb of Emperor Akbar," he
wrote, "Thus we sometimes come to grief on account of our zeal for
antiquity. Take care, Mary, don't be too zealous for your piece of
Italian antiquity."62 (Swamiji's meaning here is obscured in the Com-
plete Works, where the word Italian is printed as Indian. In view of
the context and the situation, Italian is surely what Swamiji wrote.)
But Mary Hale failed to take the warning and in a year or so married
either this or another aged and wealthy Italian-a widower, named
Carlo Guiseppe Matteini. Commendatore Matteini owned a palatial
villa on a huge estate outside of Pistoia, in the district of Santomato.*
There Mary lived for many years, the charming mistress of Villa di
Celle, about whose gardens and drives and vineyards she drove in a
small landau drawn by a little pony. She had, it is said, a regal
bearing, dressed beautifully, and wore floppy-brimmed hats against
the Italian sun. It is also said that Matteini guarded his prize of a
handsome young wife jealously, keeping her virtually confined
within the boundaries of his property. When I asked Mrs. Hyde if this
treatment would not have been difficult for Mary Hale to bear, she
replied, "I don't
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know. Mary was so serene and so-well, gentle is the only way I can
describe it-that I think she would be very easily captured."63 Perhaps.
And to be sure, Mary seemed happy enough in her married life,
which was, after all, a life to which, as a late nineteenth-century
young woman of the upper and moneyed classes, she had been
reared. She had chosen an odd variation of the usual pattern, that was
all. When she wrote to Nivedita in March of 1909 her only cause for
uneasiness seemed to be the mortality of those she loved: "I some-
times feel as though I were living on the top of a volcano. Mr.
Matteini, strong, robust tho' he is, is not a young man (he was then
seventy-seven), and my dear little mother is delicate and seventy-two
years old, & my dear sister Harriet is in such delicate health. But I try
not to think of it and live and enjoy."64 Yet Swamiji had seen another
side of Mary-the "mettlesome Arab," with a potential for great deeds.
"Eating, drinking, dressing, and society nonsense are not things to
throw (away) a life upon-especially you, Mary. You are rusting away
a splendid brain and abilities, for which there is not the least
excuse."65 So Swamiji wrote to Mary in 1896 and again with the
same straight-from-the-shoulder tone in 1901. And perhaps the side
of Mary to which those letters had been addressed was the true
volcano upon which she lived. In 1916 she wrote a letter (now lost) to
Miss MacLeod, which the latter shared with Alberta, with the
comment: "This is rather a pathetic confession, isn't it, of Mary Hale.
She sees her mistakes so profoundly and yet why shouldn't the last
twenty years of her life be the fulfillment of all her desires and
aspirations, making these years only the necessary preparation? And
this I have written to her." Whether or not Mary was heartened by
this counsel, one does not know. Six years later Miss McLeod wrote
to Alberta: "Mary is at last a widow, her husband the last five of his
eighty or ninety years (he died at eighty-nine) being quite senile, I
hear. She is an angel, protecting, loving, honouring him always."66
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 After the death of her husband in April of 1919, Mary sold the
Villa di Celle and moved into the Anglo-American Hotel in Florence
with her mother and sister, Harriet, who had long since divorced
Clarence Woolley. There they lived for the remainder of their lives.
In December of 1925 Miss MacLeod wrote to Alberta: "Mary Hale
Matteini is living her own loving life, gentle, considerate, faithful to
mother, sister, [late] husband. Deep down, there is the big note that
Swamiji brought to them all, but no inclination to help his work.
However she gave me £5 for the Math and £5 to buy his books. I
fancy this is the first contribution she has given. They live in luxury.
Beautiful rooms. Two maids, companion for Mrs. Hale, motor, and
Mary feels herself to be Italian and gives and works in local charities
in Italy. I love her, just as she is!"67 But if Mary did not give
bounteously to Swamiji's work during her lifetime (and there is no
certainty that she did not), she remembered his work in her will.
According to the available records, she bequeathed to Belur Math
through Swami Shivananda approximately Rs. 48,500 (about
$18,500), which in those days was not a small remembrance.
Mary Hale Matttini died in the spring of 1933 when she was sixty-
eight, the last of the Hales to go. Harriet Hale Woolley had died in
1929 at the age of fifty-seven; Mrs. Hale followed a year later, an old
lady of ninety-three. As for the McKindley sisters, Isabelle died at an
early age in 1904, but Harriet (the oldest of the four "sisters") far
outlived them all. For years, in the role of spinster aunt, she took care
of Clarence Woolley's three children by his second wife (who, it so
happened, was her niece, Isabelle Baker), and in her old age
Clarence Woolley cared for her, paying for her room and board at the
El Cortez Hotel in San Diego, where she lived for many years,
attended by an old family servant, until her death in 1955 at the age
of ninety-four.
That is the skeletal "follow-up" story of the four "sisters," whom
Swamiji so dearly loved. But that is only the external story. What
really happened to them; who they were in the
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first place to have been so much loved by him and of such service to
him; what profound changes took place in the long history of their
souls' journey; what goal they attained-that internal story, the story
that would really interest us, is far beyond the ability of the present
writer even to guess at, let alone relate.
Saying his last farewell to the Hales in Chicago, Swamiji went on
to New York, where he arrived on the hot summer day of Thursday,
June 7, 1900.

Changes had taken place in the New York Vedanta Society since
Swamiji had last been on the East Coast. The opening of a
membership roll had at once increased the Society's funds, thereby
making possible the rental of an entire house for its headquarters. In
April or early May the Society had accordingly moved from its
rooms at 146 East Fifty-fifth Street to a modest, four-story house at
102 East Fifty-eighth Street, just off Park Avenue (a little more than
two blocks east of Fifth Avenue). The neighborhood was very much
more fashionable than those in which Swamiji had lived and worked
during his first visit to America, and the house less dreary. As was
usual in New York houses of that period, the ground floor was given
over to a kitchen and a dining room; the second, or parlor, floor had
ample space for reading room and library, classroom and reception
room, or drawing room. "On the floor above the drawing room," to
quote from a Bengali biography of Swami Abhedananda, "was the
sitting room of the Swamis. There was only one bed in the Vedanta
Society house, and they gave it to Swami Vivekananda. Swami
Turiyananda and Swami Abhedananda slept on the floor."68 (Prior to
the rental of the house, Swami Abhedananda had lived in a poor
rooming house, and Swami Turiyananda, as mentioned earlier, had
been the guest of Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler in Montclair, New Jersey,
from which, when necessary, he had traveled the twenty miles to
New York.) On the fourth floor of the Vedanta Society's house there
was, no doubt, a sparsely furnished bedroom or two,
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where the housekeeper (a Mrs. Crane at this particular time) and
hardy guests could sleep.
(It should be mentioned here, lest confusion arise, that one of
Swamiji's first published letters from New York dated June 23, 1900-
bears the return address "146E. 55th St." -the address of the rooms the
Society had earlier occupied. I have not seen Swamiji's original letter,
but would hazard the guess that it was written on leftover stationery
printed with the old address. Other sources leave no doubt that the
Society had moved into its new quarters well before June and that
Swamiji, with the exception of a short visit to Detroit, lived in the
Fifty-eighth Street house throughout his stay in New York.)
The furnishings and decor of the house were not, perhaps, on the
ample or spruce side. Indeed, as one can infer from a report written in
the fall of the following year, the interior was in a sorry state.
"[Swami Abhedananda] returned to New York [from California] at
the beginning of October [1901]," this report reads, "and had the
pleasure of finding the Society house entirely renovated and made for
the first time a really suitable home for the work. All the rented
furniture had been removed, the walls rehung, the floors recarpeted,
and the classroom where the daily meditation is held, converted into a
sort of chapel."69
But shabbily and meagerly furnished as the house may have been
in 1900, the rental of it was a milepost in the Vedanta Society's
history. Swamiji was delighted. At a reception the Society was to
accord him a few days after his arrival he "expressed his satisfaction
at being able to live in the Vedanta Society's own house. And he said
joyfully, `I have knocked at the door of New York three times: it
never opened. But now I am very happy to see that the Society has a
house of its own.' "70 (Actually, the Society did not have a house of
its own; it had a rented house. Still, a rented house in a good
neighborhood was a big step above a rented flat in a poor one.)
Other changes had taken place in the New York Society
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while Swamiji had been in California. The differences between
Swami Abhedananda on the one hand and the Leggetts, Miss
MacLeod, and Mrs. Bull on the other had been resolved or, at least,
dissolved. "These things get complicated sometimes, in spite of
ourselves," Swamiji had written soothingly to Miss MacLeod from
Alameda, after receiving a number of agitated letters. "Let them take
their shape.''71 And, to be sure, things had of themselves taken shape.
Mr. Leggett had resigned from the presidentship; one of Swami
Abhedananda's disciples, Dr. Herschell C. Parker, a professor at
Columbia University, had been unanimously elected president by the
newly enrolled membership, the bylaws had been changed, giving the
Swami in-charge some measure of control over the Society's
activities, and Mr. and Mrs. Leggett, Miss MacLeod, and Mrs. Bull
had all withdrawn from the field and gone off to Europe. The waves
created by the recriminations that had flown back and forth had, to be
sure, not yet fully subsided, for inevitably people had taken sides, and
there was tension between the partisans, be they old guard or new.
"Arriving here I found the Society nearly broken to pieces," Swamiji
would write to Sister Christine on July 2; "they had all quarreled
[and] that had all to be patched up."72
But both sides came to the reception. Many of Swamiji's friends
and disciples who had been close to him in 1895and 1896 were surely
there-although some were sadly missing. Josiah J. Goodwin, whose
passage through Swamiji's mission coincided almost exactly with the
deliverance in New York, London, and India of his main message to
the world, had died in 1898. Swami Kripananda (Leon Landsberg), to
whom Swamiji had given sannyasa at Thousand Island Park in 1895,
had, as we have seen, defected in 1898, if not earlier. Swami
Abhayananda, to whom Swamiji had also given sannyasa, had, for
reasons of her own, also turned against him. Others, however, had
been faithful. Sarah Ellen Waldo, one of his brahmacharini disciples,
who had been at Thousand Island Park and was his housekeeper and
secretary in 1896, was still
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connected with the New York Society; Mr. and Mrs. Walter
Goodyear, who had also been among the group at Thousand Island
Park, were still devoted, as was Miss Mary Phillips, one of Swamiji's
earliest supporters in New York and first secretary of the New York
Vedanta Society. Others, certainly, had remained close to him. But
the hot days of summer having descended upon the city, it is hard to
say who among his many New York friends and disciples were in
town. Miss Emma Thursby, Miss Sarah Farmer, Dr. and Mrs.
Guernsey, for instance, may or may not have been. On the other
hand, many new people who had been drawn to Vedanta during the
years Swamiji had been away would have been present to greet him.
In any case, it must have been with joy that he met his friends, old
and new, and with particular delight that he embraced his brother
monks, Swami Turiyananda and Swami Abhedananda, after a six-
month separation. Then there was Sister Nivedita, whom he had left
in Chicago in late November of 1899 to attempt on her own, in this
foreign and not altogether friendly land, to arouse the kind of
sympathy for India that would manifest itself in money-an enormous
amount of sympathy indeed. Her path had been hard and, on the
whole, unrewarding. It is impossible to suppose that during the past
six months or so she had not suffered many an emotional crisis, not
the least of which lay in now confronting her great guru, who must
surely have looked deeply into her mind, questioning, knowing. But
of Sister Nivedita I shall say more later on.
Swamiji's return to New York was noted in both the New York
Daily Tribune and the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. The Eagle, whose
editors knew him well from lectures and controversies of earlier
years, published on June 9 the following item:

VIVEKANANDA RETURNS

The arrival in New York yesterday [?] of Swami

Vivekananda, who was a delegate to the Congress of
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 Religions in Chicago in 1893 and has since lectured in different
parts of this country, will be of interest to many who heard him
in Brooklyn under the auspices of the Ethical Society. The
Swami has just come from California, where for the past six
months he has lectured and taught the Vedanta philosophy. He
is now on his way to the Paris Exposition and will remain a few
weeks in this city at the home of the Vedanta Society, 102 East
Fifty-eighth street, Manhattan. A reception will be given there in
his honor on Tuesday evening.

The next day the Tribune printed the following item, which,
though adding little to the above, would have been welcome news to
many of Swamiji's New York friends and students:

VIVEKANANDA HERE

Swami Vivekananda, who after the close of the Congress of

Religions in Chicago, to which he was a delegate, formed the
Vedanta Society, arrived here yesterday on his way to the Paris
Exposition. He has for six months been lecturing and teaching
the Vedanta philosophy in California and the West. He will
remain in this city for a few weeks at the home of the society,
No. 102 East Fifty-eighth st., where a reception will be given for
him on Tuesday evening.

Much of what is known of Swamiji's lectures and classes during

this period is contained in the report of the assistant secretary of the
Vedanta Society to the Brahmavadin, which has been republished in
the Life and there reads as follows:

On June 7, Swami Vivekananda came to New York from

California and stayed in the Vedanta Society Rooms, 102 E.
58th St., with Swami Turiyananda and Swami Abhedananda. At
that time Sister Nivedita was also in the City and she was
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269
 On the following Saturday, June 9, Swami Vivekananda
conducted the morning class on the Bhagavad-Gita, relieving
Swami Turiyananda, who usually taught the class. On Sunday
morning, June 10, Swami Vivekananda lectured in the Vedanta
Society Rooms on the subject of "Vedanta Philosophy." The
rooms were filled to their utmost capacity with students and old
friends of the Swami. A reception was given to him on the
following Friday evening, thus giving an opportunity to old
friends to meet him once more, and many students who had long
wished to meet the renowned author of Raja Yoga, were made
happy by a few kind words and a grasp of the Master's hand. He
spoke on the object of the Vedanta Society and of the work in
America.
[I interrupt the report at this point to note that the newspapers
had stated that the reception for Swamiji was to be held not on
Friday evening, June 15, but on Tuesday evening, June 12. On
the strength of this erroneous information, a good many people
must have come three days early to meet Swamiji. One cannot
but remark also on how regrettable it is that, except for his
expression of satisfaction that the Society could afford to rent a
whole house, we have no notes of his talk at the reception-re-
grettable because as far as is known this was the only occasion
on which he spoke on "the object of the Vedanta Society and of
the work in America." But to continue with the assistant
secretary's report:]
The next morning, Saturday, June 17 [actually, June 16],
[Swami Vivekananda] also took charge of the class and [on
Sunday, June 17] lectured on "What is Religion?" Sister
Nivedita spoke in the evening on "The Ideals of Hindu Women,"
giving a most beautiful and sympathetic account of their simple
life and purity of thought. The women students, who were
always eager to hear of the every-day life and thought of their
Hindu sisters, especially enjoyed this talk. The Sister Nivedita
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 was pleased at this interest and answered many questions giving
a clearer idea of life in India to most than they had ever known.
On June 23, Swami Vivekananda conducted the Gita class,
and on Sunday, June 24, he lectured on "Thc Mother-Worship."
In the evening Sister Nivedita spoke again on "The Ancient Arts
of India." Her talk was most entertaining because of her
familiarity with the subject. Her visit and conversation were
very instructive. . . .
Swami Vivekananda conducted the class on the morning of
June 30, and the next morning, Sunday, July 1, lectured on the
"Source of Religion." As on all previous occasions, the rooms
were crowded, and all felt it a privilege to listen to him. On July
3, Swami Vivekananda and Swami Turiyananda left New York,
the former going to Detroit to visit old friends, and the latter to
California to establish a Santi Asrama.
On July 10, Swami Vivekananda returned from Detroit and
stayed at the Society rooms here until the latter part of July. On
the 20th [?] he sailed for Paris. . . .73

Of Swamiji's first Sunday lecture and of her own moment of

crisis, Sister Nivedita wrote to Miss MacLeod in a letter, a portion of
which has been published in Reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda.*
After long, grueling, and largely fruitless work in the United States-to
which we shall return-Sister Nivedita had come to New York in early
June. One sees Swamiji through her eyes in the Vedanta Society
parlor-a being whose unimaginable grandeur memory could not
contain, vast in superhuman serenity and power, and yet profoundly
human. I shall quote here only her reaction to his presence, for of his
lecture itself one finds her notes in an Appendix to The Master as I
Saw Him as well as in the Complete Works, under the title "Unity."
This was the first of Swamiji's Western lectures Nivedita had
attended since, half awed, half skeptical, and more deeply stirred than
she had known at the time, she had
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heard him speak in 1895 and 1896 to London audiences.

Swami has just lectured [she wrote]. I went early and took
the seat at the left end of the second row-always my place in
London, though I never thought of it at the time.
Then as we sat and waited for him to come in, a great
trembling came over me, for I realized that this was, simple as it
seemed, one of the test-moments of my life. Since last I had
done this thing, how much had come and gone! My own life-
where was it? Lost-thrown away like a cast-off garment that I
might kneel at the feet of this man. Would it prove a mistake; an
illusion; or was it a triumph of choice; a few minutes would tell.
And then he came; his very entrance and his silence as he
stood and waited to begin were like some great hymn. A whole
worship in themselves.
At last he spoke-his face broke into fun, and he asked what
was to be his subject. Someone suggested the Vedanta
philosophy and he began. . . .
. . . The splendid sentences rolled on and on, and we, lifted
into the Eternities, thought of our common selves as of babies
stretching out their hands for the moon or the sun-thinking them
a baby's toys. The wonderful voice went on . . .
At last-the whole dying down and away in the thought "I
could not see you or speak to you for a moment -I who stand
here seeing and talking-if this Infinite Unity were broken for a
moment-if one little atom could be crushed and moved out of its
place. . . . Hari Om Tat Sat!"
And for me-I had found the infinitely deep things that life
holds for us. To sit there and listen was all that it had ever been.
Yet there was no struggle of intellectual unrest now-no tremor
of novelty.
This man who stood there held my life in the hollow of his
hand-and as he once in a while looked my way, I
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 read in his glance what I too felt in my own heart, complete faith
and abiding comprehension of purpose-better than any
Feeling. . . . 74

Sister Nivedita's report of Swamiji's first lecture as published in

volume eight of the Complete Works duplicates in essence her report
to Miss MacLeod, but it is somewhat more full. "These distinctions
which we so love," she quoted Swamiji as having said, "are all parts
of one infinite fact, and only differ in the degree of expression. That
one infinite fact is the attainment of freedom. . . . We seek neither
misery nor happiness, but freedom. This one aim is the secret of the
insatiable thirst of man. . . . One Infinite alone can satisfy him, and
that Infinite is Himself. When he realizes this, then alone comes free-
dom. . . ." And Sister Nivedita quoted Swamiji's cry of sorrow for all
mankind: "Our lives are but a passing from dream to dream. Man the
infinite dreamer, dreaming finite dreams!"75
There exist two sets of notes of Swamiji's second lecture (Sunday,
June 17), "What is Religion?" One of these is published in the
Appendices of The Master as I Saw Him; the other and much more
full set can be found in volume one of the Complete Works. The
former was, presumably, taken down by Sister Nivedita; but who
took down the latter we do not know.
In the lecture "Unity" Swamiji had equated unity with freedom;
now, in "What is Religion?" he equated the quest for freedom with
religion. " `Freedom, O Freedom!' is the song of the soul," he said. (I
quote here from the briefer notes.) "All worship, all desire for
miracles, is, at bottom, this thirst for Freedom. Science on her
countless watch-towers signals back to the asking soul, `No, not yet!
Nature has no freedom. She is all law.' This is why the idea of God is
essential to the Mind. There must be the concept of some being or
beings with Freedom. Religion thus becomes only a question of the
materialisation or personification of the idea. Even a plant could not
be, without this notion of Freedom. Embodied Freedom, the Master
of Nature, is what we call God."76#

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 In this same lecture Swamiji spoke, as he had in California, of
God as the giver of "not only all that we call good, but evil also." "He
who gave us life, He is pouring out of His vial the direst death. . . . So
face nature. Face ignorance. Face illusion. Never fly. . . . A moment
of terror and then-It is the Lord! The world has been ever preaching
the God of virtue; I preach to you a God of virtue and of sin. No more
looking up and down at each other! The less differentiation, the
sooner God. This is the one sin, differentiation. This is the door to
hell, differentiation. Only when this is broken, when it is pulverised
to atoms, can we attain the goal."77
"And so," as Sister Nivedita wrote to Josephine MacLeod, "the
splendid sentences rolled on and on. . . ."78
"Mother Worship" (Swamiji's lecture of Sunday, June 24) was a
subject on which he seems never before to have lectured, but this
reticence had not been out of distaste. "This morning at eleven,"
Nivedita wrote to Miss MacLeod on June 24 (not July 24, as in the
Reminiscences), "he is to lecture on Mother Worship, and you shall
have every word of that lecture, if I have to pay ten dollars to get it
taken down. It is going to be the great event. Just think of it! It was
mentioned by someone yesterday to me, before him. And he turned
and said, smiling, `Yes, Mother-Worship-that's what I am going to
lecture on, and that is what I love.' Just like that, radiant and at ease
and free."79
If Nivedita obtained a full verbatim transcript of the lecture, it is
not, as far as I know, available today. Yet in addition to "fragmentary
notes, taken by Miss Waldo" (which are published both in The
Master as I Saw Him and in volume eight of the Complete Works
under the title "The Worship of the Divine Mother"), there are
extensive notes of this lecture in volume six of the Complete Works,
entitled "Mother-Worship." Here, again, Swamiji called for strength
in the face of whatever might come, proclaiming that the evil of the
world, as well as the good, is divine. He traced the attempts of
various religions to solve the riddle of good and evil, he spoke of
man's vain
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attempt through the ages to fly from evil, to deny it, to attribute it to
anything but to God. "But we have to face it," he said. "Face the
whole! Am I under contract to anyone to offer partial love to God
only in happiness and good, not in misery and evil? . . . `I am the
Power that manifests everywhere,' says the Mother--She who is
bringing out this universe, and She who is bringing forth the
following destruction. . . . Be bold, face facts as facts. Do not be
chased about the universe by evil. Evils are evils. What of that? After
all, it is only Mother's play. . . . She it is whose shadow is life and
death. She is the pleasure in all pleasure. She is the misery in all
misery."80 "This world is all alike the play of Mother. But we forget
this. Even misery can be enjoyed when there is no selfishness, when
we have become the witness of our own lives. . . . See Her in all,
good and bad alike. Then alone will come `sameness,' the Bliss
Eternal that is Mother Herself, when we realise Her thus. Until then,
misery will pursue us. Only resting in Mother are we safe."81
Of the Bhagavad-Gita classes that Swamiji took over from Swami
Turiyananda, we know only what Sister Nivedita wrote to Miss
MacLeod. But the passage in her letter, brief as it is, is a beautiful
and revealing one, and although I have quoted a little from it in an
earlier chapter, it is worth giving here in full. (In the Reminiscences
this letter is dated July 15, 1900; the correct date is June 16.)

This morning the lesson on the Gita was grand. It began with
a long talk on the fact that the highest ideals are not for all. Non-
resistance is not for the man who thinks the replacing of the
maggot in the wound, by the leprous saint, with "Eat, Brother!"
disgusting and horrible. Non-resistance is practised by a
mother's love towards an angry child. It is a travesty in the
mouth of a coward, or in the face of a lion.
Let us be true. Nine-tenths of our life's energy is spent in
trying to make people think us that which we are not.
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 That energy would be more rightly spent in becoming that which
we would like to be. And so it went-beginning with the
salutation to an incarnation:
Salutation to thee-the guru of the universe,
Whose footstool is worshipped by the gods.
Thou one unbroken Soul,
Physician of the world's diseases.
Guru of even the gods,
To thee our salutation.
Thee we salute. Thee we salute. Thee we salute.
In the Indian tones-by Swami himself.
There was an implication throughout the talk that Christ and
Buddha were inferior to Krishna-in the grasp of problems-
inasmuch as they preached the highest ethics as a world-path,
whereas Krishna saw the right of the whole, in all its parts-to its
own differing ideals. But perhaps no one not familiar with his
thought would have realized that this lay behind his
exclamation, "The Sermon on the Mount has only become
another bondage for the soul of man!"
All through his lectures now, he shows this desire to
understand life as it is, and to sympathize with it. He takes less
of the "Not this, not this" attitude and more of the "Here comes
and now follows" sort of tone. But I fear that people find him
even more out of touch at a first hearing than ever used to be the
case.82

But if some found Swamiji "out of touch" with the surface of life,
it was because he stood at the incandescent center of things, and
many in his audience found themselves drawn as by a powerful
magnet into depths theretofore unguessed. "As he is now," Sister
Nivedita wrote to Miss MacLeod, "nothing can resist him: ' 83 Swamiji
was not at all unaware of the effect of his lectures and classes. Some
twenty years later Swami Turiyananda was to say to a group of
devotees at Benares, "Swamiji used to tell us, `Do you think I only
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 I give them something solid, and they know they receive some-
thing solid.' In New York Swamiji was lecturing to a class," Swami
Turiyananda continued. "Oh, the tremendous effect of it! K. [Swami
Abhedananda] said that while listening to the lecture he felt as if
some force was drawing the Kundalini up, as at the time of
meditation. After the lecture was finished (it took an hour) K.
announced that he would hold a question class. Most of the audience
had gone after Swamiji's lecture. Swamiji rebuked-saying, `A
question-class after this! Do you want to spoil the effect of my
lecture?' Just see! Oh, what a Power Shri Ramakrishna left for the
world in Swamiji! Hasn't he changed the very thought-current of the
world?"84
Even the questions that people asked Swamiji at the close of his
lectures or classes seemed, at least to one listener, out of place-not
breaking the spell, for Swamiji was still there, but introducing an
irrelevant note. "I wish they hadn't asked any questions," this listener
said many years later, "because to tell you the truth, I thought that all
you had to do was to look at this person. Here was perfection. . . .
Some [of the questions] were sincere, but I felt that there were many
who were much more interested in what they were saying than in the
answer Swami might give. One man got up, and his question was so
long and complicated that by the time he got to the end, I had no idea
what his question was about. But Swami answered it in three words,
and those words just punctured the man's [monologue] like a
balloon."85
The listener was a Mrs. Lillian Montgomery, who had come one
Sunday morning in June of 1900 to the Vedanta House to hear the
"new" Swami and who had left "treading on air." Thereafter, she
attended every lecture and class that Swamiji gave during that brief
period-a period of her life that changed her world. The words with
which she sought to describe Swamiji's indescribably immense and
powerful personality are to be found in a letter she wrote more than
half a century later (in 1954) at the request of the then head of the
New York Vedanta Society, Swami Pavitrananda, and also in a
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taped talk that she gave the following year before a gathering of the
members of the same Society. I shall quote here primarily from the
tape of 1955, inserting passages from her letter of 1954 in brackets.
She said in part:

Swami Vivekananda was so entirely different from anything

that we had known in America. I had heard all my life, it
seemed to me, of power and repose, and the first time I had seen
it was in the presence of Swami Vivekananda. And it all came
as such a surprise, because I wasn't prepared for it, really. Just a
short time before that I was really searching for something, and
someone said they had heard of a swami, . . . and that was
Swami Abhedananda. I heard him several times and was very
impressed because he was so different from us; he was very
calm and poised and all that, and I was surprised that he knew so
much about our literature and our sciences. I think I heard him
only twice, when someone said another swami was coming.
Abhedananda had been speaking in a hall, and they told us that
this new swami would speak in a Vedanta House. I wasn't at all
prepared, you see, for Swami's personality. But at that time I
wanted to hear everybody and see everybody, and so I went to
the Vedanta House, and I sat [in the front row] so that I wouldn't
miss anything. [After an interval, a door at the left opened-
Swami entered quietly-his air was unassuming, but]
immediately I knew that there was something extraordinary
about him. [He took his place in high-back chair on the rostrum
just in front of me] ; and there was something about his presence
that fascinated you; you couldn't take your eyes off of him. [His
eyes closed. He sat in meditation. . . . He had the most perfect
head I had ever seen. Perfectly poised.] Power seemed to
emanate from him. I was fascinated; he looked like a living
Buddha; he looked entirely different from any personality I had
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 [Then came the voice in the chant of a Sanskrit invocation-
but a voice of what exceptional quality! It was mellow, but full-
resonant-in tone, bell-like-but, above all, it rang so true.]
And then he rose to speak; [phrases flowed forth without
effort, but every word was molded round a light that brought
new significance to its meaning-he was living the very thoughts
he was expressing.] And as he spoke, veils just seemed to fall
from your eyes; as he was speaking, he gave you an entirely
different impression of personality, an entirely different
impression of the relationship of the individual to the Divinity.
In some way there was no limit to his personality. . . . As we see
people we see them limited because their awareness is entirely
connected to the body. It seemed to me that there was an ocean
of consciousness back of Swami Vivekananda, and in some way
it focused and flowed through his words.
I heard him say "Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall
see God." I had heard those words all my life, but as
Vivekananda was speaking, the purity of that personality was so
great, it just seemed to me that Divinity was reflected in him,
and [I had a new conception of the quotation]. It was as though
his mind was a limpid lake that was reflecting divine light, and .
. . every word he spoke was a revelation. Other people that I
have heard from the pulpit-and I had heard about the best-speak
from a standpoint of faith. But I began to realize that this man
was speaking from something that he was living that every word
he uttered came from a state of realization, such a realization
that the ordinary person cannot imagine. At one time, as I
listened, I thought that lie was so established in the realization
that the soul was eternal that he could stand before a cannon
without fear, and I seemed to sense that if his form vanished that
the light that was shining through it would stay there forever,
that it would never disappear. It was a strange sensation
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at the time. But there was a purity, and an intense power, such a
power as I think we have never seen-that I had never seen, and I
don't expect I will ever see it again. It seemed to pour from an
infinite source, and it was perfectly calm, perfectly reposed.
One thing he said that fascinated me was "face it." He told
the story of how he was walking along a broad wall, and an
elderly monk was back of him, when suddenly a vicious ape
appeared, and was about to attack him. Vivekananda was about
to turn and run, when the monk said, "Face it!" And he turned
immediately and faced it and he felt the power that conquers the
beast. The idea that he gave us was that there was that within
man which could face any situation that came to him, and those
words have always stayed with me; I have never forgotten them.
One thing that impressed me very much was that there was
an absence of the sense of ego. And I saw eventually what that
was, because his whole awareness was turned to that inner
vision. Where the ordinary person has the sense of a little ego,
Swami Vivekananda's sense of `I' had expanded to something
that was vast and deep and very very pure and very very
powerful. It just penetrated within you and aroused something
that was never there before. Some place he has said that you
never see anything outside that isn't within. And I think perhaps
his great power was that he perceived the divinity in all forms,
and he perceived it with such a degree that he awakened it in his
listeners as he was speaking. . . .
He was the only person I have ever seen in whom there
seemed to be no limit to his personality. It was just as if this
outer form was tuned to a realization that was all power and
purity and beauty. There was a beauty that just flowed through
every word that he spoke-every phrase, and as I say, every word
that he spoke took on a different meaning, you had a different
conception
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of the words, and as he spoke, just veil after veil fell from your
eyes, because you sensed the vastness of his realization; it was a
sort of tremendous joy. I don't think he could possibly have
made an awkward movement, or have struck a false tone
because he was tuned to something that was all harmony, all
beauty. There is no one that has appeared at the Metropolitan or
on any stage that has that wonderful voice, or that has that
wonderful magnetism. He just seemed to be a center of spiritual
thought (?) and that emanated from him, and still he was always
calm. But every line of his body followed his thought; it was
just as if his outer form were floating on a great light. . . . It was
something that was very very perceptible and very very tangible
that he brought into the whole room. . . .
It was just as if his form was [carved?] out of an ocean of
light as it were, and somehow that light concentrated and just
poured through the words he was speaking. I find him in his
poems; I find him in his poems much more than in his lectures,
because as you read his lectures with your own conception I
don't think that you can possibly get the tremendous beauty that
flowed through Vivekananda. But in his poems, the more and
more you sink into them, the more you get the intensity of his
feeling, and you know that he was really living every word that
he spoke.
[There was a brilliance of mind, clothed in the warmth of the
heart, and an impressive calmness as he spoke words of wisdom
that were leading you into a realm of higher truth unknown.] It
was the intensity of the emotion of his heart that brought into
manifestation the brilliance of his mind. But they weren't
separated. We think of the intellect as something rather cold, but
in Swami Vivekananda -you felt that all the energy of his body,
all of his emotions had been concentrated and turned towards
this one vision. That's why there was a complete whole, there
was
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 a complete fulfillment. I couldn't imagine that Swami
Vivekananda had cast out anything; I don't think that any part of
his body he thought was unholy or anything like that, but it
seemed to me that he had transmuted all the elements of his
body into a much finer element. It was almost transparent-but
still it was full of power and force; there was no weakness
there. And all the time he was speaking it was that warmth of
heart that was clothing the brilliance of the mind; so that with
his whole personality you felt that all his energy, all his
emotions were directed by this vision of his mind; nothing could
have gone astray. . . .
He was filled with such ease, and all you saw was this
tremendous beauty, and it was spoken with such childlike
simplicity that it just seemed that that was the natural state-that's
what we all ought to be doing, just the same as Swami
Vivekananda. . . .
I had the feeling that there was something that penetrated
right through the very depth of my being. As I say, the whole
world changed as Swami was speaking, because every word he
spoke he spoke with his great realization. He lived every word
that he spoke. . . .
I'll tell you, you just sat there and your whole vision changed,
and you saw such a wonderful world; you saw a world just
palpitating with light, and you were part of it, and it was all
harmony and beauty, and no false notes or anything like that.
And as you left you just trod on air; you lived in the presence
even after you left him. . . . It stays with you, that's it, you see.
You feel that that power is always there, that you can never lose
it.86
As Mrs. Montgomery remembered it, not many people attended
Swamiji's lectures at the Vedanta House, for they were intimate,
unpublicized talks, and the double parlor rooms were small. Still, as
many people came as one could expect during the summer month of
June. According to a number of
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entries in Swami Abhedananda's diary for this period, about thirty
people regularly came to the Saturday morning class; and at the
Sunday morning lectures the attendance was almost always over a
hundred. In addition to recording the size of the audiences, Swami
Abhedananda jotted down the amount of the Sunday collections.
These seem to have been incredibly -one might say, disgracefully-
small, averaging about fifteen dollars. (Yet fifteen dollars for a
hundred people was, one might also say, a good deal more generous
than the collection at the Unitarian church in Oakland of thirty dollars
for fifteen hundred; and on one Sunday morning in New York two
bounteous checks for twenty dollars each were added to the plate.) As
for the class, Swami Abhedananda noted the collection on only one
Saturday: "about $3.50."
However, Swamiji no longer cared about earning money; nor did
he want to lecture before large crowds. "This time I want to let upon
New York the charge of the Light Brigade,"87 he had written to Miss
MacLeod on April 10, just before moving from San Francisco to
Alameda. But two months later his mood had changed. "I am
working some though not hard," he wrote to Sister Christine on June
15, "-[in order] to get the old friends together and put the thing in
shape."88 Telling of these days, Miss Waldo writes in her brief
account of his life and work in America, "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."89
Regrettably, Miss Waldo, who had taken down invaluable notes of
Swamiji's talks at Thousand Island Park, of which he once said to her
with delighted approval, "How could you have caught my thought
and words so perfectly!"90 did not (as far as we know) take notes of
his informal classes and talks at 102 East Fifty-eighth Street, and thus
much of that period, the very last he was to spend among
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his American disciples, a period in which he surely held back nothing
of thought or of power, is lost to us.
Apart from knowing that he gave intimate talks, Gita classes, and
Sunday lectures, we have very little information of Swamiji's
activities in New York that sweltering summer. Here and there,
however, one catches sight of him. We see him, for instance (through
Swami Abhedananda's diary), spending the rainy afternoon of June
14 with Swami Turiyananda and a Dr. Kate Stanton at Coney Island.
(Swami Abhedananda had escorted them there and had then returned
home.) Again on June 19, we find him riding with Swami
Abhedananda on the Third Avenue El to the Bronx Zoo. (They did
not return home from that excursion until seven o'clock, at which
time Walter Goodyear came to dine.) And on a Sunday afternoon,
after lecturing in the morning on "Mother Worship," he and the two
Swamis drove in an open hansom through Central Park accompanied-
or perhaps trailed-by Miss Waldo, Mrs. Crane, the Society's
housekeeper, Sister Nivedita, and a Mr. Thomson. Again, one sees
Swamiji and Swami Abhedananda on the balmy, moonlit evening of
June 10 walking home (perhaps across Central Park and down Fifth
Avenue) from the house of Miss Mary Phillips (then at 208 West
Seventy-second Street), where they had been guests at dinner. And
we learn that on the evening of June 22, Swamiji again had dinner at
Miss Phillips's and later stayed there for a few days, to Nivedita's
great joy, for at the time she was also a guest at this quiet and
congenial boardinghouse.
Once again near her guru, Nivedita again hung on his every word;
she herself, however, had somewhat changed; she was no longer the
ardent young crusader, fully confident of conquering the world with
the power of her own enthusiasm. Behind her lay a season of
arduous, frustrating work, of traveling from place to place in an
unsuccessful attempt to raise money for her girls' school. By the end
of April she had collected $1,046, the $1,000 of which had been
contributed by Mrs. Leggett, a friend, so to speak, of her father's.
Other
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friends of Swamiji's had done what they could. In March, for
instance, she formed "The Ramakrishna Guild of Help in America,"
the purpose of which was to raise funds for her proposed Widows'
and Girls' Home and School in India. Mrs. Leggett was president;
Mrs. Bull was honorary national secretary; there were a number of
vice-presidents, who represented the cities of New York, Chicago,
Boston, Cambridge, and Detroit, and all of whom, with perhaps one
exception, were close friends of Swamiji's. On her own, Nivedita had
made no lasting mark on the American mind, had gained no
substantial support. She had, in fact, received many a rebuff, perhaps
the most crushing and least expected of which had come from Mary
Hale, whom she had, all unwittingly, managed to offend.
It would be unrealistic to think that Nivedita's overall failure in
America, coming as it had on the heels of the London debacle, had
not disheartened her. Swamiji, who well knew the difficulty of
pleading India's cause in America, was equally well aware of his
disciple's hours of despondency. Throughout those trying months, he
had written many bracing, consoling letters to her, assuring her that
somehow money for her school would come; or, "if it does not come,
who cares?" he said. "One road is quite as good as the other. Mother
knows best." He assured her also that he would again take London by
storm. "Things shall look up for us, never mind," he wrote from Los
Angeles. "As soon as the [Boer] war is finished we go to England and
try to do a big work there. What do you think? . . . Sturdies and
`Shakies' will all come round-hold on. You are learning your lessons-
that is all I want."91 And later from San Francisco: "Finish your
books, and in Paris we are going to conquer the Froggies." 92
It was in March, after months of talking before largely un-
responsive women's circles, that Nivedita met Patrick Geddes, whom
she had long admired from afar and who was then lecturing in
America. On the strength of her enthusiasm (which she had relayed to
Miss MacLeod in India), the Leggetts invited Geddes and his wife,
sight unseen, to be their house
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guests in New York. Nivedita, also staying with the Leggetts for a
time, came to know him fairly well. The eminent sociologist, who
was then in his forty-sixth year and whose mind was shooting out
ideas as a Roman candle shoots out stars, found an intelligent, eager
listener in this intense young woman; she, for her part, was dazzled.
Like one starving, she sat sown with avidity to the intellectual feast
Professor Geddes spread before her, and on March 13 she wrote to
Swamiji, telling him of her new friend:

Long years ago in England-in the year I first met you,

Norman Wyld . . . told me that if I cd only know Prof. Geddes-
to whom he was proud to be disciple-my soul wd be saved, &
my attitude to Life determined for ever
This function however was played by some one else! Yet all
the time in Kashmir I used to tell S. Sara and Yum Yum of this
man & of the claim Norman had made for him-that he was the
first Sociologist since Spencer to produce a new Br living theory
of Society with a future in it.
Hence the present facts.
He is not in the least disappointing. But I am glad that I
found my own place in the world before I met him. He is a light-
beautiful & lovable-. . . He is a biologist professor of Botany &
Biology-I forget which-at Edinburgh-has brought out various
books-but is better known as an inspirer or stimulator of men in
many activities than as anything very technical. His wife & he
say that Biologists look askance upon him because he wanders
off into Economics & Sociology & what he calls "Geotechnics,"
instead of keeping to his subject.
To look at . . . he is a wee bit like a kind, wise, horned owl-
comparatively young, but with a sort of venerableness of
thought-& the most loving & reverent aspect to ignorance &
weakness that I have ever seen-a great tenderness, in fact.93
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 Nivedita went on at considerable length, telling Swamiji of
Professor Geddes's many ideas, one flowering from the other,
creating rich, fluvial "sequences."
"I enjoyed your account of Prof. Geddes," Swamiji replied, and
added with perhaps unintentional irreverence, "and Joe has a funny
account of a clairvoyant."94
On March 21, Patrick Geddes and his wife left New York for
Paris where he was to organize various sessions of the International
Association for the Advancement of Science, Arts and Education at
the Paris Exposition. Sister Nivedita, fascinated with many of his
theories regarding the evolution of society in relation to environment,
wanting to study them more deeply, and seeing in them an
application to India's problems, committed herself to working for
him, for a time, as secretary. She arranged to meet him in Paris in
early July.
It was only a few days before Sister Nivedita left New York that a
windfall came her way-again through Swamiji. As he had wished, she
called upon Mrs. Collis Potter Huntington, whom, as . the reader will
remember, he had met in San Francisco and who, hearing from him
of Nivedita's work, had wanted to help it. Mrs. Huntington has been
written of by most chroniclers of the era as given to an ostentation
second to none among the wives of the fabulously rich railroad and
mining moguls. At the time of our story, when Arabella Huntington
was in her late forties, she reigned not merely from one mansion, but
from two, the vast edifice on Nob Hill having been something of an
afterthought. Earlier, she had persuaded her husband, a man
personally frugal in the extreme, to build a two-million-dollar house
in New York at Fifth Avenue and Fifty-seventh Street-a mansion
which turned out to look, it is said, "a good deal like a fancy
warehouse," and which bulged with large objets d'art. But however
many huge and ornately furnished houses Mrs. Huntington may have
presided over, she clearly appreciated Swamiji and wanted, quite
sincerely and without fanfare, to donate to his
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cause. He, in turn, as one may judge from his acceptance of her help,
must have recognized her sincerity.
Nivedita's few meetings with Mrs. Huntington (no doubt at the
Fifth Avenue house) were more financially rewarding than her long
months of hard work. On the morning of June 26, she wrote to Miss
MacLeod: "Yesterday Mrs. C. P. Huntington gave me $5,000 &
Swami says there is no longer any secret. He only did not want you
all to know until the thing was done -as that sort of thing makes
people ridiculous. When Mrs. Leggett comes back to New York Mrs.
H. looks forward to knowing her & after consulting with her &
securing her advice, to making a further yearly donation to the
School."95
Whether or not Mrs. Huntington continued to make donations to
Sister Nivedita's school, I do not know. Possibly not, for her attention
soon turned elsewhere. In August of 1900, Collis P. Huntington, the
most powerful of all the railroad tycoons of that era, and perhaps the
most hated for his ruthless dealings and what was said to be his
"scrupulous dishonesty," died of a heart attack in his summer camp in
the Adirondacks. Shortly thereafter Mrs. Huntington became
absorbed in the collection of art works. (Thirteen years later she
married her late husband's nephew, Henry E. Huntington, a multi-
millionaire in his own right and himself a large-scale collector of
paintings. Their combined fortune was enormous, and together the
Huntingtons collected the rarest books and finest paintings available.
The Huntington Library and Museum in San Marino, California-not
far from Pasadena-is their enduring legacy to America.)
Sister Nivedita had now gathered, in all, $6,500, $1,000 of which
sum was from Mrs. Leggett and $5,000 from Mrs. Huntington. It is
reasonable to guess that at least some of the remainder had been
contributed by the vice-presidents of the Ramakrishna Guild of Help.
But in whatever way the money had come, it was, in terms of Indian
currency, a sizable amount. "Swami says that the interest of the
present sum will give me in Calcutta a monthly income of at least 50
Rs. [about
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$17]," Nivedita continued in her letter of June 26, "and that that, with
what I may gain in the next few months, will be enough to begin
upon. So he wants me to leave for Calcutta next January or
February!!! Won't that be joyful?"
Two days after writing this letter, Sister Nivedita sailed from New
York for Paris, where Patrick Geddes awaited her help. (It should be
mentioned that in a letter of June 23, published in the Complete
Works, Swamiji wrote, "Margot starts on the 26th." This is an error,
perhaps typographical. The correct date was June 28.)
Nivedita's conception of her work in India had not yet changed, as
it was to do later on. The day before her departure, a New York
newspaper (today unidentified) printed an interview with her in
which she outlined her future plans. The article read in part:

Sister Nivedita, of the Order of Ramakrishna, will leave

New-York to-morrow for Paris, on her way to India, where she
hopes to resume work in the autumn.
Sister Nivedita is in secular life Miss Margaret E. Noble, an
English woman, whose interest in India led to her joining the
Vedantic order in which she is enrolled. She came to the United
States some months ago in the interest of the Ramakrishna
School for Girls, about to be established in Calcutta. Miss Noble
says:
It is wholly a mistake to suppose that I have renounced either
my nationality or my religion in becoming a sister of the order.
Christianity is the nursery in which my spiritual thought was
trained. In acquiring the larger lessons of life that come when
the world opens to us, we do not renounce the valuable
teachings of the nursery. . . .
I went to India through the influence of a friend in England
who was a disciple of Swami Vivekananda and placed myself
under his direction to a certain extent in my earlier work. The
first thing I had to do was learn Bengali, as none of the women
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 In ten months I had acquired a working knowledge of the
language, so that I opened my school. It was a day school, and
in the time of its existence, which was nearly a year, I learned
what was really needed in India, and it was decided to make the
attempt to establish such a school under the auspices of the
order and especially of the Swami Vivekananda.
My object is to educate the Hindoo girl as the English and
American girl is being educated, without any impertinent
interference with her religious beliefs or social customs. We
make a serious mistake in such interference. . . .
At present our efforts must be directed to the higher classes,
but eventually I hope to reach all. The Hindoo girls who are
trained in our schools will go home eager to specialize in
various social directions. We shall teach the Bengali and the
English language, literature, elementary mathematics and some
one elementary science with extreme thoroughness, and manual
training, beginning in the kindergarten and finally reviving old
Indian industries and arts. I believe that manual training gives
more effectiveness to character than anything else. . . .
We intend, if we succeed in acquiring means, to buy a house
and a piece of land on the banks of the Ganges near Calcutta,
and there to take in some twenty widows and twenty orphan
girls-the whole community to be under the guidance and
authority of Sarada Devi.
I am sure that the plan will succeed. I have found much
sympathy and encouragement in America. Two New-York
women have given the bulk of the money I have received here,
one contributing $5,000 and one $1,000, and a Ramakrishna
Guild of Help has been formed, from which we expect much.
Mrs. Francis H. Leggett is the president, Mrs. Ole Bull of
Cambridge is National secretary, and there are branches in a
number of the large cities.
Miss Noble is an earnest woman and wears the simple
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 black gown of the order. Her only ornament is a Hindoo rosary,
which differs from the Roman Catholic in having 108 beads,
instead of 100. It is older than the Roman Catholic and is
intended merely as an aid in concentration of thought. 96

While Swamiji was in New York an event of great moment took

place in connection with his work in California. As was bound to
happen sooner or later, it had become apparent to some of the
Vedanta students in New York that one could not enter deeply into
the search for God without at the same time wanting to renounce the
world externally as well as internally and devote oneself to intense
spiritual practice. It was also apparent that in Western countries
where the mendicant monk was not an acceptable part of the
community, outward renunciation, unless one joined an established
monastery or convent, was impossible or, at least, highly unpractical.
Swamiji had long ago foreseen this difficulty and during his first visit
to the West had often spoken of the need for a Vedantic ashrama or
retreat. But it was not until early in 1899, when one of Swami
Abhedananda's students, Cornelius Heijblom (sometimes spelled
Heyblom), renounced the world and received the name by which we
already know him-Gurudasa -that the problem became real. Another
of Swami Abhedananda's students, Miss Minnie C. Boock, offered a
solution. She possessed, it so happened, a homestead in California
that had been issued to her some eight years earlier by President
Harrison and that contained, according to the Official Plat of the
Survey, "one hundred and fifty-nine acres and eighty-nine hundredths
of an acre." This property could, she thought, fill the need for an
ashrama. "It had its disadvantages," Gurudasa (then Swami
Atulananda) later wrote, "it was fifty miles from the nearest railway
station and market, but it would do to begin with. It would be solitary
anyhow. And she very
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generously offered this place to Swami Vivekananda."97
This, incidentally, was not the first time Swamiji had been offered
a piece of land in California. In April of 1896, just as he was leaving
New York for London, a telegram arrived: "Gift to Swami from
Richardson, valleyland California for retreat. Will write particulars.
Bon voyage. Florence Adams."98 Who Richardson was and where in
California the "valleyland" was located, we do not know at present.
In any case, nothing seems to have come of the offer; it was wrongly
cued, as though the idea of a retreat in California had somehow
slipped from its place in the ordered course of things, appearing like a
portent long before the time was ripe.
The time was ripe on June 25, 1900, on which date Miss Minnie
Boock deeded her homestead to Swamiji, "to have and to hold," the
record reads, " . . . in trust for the general use and benefit of the
Vedanta School of Philosophy."99 Thus came into being Shanti
Ashrama, the first Vedanta retreat in the Western world.
Swamiji accepted Miss Boock's gift with what must have been
delight and toward the end of June sent off the following heretofore
unpublished letter to Mrs. Hansbrough:

102 E. 58th
The Vedanta Society
[New York, N.Y.]
Dear Mrs. Hansbrough

I have not written you a line since you left San Francisco. I
am well and things are going on well with me.
I am in New York once more, where they have got now a
home for the Society and their headquarters. I and the other
Swamis also live there.
A San Francisco lady now here-owns a plot of land near Mt
Hamilton 12 miles east of Lick observatory 160 acres in all. She
is going to make us a present of it. It would be nice for a
Summer gathering for us in California if friends like to go there
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292
 written authority. Will you write to Mrs. Espinol [Aspinall] and
Miss Bell etc. about it. I am rather desirous it should be
occupied this summer as soon as possible. There is only a log
cabin on the land for the rest they must have tents.
I am sorry I can not spare a Swami yet.
With all love to you and Mrs. Wykoff and the baby of the
family.
Ever yours in the Truth
Vivekananda

P.S. Tell Helen-I thank her for her kind invitation but so
sorry can not accept it now. After all you three sisters have
become a part of my mind forever.
What about the [the word is illegible]?100
V.

Swamiji himself wrote to Miss Bell (one learns from a letter of Ida
Ansell's to Mr. Allan), asking her to go to the property and take
possession. But Mrs. Aspinall, always practical and perhaps aware of
the living conditions east of Lick Observatory, dissuaded her. In the
meanwhile, Swamiji asked Swami Turiyananda, to whom he had
already assigned the California work, to establish the Ashrama. "It is
the will of the Divine Mother that you should take charge of the work
there," Swamiji told him. Swami Turiyananda smiled. "Mother's
will? Rather say it is your will. Certainly you have not heard the
Mother communicate Her will to you in this matter." But Swamiji
grew grave. "Yes, Brother," he said. "If your nerves become very
fine, then you will be able to hear Mother's words directly." He spoke
with such fervor that Swami Turiyananda's doubts were stilled. 101
Even as a year or so earlier he had agreed, out of love for Swamiji, to
come to America, so he now agreed to try to establish a retreat in far-
off California.
Accompanied by Miss Boock, the Swami traveled to southern
California, arriving on Sunday, July 8, 1900. As has not been
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heretofore known, the two travelers went directly to the small town of
Alhambra (near Los Angeles), where they became the guests of Mr.
and Mrs. Thomas Lister, Miss Boock's sister and brother-in-law. How
many days Swami Turiyananda remained at the home of the Listers is
not certain, but he carried with him an introductory letter from
Swamiji to Mrs. Hansbrough, which he evidently sent to her at once.
It read as follows:

3rd July 1900

102 E. 58th Street
New York
My dear Mrs. Hansbrough--
This is to introduce Swami Turiyananda. The lady who gave
the piece of land for Vedanta work belongs to Los Angeles. She
has taken Turiyananda with her. He is a great spiritual teacher-
but has no experience in platform work.
The best thing would be to help him to start a center for quiet
and rest and meditation in the land near San Jose.
With all love to the holy Trinity.
Ever yours in the Lordl102
Vivekananda

In no time Swami Turiyananda found himself living in the Meads'

house in South Pasadena, occupying, almost certainly, the room that
Swamiji had lived in for many weeks and coming to know the people
Swamiji had known so well.
He stayed with the Meads for two weeks or so. Then he traveled
to San Francisco, where, on the evening of Thursday, July 26, he was
greeted by the Vedanta Class at its regular meeting at Dr. Logan's
office. A week later, on the afternoon of Thursday, August 2, the
Swami and eight students, including Mrs. Aspinall, Ida Ansell, and
Dr. Logan (Miss Bell and Miss Boock had gone on ahead) traveled
by train to the town of San Jose, sixty miles south of San Francisco.
The following day they made a hot and arduous trek, partly by
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294
partly by mule-drawn wagon, thirty-five miles east over the
mountains to the isolated San Antone Valley.
The story of Swami Turiyananda's valiant attempt to establish a
Vedanta retreat has been told in "Early Days at Shanti Ashrama," a
history that appeared some ten years ago in Prabuddha Bharata and
that includes much theretofore unpublished material.103 It is enough
to say here that it was a story of light and shadow both. Because of its
remoteness, the San Antone Valley was an ideal place for a
contemplative retreat; but it was a demanding place as well. There
was very little water, the climate during most of the year was one of
extremes-burning hot in summer, freezing cold in winter and the
accommodations were, to say the least, primitive. Further, the valley
was a day's journey, for the most part over rough, barely passable
roads, from a market or any other kind of store. None of these
inconveniences mattered to Swami Turiyananda, nor would they have
mattered to students trained in spiritual discipline and ready for a life
of austerity, renunciation, and meditation; but with the exception of
Gurudasa, none of those who spent a long or a short time at Shanti
Ashrama (some came from the young San Francisco Vedanta Society
and some from the Home of Truth) were thus ready.
Most of them, however, were earnest, and those who lived at the
Ashrama for any length of time plunged into the new and difficult
way of life with a zest and vigor that in the presence of Swami
Turiyananda they could not help but feel. They were carried, as it
were, in the current of his great spirituality. The Swami, Gurudasa
later wrote "never spared himself; he, did not think of his own health
or comforts; he had only one object, namely to bring these eager
students to the feet of his Divine Master. . . . He became a channel of
the inflow and outflow of a great spiritual Power. He had no other
thought but to do God's will. . . . The students had to respond; the
Swami's ardour was infectious."104 And the Swami was constantly
vigilant, watching carefully over his charges, teaching them, scolding
them, correcting their shortcomings, helping
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them to break obstructive habits and attachments, striving to keep
harmony; he looked after them, as he later said, "almost twenty-four
hours a day." There was no respite for him.
Except for a period of three months in the early part of 1901,
when he worked in San Francisco and Los Angeles, he lived
continuously at the Ashrama. For the students, the experience was
unforgettably beneficial; but the cost to Swami Turiyananda was
high. Early in September of 1901, exhausted and badly in need of a
change, he left the San Antone Valley for Donner Lake, a rustic
resort area in the High Sierra. He stayed there for some five weeks
and then went directly to San Francisco, where, almost at once, he
became seriously ill. Recovering somewhat, he returned to Shanti
Ashrama for the winter and spring. Only Gurudasa and two or three
other students were with him during this period, and he remained
much of the time in retirement.
Receiving news of his brother's illness, Swamiji, then in Benares,
became concerned. He wrote anxiously to Mrs. Hansbrough in
February. His letter, heretofore unpublished, read in full:

Benaras
14. Feb. 1902
My dear Mrs. Hansbrough,

I am eternally indebted to you for what you did for me in the

past and infinitely more now-for what you are doing to
Turiyananda.
A gloom came over the Math when news reached Calcutta of
his severe illness. Now-I hope-he has recovered completely-and
I will be so glad to get the news from you.
It seems the American climate does not suit him-in that case
it will be better for him to come over to India whenever he
thinks fit.
In all probability I am going to Japan in a month or
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 two. Ramakrishnananda accompanies me. Turiyananda may
come over to Japan and I go to America-- `Mother" knows best
however and we obey.
I am just now in Benaras for a few days. All letters should
however be addressed to the Belur Math.
Kindly convey my best love to Turiyananda and to yourself,
the holy family and the other friends.
Ever yours in the Lord
Vivekananda

P.S. Let Turiyananda take rest all the time now-he must not
work at all till I reach Japan or America. 105
V.

In March of 1902, Swamiji, increasingly anxious over his

brother's health, wrote to Dr. Logan, asking that the Swami be sent
back to India. Nor did he rest with this: he asked Swami Saradananda
to write both to Dr. Logan and to Swami Turiyanarida. Swamiji's
letter no longer exists (if it was received); but that of Swami
Saradananda to Dr. Logan, dated April. 3, 1902, was written into the
Society's Minutes. Mr. Wollberg's presumably true copy of it reads in
part as follows :

My dear Dr. Logan:

.......
The Swami [Vivekananda] hopes that you have received his
letter by this time, requesting you to make arrangements to send
the Swami Turiyananda back to India, as he has not been
keeping well there.
The Swami has become very anxious to know of Swami T.'s
last illness. He himself has not been keeping very well and only
a little month ago we were seriously alarmed to find him almost
run down. He is much better however by a month's treatment &
shows signs of perfect recovery ere long. . . .
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297
 hopes that his letter to you intimating his wish to send Swami T.
back has not been miscarried.

Most truly yoursl06

Saradananda

On June 6, 1902, Swami Turiyananda sailed from San Francisco

for India. According to the Pacific Vedantin, he intended to return to
California after a year's rest. But it is said that when his homeward-
bound ship touched port in Rangoon and he learned the thunderbolt
news of Swamiji's death a week earlier, he then and there, in an
agony of grief, threw his Western clothes into the Bay of Bengal,
knowing that he would never have the heart to return. And return he
never did. There is evidence that this was as Swamiji would have
wished. "Sarada [Swami Trigunatita] will soon be leaving for
America to replace Brother Hari [Swami Turiyananda]," Swami
Premananda wrote to Swami Abhedananda on August 20 of 1902.
"Swamiji had arranged this before his death."107
Although it is true that an ashrama was not established on a
working basis during Swami Turiyananda's stay in California, the
months that he spent in the San Antone Valley, meditating, practicing
austerities, living continually in a high state of spiritual
consciousness, teaching from Sanskrit scriptures, chanting, speaking
of God-those months, about fifteen in all, did not by any means go in
vain. Shanti Ashrama still holds, as in a chalice, all that the great
Swami gave to it-an undying legacy of spirit. He made it a holy
place; and a holy place, a place of pilgrimage, it is today. Nor is it
unlikely that at some future time it will flourish as a livable retreat for
those who wish, and are ready, to renounce the world permanently
and live a secluded, contemplative life dedicated to the full
realization of God. When that day comes-and surely it will come,
though when, who can say? - the holy land that Swami Turiyananda
created will be a source of spiritual inspiration and vitality to
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298
 Further, one can, I think, surmise that when a Prophet of the
stature of a Swami Vivekananda inaugurates a work on this visible
level-no matter how small in measure it may be, or whether, as such,
it succeeds or fails-a tremendous, creative current is set in motion on
deeper, more subtle levels, which nothing can stop from eventually
becoming a historical force. One might say, in short, that at Shanti
Ashrama Swamiji's idea of Vedantic retreats in the Western world
became a power, and their future establishment thus became assured.

But let us return to the summer of 1900 when Swamiji was still in
New York and Swami Turiyananda was about to set out for
California. It was in the late afternoon of July 3, two days after
Swamiji's last Sunday lecture at the Vedanta Society, that the two
Swamis, accompanied by Miss Minnie Boock, left New York.
Swamiji was going as far as Detroit; Swami Turiyananda and Miss
Boock were traveling on to Los Angeles.
Ever since his arrival in New York in early June, Swamiji had
been assuring Sister Christine that he would not leave America
without seeing her. She had been disappointed in November of 1899,
when he had suddenly left New York for California, canceling his
plans to be with her at Mrs. Bull's home in Cambridge; and she had
again been disappointed when he returned from California to New
York without visiting Detroit. There was also his difficulty with
Sister Christine's address, which he seemed often to have trouble
remembering, either losing his address book, or not being able to
recall which of her various addresses therein listed was the current
one. Some of his letters to her had thus gone astray or were late in
being delivered. "I could not write more as the last few weeks of my
stay in California was one more relapse and great suffering," he wrote
to her from New York on June 9, 1900. "...I wrote you [a letter]
however from770 Oak Street
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San Fran. to which I did not get any reply. Of course, I was bedridden
there & my address book was not in the place I was in; there was a
mistake in number. I cannot believe you did not reply willingly."

As you see, now I am in New York [he continued] and will

be here a few days. I have an invitation from Mrs. Walton of
Cleveland Ohio.* I have accepted it. She writes me you are also
invited and have accepted her invitation. Well, we will meet in
Cleveland then. I am sure to see you before I go to Europe.
Either there or anywhere you wish. If you don't think it would
be possible for you to come to Ohio-I will come to any other
place you want me to come to say goodby. . . .
. . . I would be very very glad to get a few weeks seclusion &
rest before I start with friends who do not disturb me at all. . . .
In Cleveland of course there will be a few friends always &
much talkee talkee as a matter of course. So if you think I will
have real peace and rest elsewhere just write all about. . .
How I wish I was in Detroit--or elsewhere just now among
friends, who I know are good & true always. This is weakness-
but when the physical vitality is lowered and the nerves all
unstrung-I feel so so much to depend upon somebody. You will
be glad to learn I made a little money in the west. So I will be
quite able to pay my expenses.108

For one reason or another the Cleveland plan did not work out. On
June 13 Swamiji wrote again to Christine:

I will be here [New York] a week or two and then I come to

Detroit. If things so happen that I can not come, I will sure send
for you. Anyway, I am not going to leave this country before
seeing you. Sure, sure I must see you first, and then go to
Europe.109
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Two days later the very thought of going to Detroit seemed
unbearable to Swamiji, tired as he was of constant talk. "Detroit-
alas! will be no better than New York," he wrote on June 15. "With
so many old friends! How can you avoid friends whom you really
love?"

I will have perfect freedom at yours sure [he went on] -but
how can I avoid seeing friends? and the eternal visiting &
paying visits & much talkee talkee? Do you know any other
place within eight or 10 hours (I want to avoid night rides) of
ride from New York, where I can be quiet and free from the
people (Lord bless them)? I am dead tired seeing people just
now. Just think of that and everything else-if after all you think
Detroit is the best place for me-I am ready to come. 110

And on June 20:

Most possibly, I will be in Detroit next week. If anything

.happens to delay me, don't be anxious. I will not leave the
country without seeing you. It is absolutely necessary.
Well, Mother seems to be kind again and the wheel is slowly
rising up. Did you hear of my friend Miss Muller? Well, she left
me in India-and they say tried to injure me in England. This
morning I got a letter from her that she is coming to the states-
and wants to see me badly!
Her defection was a great blow to me-as I loved her so much
and she was a great helper and worker. She has plenty of this
world's goods and brains but like myself she now and then gets
into violent nervous fits. Now, of course there is good excuse
for her-age; none for me. She wants to come by the end of June.
I of course want her to come earlier. So I wrote her just now. If
possible I will wait-in some quiet country place. But I will come
to Detroit anyhow.111#

301
 (Miss Muller could not come to New York in June, in July,
or in August. It is not likely that she ever made her peace with
Swamiji-if that is what she had wanted to do.)
A week later (on June 27), with three Sunday lectures and three
Gita classes behind him, and only one lecture and one class to go,
Swamiji received an invitation whereby he could escape from all the
"talkee talkee" that so tired him. "This is my plan just now," he wrote
to Christine:

I will have to remain in New York a few days yet to see my

books through. I am going to publish another edition of Karma
Yoga and the London lectures in a book form. Miss Waldo is
editing them & Mr. Leggett will publish.*
Then I think if I am to remain in this country a few days
more-it is better that you get a rest & change. Newport is a
celebrated sea side place-four hours from New York. I am
invited there. I will go there this week and as promised-I find
quiet and retirement & freedom -I will try to find a place for you
and wire you as soon as found.
I am sure in Detroit you can not have rest. A little change of
place-and quiet from time to time is a great factor in regaining
one's vigour.
Well, if you think that you would have better rest & quiet in
Detroit-drop a line-and I come....I am free to go already-only, I
really want you to take a good long rest for some weeks at least.
Don't be afraid of expenses. Mother has amply provided that
and will provide so long I am unselfish. . . .
I am going to Newport anyway just to see what it looks like.
I will write you all about as soon as I am there. 112

Newport, Rhode Island, was the fashionable resort of the very

wealthy, who built huge and increasingly ostentatious "cottages"
along its ocean cliffs. One wonders who among
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Swamiji's affluent friends had invited him there, but whoever it may
have been, it would appear that he did not go, or if he went, it was
only for a day or so, for it was just around then that the gift of Shanti
Ashrama was made. Meanwhile, Sister Christine was growing
impatient.
Your last letter had a note of vexation [Swamiji wrote to her
on July 2]. It is quite natural-but on my part the delay has its
excuses. . . . Then came a gift of land in California and suddenly
as I was getting ready to start last week, it so happened that the
way opened for Turiananda [sic] to go to Califor. He goes today
or tomorrow. I am trying to go with them as far as Detroit but
Mother knows, as I always say.
You pray to Mother. It is hard work to be a leader. One must
crush all his own self under the feet of the community. Anyway
I am coming as soon as I can. Do not worry. I am getting strong
every day.113
And on the following day, July g, Swamiji sent a telegram to
Christine: STARTED REACH TOMORROW WEDNESDAY 2 PM COME STATION
ll4
WABASH.
Of Swamiji's visit in Detroit we know few details. He stayed at the
home of Mrs. Greenstidel, Christine's mother, whose address was
then 528 East Congress Street. The house would not have been a rich
one. Indeed, in writing of a visit to the Greenstidels in 1895, Leon
Landsberg (Swami Kripananda) spoke of the household (then at
another address) as "very poor." Christine's father, "a noble, free-
thinking German scholar," who had brought his family from
Germany to Detroit in 1869 when Christine was three years old, had
lacked business acumen and, "as a result, lost all his savings and
inheritance."115 Mr. Greenstidel died when Christine was seventeen,
and the burden of supporting her mother and four (some say six)
younger sisters fell upon her shoulders, where it remained for many
years. (It was not indeed until her mother died in early
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1902 that Christine was free to answer Swamiji's call to serve his
cause in India. She was to arrive there on April 7, 19022, and was to
remain, totally dedicated to his work of educating Hindu women,
until 1914, when she returned to Detroit.)
But poor though they were, the Greenstidels would have shared
with Swamiji whatever they had, and it was perhaps in their parlor
that, as the Life tells us, he "once or twice held conversaziones for the
benefit of his immediate disciples and intimate friends."116 Of both
disciples and friends Swamiji had many in Detroit, for, as is well
known, he had spent several weeks in that city in 1894 and again in
1896, lecturing and holding classes. Except for Sister Christine and
Mary Funke, however, we do not know the names of those who now
(as he had anticipated) gathered around him. (One old and dear friend
would have been missing. Mrs. John J. Bagley, who had introduced
him to Detroit and had later stood by him when his enemies sought to
discredit him, had died in 1898.)
It is from Mary Funke that we gain a glimpse of Swamiji at this
particular period of his life. In London, in August of 1899, she had
found him "very slim." Now, almost a year later, she found him
slimmer still. "He had grown so thin, almost ethereal," she wrote, "-
not long would that great spirit be imprisoned in clay. Once more we
closed our eyes to the sad truth, hoping against hope."117 Swamiji had
indeed grown slim -and this since he had left Los Angeles, for, as we
shall find later, Miss MacLeod, on meeting him in Paris, was also to
remark upon his loss of weight. Yet, Swamiji was not, one thinks,
wasting away, and his health, though not good, was not at this time
irreversibly poor. It was perhaps something else that Mrs. Funke saw:
not a frailness of body but an expansion of spirit that made a stay of
many more years on earth impossible to him.
"Well, Brother, my days are numbered," he had said to Swami
Abhedananda. "I shall live only for three or four years at the most."
"You must not talk like that, Swamiji," Swami Abhedananda had
remonstrated. "You are fast recovering your
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health. . . ." But Swamiji had replied, "You do not understand me. I
feel that I am growing very big. My self is expanding so much that at
times I feel as if this body could not contain me any more. I am about
to burst. Surely, this cage of flesh and blood cannot hold me for many
days more."118 In the Life this conversation is placed in November of
1899; yet it seems far more in keeping with Swamiji's mood in June
of 1900, when he had written not long before, "Bonds are breaking-
love dying . . . I come, Lord, I come. . . . Everything is good and
beautiful; for things are all losing their relative proportions to me-my
body among the first "119
But in this withdrawal and this vastness of being, nothing seemed
to slip from attention or be too small, too trivial, for his care. "The
last time he was with us in Detroit," Mrs. Funke wrote, "he prepared
for us the most delicious curries. What a lesson to his disciples; the
brilliant, the great and learned Vivekananda ministering to their little
wants! He was at those times so gentle, so benign. What a legacy of
sacred tender memories has he left us!"120
According to the Life, Swamiji spent seven days in Detroit, but
this reckoning does not account for the two days he would have
traveled to and fro on the train. To Swami Turiyananda he wrote, "I
stayed in Detroit for three days only."121 This, too, however, is
misleading; for he no doubt meant that he had remained three more
days in Detroit after his brother had gone on to the Pacific Coast. The
truth very likely is that Swamiji stayed in Detroit for five and a half
days (during which he wrote what actually turned out to be his last
will and testament)122 and then returned directly to New York,
arriving there, as we know from a letter he wrote to Mary Hale, on
July 10.123
From then on, until he sailed on July 26 for Europe, Swamiji lived
alone at the Vedanta Society's house. "It is frightfully hot here in
New York," he wrote on July 18 to Swami Turiyananda, who was
then in California. ". . . I have not heard from Sister Nivedita yet. . . .
Kali (Swami Abhedananda] went away
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about a week ago to the mountains [for a vacation in the Adirondacks
with his disciple Dr. Herschell Parker]. He cannot come back till
September. I am all alone, and washing; I like it. Have you seen my
friends? Give them my love."124
In those steaming days of July, after his return from Detroit,
Swamiji was not always alone at the Vedanta House. The
housekeeper, Mrs. Crane, was there to take care of things, and Ellen
Waldo, together with Sister Christine, who had come to New York
with him, were paying guests. In addition there was another guest,
one Mrs. Lowe, of whom Miss Waldo wrote years later to Devamata
in a passage that gives us an interesting view of the household:

Your letter & Mrs. Lowe's duly reached me.... I know the
kind of woman she is & feel sure she could never be of any use
in India. She is lazy & never wants to soil her hands. When Mrs.
Crane kindly gave her a home at 102 [Fifty-eighth Street], she
would not in return help her one bit in the housework. She wd
go & sit down after meals with Swamiji & leave Christine & me
(who were paying liberally for our board) do all the helping of
Mrs. Crane. Swamiji himself reproved her in severe terms for
this behaviour and told her she ought to help in the work, but
she never did. He paid her for her laziness, by never opening his
lips to talk unless Christine and I were there to hear him. He
always addressed himself to us & ignored her, not even
answering her question. When I recall all these things, you can
see how impossible it is for me to believe that he "loved her as
Shiva loves Parvati" ! Neither do I for one moment believe he
appears to her or that he has "made her a Swami." 125

Another memory shows us Swamiji at the breakfast table one July

morning designing the emblem that was later to become the seal of
the Ramakrishna Order and that is today
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306
so familiar to readers of the Order's literature. It was Sister Devamata
who wrote of the incident in her Memories of India and Indians, first
published serially in Prabuddha Bharata of 1932. (In 1896 Sister
Devamata-then Laura Glenn-had regularly attended Swamiji's New
York lectures and classes. She received her monastic name years later
from Swami Paramananda.)
The design which has become the symbol of the Rama-
krishna Mission everywhere [she wrote in her Memories] came
into being in the same casual way as did the "Song of the
Sannyasin." It took shape in 1900 during Swami Vivekananda's
later visit to America. At that time the Vedanta Society of New
York was definitely established and occupied a modest house in
Fifty-eighth Street. Mrs. Crane, the housekeeper, told me that
the Swami was sitting at the breakfast table one morning when
the printer arrived. He said he was making a circular for the
Society and wished to have an emblem to go on it, could the
Swami suggest something? Swamiji took the envelope from a
letter he had just received, tore it open and on the clean inner
surface drew the waves, the swan, the lotus, and the sun circled
by a serpent-the four Yogas wrapped about by eternity, it
seemed. He threw the bit of paper with the design on it across
the table and said, "Draw it to scale." Henry van Haagen, the
printer, was an able draughtsman as well as printer. He
converted the rough sketch into a finished drawing.126
(Mr. Van Haagen, incidentally, was among those who had become
Swamiji's brahmacharin disciples in an earlier year. It was to him that
Swamiji had once said in response to an expression of regret that the
Swami's sublime teachings had no larger following: "I could have
thousands more at my lectures if I wanted them. It is the sincere
student who will help to make this work a success and not merely the
large audiences. If I succeed in my whole life to help one man to
reach freedom,
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I shall feet that my labours have not been in vain, but quite
successful.")127
Sister Devamata's interpretation of Swamiji's design was not quite
correct. "The sun = Knowledge," Swamiji explained to Miss
MacLeod, shortly after creating the design. "The stormy water =
Work. The lotus = Love. The serpent = Yoga. The swan = the Self.
The Motto = May the Swan (the Supreme Self) send us that. It is the
mind-lake."128
Later on in India Swamiji again explained the significance of the
design, this time to the artist Ranadaprasad Das Gupta. "The wavy
waters in the picture are symbolic of Karma," he said; "the lotus, of
Bhakti; and the rising-sun, of Jnana. The encircling serpent is
indicative of Yoga and the awakened Kundalini Shakti, while the
swan in the picture stands for the Paramatman (Supreme Self).
Therefore, the idea of the picture is that by the union of Karma,
Jnana, Bhakti, and Yoga, the vision of the Paramatman is
obtained."129
Or one sees Swamiji in New York through the memoirs of Sister
Christine.

In New York [she wrote], once there was a pitiful little group
that clung to him with pathetic tenacity. In the course of a walk
he had gathered up first one and then another, This ragged
retinue returned with him to the house of 58th Street which was
the home of the Vedanta Society. Walking up the flight of steps
leading to the front door the one beside him thought, "Why does
he attract such queer abnormal people?" Quick as a flash he
turned and answered the unspoken thought, "You see, they are
Shiva's demons."

And from Sister Christine comes still another glimpse during this
same summer of that endless compassion:

Walking along Fifth Avenue one day, with two elderly

forlorn devoted creatures walking in front, he said, "Don't #

308
 you see, life has conquered them!" The pity, the compassion for
the defeated in his tone! Yes, and something else -for then and
there, the one who heard, prayed and vowed that never should
life conquer her, not even when age, illness, and poverty should
come. And so it has been. His silent blessing was fraught with
power.130

On July 24 Swamiji wrote from the Vedanta Society to Swami

Abhedananda, explaining that he could not stay on in New York and
assuring him that the work would in any event flourish. His letter
read in part:

I would have gladly remained here but sastay kisti mat ["I
have been lucky"]--got a fine berth, one room all to myself on a
fine, vessel. As soon as August comes it will be [a] terrible vir
["crowd"] as the companies are reducing the price. . . .
You need not feel the least anxiety about the N.Y. work, it
will go as a marriage bull next season. Give my love to Mrs.
Coulston and explain to her the circumstances.

With all love,131

Vivekananda

Why Swamiji remained in New York as long as he did more than

two weeks-after returning from Detroit is not clear. Perhaps it was to
prolong his last days with his Western disciples; perhaps it was to
attend to the publication of a new edition of Karma Yoga. ("I have
straightened out my business here," he wrote to Miss MacLeod on
July 20. "The works are at Mr. Whitmarsh's suggestion in the hands
of Miss Waldo."132 And a few days later, "I am to start on Thursday
next [July 26], by the French steamer La Champagne. The books are
in the bands of Waldo and Whitmarsh. They are nearly ready.")133 Or
perhaps he was simply waiting, toward the end at least, for a ship on
which to sail.
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 NOTES FOR CHAPTER TEN

p. 237 * For a detailed account of Swamiji‘s initiation of his Indian

work see The Life of Swami Vivekananda (1979), Vol. I,
chap.25. See also World Teacherr –2, chap. 15.

p. 262 *As Swami Vivekananda tells us in his informative article

―what Ever Become of Mary Hale?‖ (Prabuddha Bharata,
March 1985), ―‘Commendatore‘ is an honorary title
bestowed by the Italian government in recognition of services
to the state.‖ To the swami, who did research for his article in
Italy irself, I owe tht date of Matteini‘s death as well as those
of Mrs. Hale and Harriet Hale Woolley.

p. 271 *As published (Reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda, page

290), this letter bears the date June 4, 1900, which, like the
dates given to the other published excerpts of sister
Nivedita‘s New York letters, is manifestly incorrect – though
in this instance the error appears to have been her own (see
Letters of Sister Nivedita, I : 356).

p. 300 *All we know at present of Mrs. (or Miss) Walton is what

Nivedita wrote to Miss MacLeod on May 30, 1900: ―I spent
some days in Cleveland with a rich Catholic lady – a Miss
Walton – who seems to have been the good genius of the
Gordon family, and their next-door neighbour. She is
agonising to have Swami come to her, and has formed the
project of buying a place in the Himalayas as the Seviers
have done …. She has invited Christina Greenstidel to come
to her if Swami does, across the lake [Lake Erie] – as I felt
that might help to bring him. Her longing up to quite lately
has been to die in Florence. But she says

310
p. 300 that seems to have left her imperceptibly and India is now the
(cont.) thing … She is an elderly, very beautiful, and rather severe-
looking woman, but she was like a child. ‗Oh!‘ she said, ‗I
always knew this was some where!‘ As a Catholic, you see,
she has a wonderful background. Things are no trouble to her
that would puzzle us for long‖ (Letters of Sister Nivedita,
I:349)

p. 302 *The second edition of Karma Yoga would be brought out by

the Vedanta Society of New York in 1901. In 1902 th3e
London lectures that Miss Waldo was preparing for
publication in book form would also be brought out by the
Vedanta Society of New York under the title Jnana Yoga.
Two Indian editions had already come out, one published by
Prabuddha Bharatha in Madras in 1897, and the other by the
Udbodhan in Calcutta in 1902. The contents of all these
editions varied one from the other. It was not until much later
that the selection of lectures in Jnana Yoga became
stabilized.) #

311
 CHAPTER ELEVEN

HOMEWARD BOUND-I

On the afternoon of Friday, August 3, 1900, the S.S. Champagne,

which Swamiji had boarded in New York on July 26, docked at Le
Havre. Several hours later (at eight o'clock, according to his telegram
to Mrs. Francis Leggett) he arrived at the Saint-Lazare station in
Paris, that "capital of modern civilization," which, as he had written
in his long Bengali article called in translation "The East and the
West," was "the heaven of luxury, fashion and merriment on earth-
the centre of arts and sciences."1
Swamiji's telegram to Betty Leggett (ARRIVE A HUIT HRES STLAZARE -
- VIVEKANANDA) was first reproduced in Swami Vidyatmananda's
valuable series of articles on Swamiji's life in France in the summer
and fall of 1900,2 which traces Swamiji's footsteps as closely as
possible, supplying information and material that had not before been
known. I shall not retell all those findings here, for as far as the
present book is concerned, Swamiji's stay in France was in the nature
of a denouement, and this in a quite literal, or at least special, sense, it
being in Paris that his Western mission came to an end. Actually, it
had come to an end when he had boarded the Champagne in New
York, or, if one wants to be even more exact, when he had boarded
the Overland Limited at the Oakland mole. All that followed was, one
might say, an added gift to the West from the abundance of his grace.
I shall therefore only briefly review Swamiji's life in France; but in so
doing, I shall draw freely and gratefully upon Swami Vidyatma-
nanda's findings, as well as upon other sources, and shall add, when
possible, a heretofore unknown detail or two.#

312
 Since writing his article, Swami Vidyatmananda has concluded
that the "huit hres" of Swamiji's telegram to Mrs. Leggett meant eight
o'clock in the evening. Who met the train from Le Aavre is not, to my
knowledge, recorded, but one can safely guess that among those
present at the Gare Saint-Lazare was M. Gerald Nobel. M. Nobel was
a friend of the Leggetts, always ready to lend a helping hand. In his
large-scale, old world courtesy he met not only members of the
Leggett family at railway stations in Paris but friends of the family as
well,3 taking care of their luggage, easing them into the city with a
minimum of fuss, and finding them lodgings-his own, if need be.
Tall, handsome, always immaculately dressed, 4 M. Nobel was, it
would seem, the very embodiment of friendship. "It is worth having
been born to have made one friend as Mr. Nobel," 5 Swamiji once said
of this kind and charming man.
Swamiji spent his first night in Paris at Gerald Nobel's apartment,
but whether he did so because the Leggetts, for one reason or another,
could not accommodate him or because Gerald Nobel asserted a prior
claim, we do not know. In any case, M. Nobel was not a stranger to
Swamiji in 1900. The two had met during Swamiji's first visit to the
Westahnost certainly in 1895 at the time of the Paris wedding of
Besse (Betty) MacLeod Sturges and Francis Leggett. Swamiji had
evidently expected to visit M. Nobel on his way from India to
England in 1899, but the plan had been changed. "M. Nobel writes to
me to defer my visit to him at Paris to some other date," Swamiji
wrote to Mr. Sturdy from Port Said, "as he will have to be away for a
long time."6 Later, it had been Gerald Nobel who made arrangements
for Swamiji to speak at the Congress of the History of Religions in
Paris. Indeed, in a sense, M. Nobel was one of Swamiji's Paris hosts-
and thus it was but fitting that he should welcome him at his
apartment the first night.
To the known story of Swamiji's life in Paris one can add here a
brief description of that apartment. This comes to us from the letters
of Dr. Lewis G. Janes, who had sailed across
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the Atlantic at the end of June on the same ship as Sister Nivedita.
Dr. Janes remained in France until September 8, writing regularly and
at length to his wife, at home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His
letters were often full of description and were illustrated here and
there with small drawings of, for example, French priests with long
cassocks and broad brimmed hats, or horse-drawn, double-decked
omnibuses. Dr. Janes's daughters, Mrs. Charles Lytde and the late
Mrs. Edward T. Steel, very kindly made a number of their father's
letters available to me, together with pertinent passages from his
diary and other material that has bearing on Swamiji's life and work.
Although Dr. Janes says little about Swamiji in his letters from
France, he was closely associated while he was there with Mrs. Bull
and the Leggeits, and thus one catches a glimpse from time to time of
the same France that Swamiji saw. One such glimpse is of M. Nobel's
apartment, where Dr. Janes himself stayed. On July 6 he wrote home:

We were met by Miss MacLeod and her friend M. Nobel,

who was most friendly and helpful in getting our baggage
through and has kindly offered rooms at his lodgings for a week
to Mr. Moore [Dr. Janes's traveling companion] and myself. We
spent last night-a fraction of it-there. It is a typical French
residence, opening into a court-yard, and with a pleasant garden
wholly enclosed by the buildings. My room is on the garden,
Mr. Moore's on the street. [The address, as given by Dr. Janes,
was 66 rue Ampere.]7

From Swami Vidyatmananda's article we learn that after spending

his first night in Paris as the guest of M. Nobel, Swamiji went the
next morning at nine o'clock to the Leggetts' house at 6 place des
Etats-Unis. Of this joyful event Miss MacLeod wrote the same day to
Mrs. Bull, who was then in Brittany, that Swamiji had arrived
looking like a boy. He had lost thirty pounds, she reported, and was
vigorous. She went
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on to say that the Geddeses were coming to the Leggetts' for lunch
that day to meet him. To this letter, Swamiji added a postscript that
seemed vigorous indeed and that breathed of well-being and good
spirits: "Hello-Sacred Cow!" And he asked what she was doing off in
the forest, so to speak -meditating or counting Mrs. Briggs's pulse? 8
(Mrs. Marian Briggs was a close friend of Mrs. Bull's, whom he had
met in Cambridge.)
In 1967 Swami Vidyatmananda identified the Leggetts' house and
supplied a photograph of it in Prabuddha Bharata (March 1967). For
several years in the 1960s and '70s the house, then occupied by the art
gallery Vision Nouvelle, was made available by its owner to the
Centre Vedantique Ramakrichna in Gretz for biweekly classes. Thus
the French devotees of Swamiji came to know well the place he lived
in during at least a part of his stay in Paris.
It was not a large house; but it was elegant in the manner of the
belle epoque.9 It was fairly narrow, had four stories plus an attic, a
porte cochere, a large salon on the first floor, and a garden in back. It
was about five minutes' walk from the Bois de Boulogne and about
the same distance from the entrance of the Exposition. Writing to her
husband in connection with the proposed leasing of the house, Betty
Leggett hoped that since the place was modern the house would have
the comfort of modern plumbing.10
If Betty Leggett's assumption about the plumbing was correct,
Swamiji would have been as pleased as she. Several years earlier he
had been dismayed and astonished to find that Paris, "heaven of
luxury" though it was, had few bathrooms-even in the "huge palatial
hotel" (the Hotel Continental) where he had been Mr. Leggett's guest
in September of 1895. "Such hot weather, and no facility for
bathing," he had written; "if it continues like this, I shall be in
imminent danger of turning mad like a rabid dog."11
Very possibly, however, 6 place des Etats-Unis was no better
equipped with bathrooms than most other "modern"
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houses in Paris. "[A] queer thing," Dr. Janes reported to his wife, "is
that there are no bathrooms in the houses." And in this sweeping
statement he did not exclude the Leggetts' house, where, by the time
of that writing, he had been a dinner guest. Furthermore, to rely again
upon Dr. Janes's observations, the Leggetts' house, like other Parisian
houses, was backward in the matter of lighting. Yet another of "the
queer things about this very modern city," he wrote in the same letter,
"is that everybody burns candles. There is neither gas nor electricity
in my room [at M. Nobel's], which is in a modern apartment house.
Gas is usually burned in the streets instead of electricity. . . "12
But candlelight was all the more elegant, and the house was a
perfect setting for the fashionable and scintillating gatherings that
1900 Paris so delighted in. In the second part of his "Memoirs of
European Travel"-to which, as in chapter one, I shall refer as his
Memoirs--Swamiji wrote (originally in Bengali) of "the daily reunion
of numbers of distinguished men and women which Mr. Leggett
brought about at an enormous expense in his Parisian mansion, by
inviting them to at-homes."13
"All types of distinguished personages-poets, philosophers,
scientists, moralists, politicians, singers, professors, painters, artists,
sculptors, musicians, and so on, of both sexes-used to be assembled
in Mr. Leggett's residence, attracted by his hospitality and kindness,"
he related. "That incessant outflow of words, clear and limpid like a
mountain-fall, that expression of sentiments emanating from all sides
like sparks of fire, bewitching music, the magic current of thought
from masterminds coming into conflict with one another . . . used to
hold all spell-bound, making them forgetful of time and place." 14
Except for Swamiji's unexplained return address "boulevard Hans
Swan" (which, as Swami Vidyatmananda points out, must be a
misreading of "boulevard Haussmann") on a published letter of
August 14, it would appear that he made the Leggetts' house his
headquarters until the first week of September,
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occupying (for part of the time at least) "the nursery" -the bedroom
that had been recently vacated by the Leggetts' little daughter and her
governess (both of whom had gone to the seaside in England). 15
Among his old and dear friends at 6 place des Etats-Unis Swamiji
would have felt at home. There were Betty and Francis Leggett,
Josephine MacLeod, and Alberta. With whom Sister Nivedita was
staying at this time is not quite clear from the available records, but
she would, in any case, have visited the Leggetts now and then
(though, as we shall see, relations between Swamiji and his disciple
at this period were somewhat strained). Indeed, the only close friend
from Ridgely Manor days who was missing from the Paris group was
Sara Bull, who, as mentioned above, was in Brittany.
To what extent Swamiji entered into the Leggetts' sparkling "at-
homes" we do not know, but he could not have avoided them
altogether; nor, one thinks, would he have wanted to, for talent and
brilliance of all sorts was, as he said, represented at these gatherings,
and he never failed to appreciate human greatness in whatever form it
might appear. And he could, of course, be as sparkling a
conversationalist as the most urbane of Parisians, match wits with the
cleverest, and defeat in debate the most learned and most intellectual-
some of this, perhaps, in the French language, which he had been
studying off and on since his early wandering days in India,
concentrating on it with some intensity during the past year or so.
"Again I am going to learn French," he had written from Ridgely
Manor to Mary Hale. "If I fail to do it this year, I cannot `do' the Paris
Exposition next year properly. . . . "16 He had continued his study in
California. "I am sure to meet [Harriet in Paris] and parler francais!"
he had written to Mary Hale from Turk Street. "I am getting by heart
a French dictionnaire!"17
But not even Swamiji could have learned to speak fluent French
out of a dictionary. Thus we find him in September moving to the
Paris flat of a Frenchman named Jules Bois, who spoke no English.
Of this move he was to write: "My French
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-well, it was something quite extraordinary! I had this in mind that
the inability to live like a dumb man would naturally force me to talk
French, and I would attain fluency in that language in no time." 18 Yet
even before settling into the lodging of Jules Bois Swamiji had, as he
wrote to Swami Turiyananda on September i, "somewhat mastered
the French language,"19 and his fluency must have been increasing
day by day. One finds that on August 24 he gave a talk "dans 1es
salons de M. leggett," the printed invitation to which is quoted by
Swami Vidyatmananda in his Prabuddha Bharata article of March
1967. He has translated the invitation as follows:

You are invited, you and your friends, to hear a distinguished

scholar, Swami Vivekananda, who plans to explain Hindu
religion and philosophy, this coming Friday, August 24, at 4: 00
o'clock, at the house of Mr. Leggett,
6 Place des Etats-Unis, Paris20

This invitation does not say, it is true, that Swamiji would give his
discourse on "Hindu Religion and Philosophy" in French, but it does
not, on the other hand, say he wouldn't. Further research may settle
the point.21
Apart from his intimate circle, many of Swamiji's old friends were
in Paris that summer. There were, for instance, Sarah Bernhardt, the
great actress, whom he had known in New York in 1896; Emma
Thursby, the famous concert singer; Jane Addams, the Chicago social
worker and settlement founder; Dr. Lewis G. Janes, the social
evolutionist; Emma Calve, the operatic diva; Mrs. Potter Palmer, the
social queen of Chicago; Mr. and Mrs. Milward Adams (Florence
Adams), also of Chicago; Jagadis Chandra Bose, the great Bengali
scientist of whom Swamiji was so proud; and, if nothing had
prevented, Harriet Hale (Mrs. Clarence Woolley) and her husband.
Miss Sarah Farmer, the founder of Greenacre, was somewhere in
Europe at this time, visiting various health
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resorts, as was Professor William James, who dropped into Paris
from time to time.
In the city that summer was also Hiram Maxim, the famous,
delightful, and somewhat eccentric inventor, who was best known, to
his regret, for his rapid-fire machine guns. "Have I done nothing
else," he would protest, "except invent that engine of destruction!" He
had indeed done more. He had, in fact, been a pioneer in the electric-
lighting field in America and had invented, simultaneously with
Edison, the incandescent light bulb. (Edison had managed to get to
the patent office a few days ahead of Maxim, for which stroke of luck
the latter never forgave him.) Maxim had also invented an improved
mousetrap and, in 1894, a flying machine powered by a steam engine.
(The last did not prove practical.) A vigorous sixty years old in 1900,
he had heard Swamiji speak at the Parliament of Religions, had later
met him in London, and held him in high esteem. "Maxim," Swamiji
was to write in his Memoirs, "is an admirer of China and India, and is
a good writer on religion and philosophy etc. Having read my works
long since, he holds me in great-I should say, excessiveadmiration."22
His admiration for Swamiji was indeed great. In the foreword to his
book Li Hung Chang's Scrap-Book (1913), a documented polemic
against Christian missionaries in China, whom, as Swamiji remarked,
"he cannot at all bear,"23 Sir Hiram Maxim (he was knighted by
Queen Victoria in 1901) wrote at some length of Swamiji's
appearance at the Parliament of Religions. The reader will not mind a
digression, I think, to learn with what delight and relief he, like
thousands of other Americans, had heard the young Hindu monk in
1893. He wrote:

A few years ago there was a Congress of Religions at

Chicago. Many said that such a thing would be impossible. How
could any understanding be arrived at where each particular
party was absolutely right and all the others were completely in
the wrong? Still the Congress
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saved the American people more than a million dollars a year,
not to mention many lives abroad. And this was all brought
about by one brave and honest man. When it was announced in
Calcutta that there was to be a Congress of religions at Chicago,
some of the rich merchants took the Americans at their word,
and sent them a Brahmin monk, Viva Kananda, from the oldest
monastery in the world. This monk was of commanding
presence and vast learning, speaking English like a Webster.
The American Protestants, who vastly outnumbered all others,
imagined that they would have an easy task, and commenced
proceedings with the greatest confidence, and with the air of
"Just see me wipe you out." However, what they had to say was
the old commonplace twaddle that had been mouthed over and
over again in every little hamlet from Nova Scotia to California.
It interested no one, and no one noticed it.
When, however, Vive Kananda spoke, they saw that they had
a Napoleon to deal with. His first speech was no less than a
revelation. Every word was eagerly taken down by the
reporters, and telegraphed all over the country, where it
appeared in thousands of papers. Viva Kananda became the lion
of the day. He soon had an immense following. No hall could
hold the people who flocked to hear him lecture. They had been
sending silly girls and half educated simpletons of men, and
millions of dollars, to Asia for years to convert the poor
benighted heathen and save his alleged soul; and here was a
specimen of the unsaved who knew more of philosophy and
religion than all the parsons and missionaries in the whole
country. Religion was presented in an agreeable light for the
first time to them. There was more in it than they had ever
dreamed; argument was impossible. He played with the parsons
as a cat plays with a mouse. They were in a state of
consternation. What could they do? What did they do? What
they always do-they denounced him as an agent of the devil. But
the deed was done; he had sown the
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 seed, and the Americans commenced to think. They said to
themselves: "Shall we waste our money in sending missionaries
who know nothing of religion, as compared with this man, to
teach men as he? No!" And the missionary income fell off more
than a million dollars a year in consequence. 24
(One might mention in passing that Mr. Leggett appears to have
been among those Americans who had stopped contributing to the
missionaries after knowing Swamiji. According to Mrs. Hansbrough,
Swamiji had once said, "When I exposed the missionaries, Mr.
Leggett stopped giving his ten thousand dollars a year to them. But,"
he had added, laughing, "he did not then give it to me!")25
Among the old friends Swamiji met again in Paris was the
amazing Mrs. Melton, the magnetic healer, whom the Leggetts had
brought from California to New York and thence to Europe. Mts.
Melton, one finds, was now known as "Mrs. Walden." Whether this
change of name was due to a change of husband or of fancy, I do not
know; but in any case, I shall henceforth refer to her by the name she
now called herself rather than that which she bore when Swamiji was
first flayed by her treatments in Los Angeles. In a sensational article,
from which I shall have occasion to quote at some length in the
following chapter, the New York World of November 11, 1900,
mentions the Leggetts' household in Paris and includes in its
irresponsible and unpleasantly facetious story an account of the
magnetic healer. This portion of the article reads:

All last summer the Leggetts were in Paris. They hired Lady
Cunard's house [The house did not belong to Lady Cunard,
though she was a close friend of Betty Leggett's.) and spent a
great deal of money in entertainments.
Mrs. Weldon [Walden] is a remarkable character. She is a
Southern woman of refined appearance, but professes to be
unable to read or write. Although she shows no
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 trace of negro origin she speaks in a negro dialect. An American
woman tells how, having sought to make an appointment with
the "healer" by letter and having afterward spoken to her about
it, Mrs. Weldon said:
"Lor' bless yo', honey, I caint read ner write. Yo' jess speak
to Mrs' Leggett ef yo' wunter see me."
That was the cue at all times. Only through Mrs. Leggett
could the "healer" be approached. . . .

In Paris Swamiji surely met many other old friends whose names
have not come down to us, for tens of millions of people from
America, England, other parts of Europe, and even from India
crowded into the French capital that summer of the International
Exposition.26 And he of course made many new friends of all types
and classes, as he always did wherever he went. In Prophets of the ,
New India Romain Rolland regrets that "only Father Hyacinthe and
Jules Bois [of both of whom more later] should have been the guides
of so penetrating a spectator of the moral life of the West in Paris in
his researches into the mind of France."27 But certainly during his
stay of almost three months in France so penetrating a spectator as
Swamiji discovered much more of the French mind and morals than
was represented by the young Jules Bois or the aged Pere Hyacinthe.
Surely he talked with other Frenchmen, meeting them both at the
Leggetts' "at-homes" and on his own. We know, for instance, that the
young Duke of Richelieu became much attached to him and visited
him frequently; and from a letter of Alberta Sturges to her aunt Miss
MacLeod (written on September 11) we learn that Swamiji was
meeting the artists and thinkers of Paris-the sculptor Auguste Rodin,
among others. From Alberta we learn also that he intended on
September 13 to visit in the country a noted painter, whom,
regrettably, she did not name.28 Indeed, one regrets Alberta's general
reticence in regard to names: Paris was then ablaze with artists and
thinkers. To name a very few, there were the authors Emile Zola,
Anatole France, Joris Huysmans, Pierre
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Loti, Jules Lemaftre, the dramatist Edmond Rostand, the philosopher
Henri Bergson. Among painters there were the academic Leon
Bonnat and Adolphe Bouguereau; the more modern Impressionists
Pissarro, Redon, and Claude Monet, the last of whom lived in the
country some forty miles from Paris. There were the composers
Saint-Saens and Massenet, and, about to become famous, Claude
Debussy and the young Maurice Ravel. Then, effervescing in the
studios and cafes of Montmartre were the exuberant group of young
men who, still generally unknown, were changing the whole trend of
art--seeking out new and presumably deeper meanings and creating
subtler and more plastic forms; the old conventions and rigidities
were being joyously shattered to bits. These were the young men-
among them Matisse, Braque, Derain, Vlaminek, and the older but
not less unconventional Henri Rousseau-who in five years would
exhibit their work and be named by an incensed and jeering public
Ies fauves, "the wild beasts." It is not impossible that Swamiji met
such artists of the avant-garde through Jules Bois, who may have had
entree to their studios, though he was not, it would seem, one of
them.
Yet even if Swamiji did not step into the bohemia where
twentieth-century art was being born, he was, as Alberta said,
"meeting all the artists and thinkers," and thus he could not have
avoided talking with many Frenchmen of distinguished minds-of
brilliance, learning, wit, even of depth. Nor, whomever he knew or
did not know, would he have failed to plumb the mind and mood of
France. An expression in the eyes, a casual remark, a gesture could be
to him more revealing of the qualities of a person's or of a people's
thought and character than long and intimate association would be to
an ordinary judge. That he did not find the fin-de-siccle French mind
particularly profound was not, one thinks, due to a limited
acquaintance with it. Beneath the delightful sparkle on the surface,
which he much appreciated ("The countenance of French genius,
even when frowning in anger, is beautiful,"
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he wrote), beneath that limpid elegance and charm, the waters, he
found, were on the whole not deep.29 "The people of France," he
wrote on September 1 to Swami Turiyananda, "are mere
intellectualists, they run after worldly things and firmly believe God
and souls to be superstitions; they are extremely loath to talk on such
subjects. This is a truly materialistic country! Let me see what the
Lord does. But this country is at the head of Western culture and
Paris is the capital of that culture."30
Just as Paris was (as Swamiji said) the "center of the civilized
world,"31 so the year 1900, which closed one century and opened
another, was a peak in time. It was electric with the sense of change,
a sense half of foreboding, half of optimism. The world stood poised
for a plunge into the era for which Sri Ramakrishna and Swami
Vivekananda had come-an era vastly different in all respects from
any that had gone before.
Even the difference between 1893 and 1900-the years,
respectively, of the Chicago World's Fair and of the Paris Exposition-
was startling. "In these seven years," Henry Adams observed, "man
had translated himself into a new universe which had no common
scale of measurement with the old." Adams, a visitor to the Paris
Exposition, had been duly impressed by the dynamos, but he was
awed by the exhibits centering around the recent discovery of X-rays,
which, he rightly sensed, bespoke a new force commensurate in
magnitude and effect only with some tremendous metaphysical
energy.32 Mankind, there is no question, was on the eve of a new
universe, a new era, whose nature was foretold as distinctly perhaps
by Vickers-Maxim's vast exhibit of modern guns as by the wonders
of X-rays and radium-those first hints of the inconceivably immense
power within a speck of dust.
The Exposition stretched over more than 275 acres (some
historians say 550) in the heart of Paris. Its temporary buildings,
sitting in the shadow of the eleven-year-old Eiffel Tower, were as
rococo as lace valentines. Fashionably dressed men
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and women (the latter holding parasols) strolled along wide
boulevards from one resplendent "palace" to another, marveling at
their many displays of science and technology. "The grounds are
more beautiful than I expected," Dr. Janes allowed in a letter to his
wife. "There is more vegetation than in Chicago, and though the
arrangement of the buildings is not so imposing, the general effect is
very beautiful."33 A day or two later he again conceded that "some of
the buildings are very beautiful." "But," he went on, "the general
effect is less imposing than in Chicago. There is more color, and trees
and foliage on the grounds add to the beauty, but we miss the Lake
and the noble architectural effect of the buildings. There is more
`gingerbread' work here-less simplicity and harmony. The two
permanent art-palaces are very fine, however, and also the new
Alexander III bridge across the Seine."34
Every morning Swamiji went to the Exposition with Alberta, Mr.
Leggett, and Professor Patrick Geddes, the last of whom explained
the various exhibits.35 It was Alberta who remembered those morning
trips to the Fair, but, as far as I know, no one thought to wring from
her memory every drop about Swamiji-how he looked, where he
went, what he said. We can only guess that he did not pass through
all those "palaces," pregnant as they were with the twentieth century,
without comment. We can guess, too, what he must have done: he
must have seen all the exhibits worth seeing; he must have
circumambulated the grounds on the moving sidewalk; he must have
often lunched at one or another of the national pavilions; and in the
evenings he must, at least once, have viewed "the Illumination." This
last, which was not to be missed, consisted of multicolored lights
that magically played and shimmered on the soaring fountains and
cascading waters in the front court of the Palace of Electricity, a
building which opitomized progress and which, fittingly enough (for
electric power was an infant still), looked a good deal more like an
elaborately frilled bassinet than a dynamo. In short, Swamiji must
have "done" the Paris Exposition-himself something
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to see as he walked through the "palaces" looking, it was remarked,
like a prince. And if we do not know what he said of the Exposition
at the time, we do know that he wrote of it (in his Bengali "Memoirs
of European Travel") as "this accumulated mass of dazzling ideas,
like lightning held steady as it were, this unique assemblage of
celestial panorama on earth!"36
Of Swamiji's many tours through the Exposition, only one brief
story has come down to us through the reminiscences of Swami
Turiyananda, as published in the Udbodhan. The incident was
originally told, of course, by Swamiji. One day when he was walking
through the Exposition grounds, he saw a young woman whose face
was arrestingly beautiful. He turned to look at her in admiration, but
even as he did so, her exquisite features became in his eyes
metamorphosed into those of a grimacing monkey, as repulsive as
they had been attractive."37
The "celestial panorama on earth" could hold no temptations for
Swamiji; his eyes, the perfect servants of his renunciation, saw
through beauty to the bone. And all the while, in the hubbub that
swirled around him, he drifted still in "the will current of the
Mother," awaiting Her command, not certain of his next move. 38
"[Mother] knows best what She wants to have done," he wrote to
Swami Turiyananda on September 1, 1900. "She never speaks out,
`only keeps mum.' But this much I notice that for a month or so I
have been having intense meditation and repetition of the Lord's
name."39
Who can say what heights of experience Swamiji meant by the
word intense! Yet he did not remain aloof from the activity
surrounding him. He went, as we have seen, to the Exposition every
morning; he attended at least some of the Leggetts' "at-homes"; to
judge from his Memoirs, he went to the Theatre Sarah Bernhardt to
see "the divine Sarah" in l'Aiglon; he perhaps went to the opera as
well; he visited the galleries of the Louvre.
In Prabuddha Bharata of March 1927 one finds a brief but
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vivid glimpse of Swamiji during a sight-seeing excursion in Paris. "I
see him now," the friend who had been with him wrote years later to
the editor of the magazine, "leaning over and looking down upon
Napoleon's tomb and saying, `A great man, a great force! Siva!
Siva!"' (This same correspondent recalled another sight-seeing
incident that had taken place in Saint Peter's in Rome. But it could as
well, one thinks, have occurred in Notre Dame, which almost
unquestionably Swamiji visited. "At St. Peter's," his friend related, ".
. . he said, `This is splendid!' And when I said, amazed, `You,
Swamiji, like all this ceremony?' he replied, `If you love a personal
God, then give Him all your best incense, flowers, jewels and silk.
There is nothing good enough.' A great wonder it was, knowing
Swamiji.")40
He of course saw great people as well as great sight-indeed, as he
once said, he far preferred the former, and one is glad to know that he
walked through the Exposition with the brilliant (if at times
incoherent) Patrick Geddes. Known today primarily as a sociologist,
Geddes was also a savant and an expert in many other disciplines,
weaving them all together into an elaborate synthesis. He was
undoubtedly a rare genius with vision far ahead of his time, and, like
all such, not widely appreciated in his own day-nor, for that matter, in
ours. His one-time disciple, Lewis Mumford, who had something of
the same trouble as Nivedita in an assigned attempt to systematize
and clarify the brilliant, chaotic, and voluminous outpourings of
Geddes's thought, wrote of him: "There are a few people, whose
judgments have a right to be respected, who regard Patrick Geddes as
one of the truly seminal minds the (nineteenth] century produced: a
philosopher whose knowledge and wisdom put him on the level of an
Aristotle or a Leibnitz."'41 As they walked or sat together, Geddes and
Swamiji must have exchanged many views about the past and present
and many startling insights into the future, the scientist for once,
perhaps, listening more than he talked." Indeed, it has been said that
his acquaintance with
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Swamiji helped to introduce Geddes to the heart of Hindu culture-an
introduction that would lead years later to his sympathetic and fruitful
work in India on town planning.
Another great man with whom Swamiji had many talks was Pere
Hyacinthe. From a letter written in the last part of August by Emma
Thursby to her sister Ina, one learns that Swamiji called upon the
aged ex-monk earlier in that month. (To judge from recent findings
made by Swami Vidyatmananda, the date was very likely August 10.)
"I took Mrs. Jackson to Pbre Hyacinthe's," Miss Thursby wrote,
"where the Swami was to meet him there for the first [time]. It was
very interesting and Mrs. Jackson was delighted with the Swami. He
gave a talk at the Exposition."42 From those three simple sentences
one learns quite a lot. But first about Pere Hyacinthe.
He and Swamiji got along famously and continued to see each
other. Swamiji devoted many lines to him in his Memoirs, telling part
of his history and describing him as "very affable in speech, modest,
and of a distinctly devotional turn of mind." The "very aged" man (he
was seventy-three in 1900) had been a monk "of a strict ascetic
section of the Roman Catholic Church"-the Order of Discalced
Carmelites. He had been extremely famous in France as a preacher,
his eloquence, his erudition, and his manifest austerity and devotion
drawing large crowds to his sermons in the Cathedral of Notre Dame.
But his orthodoxy was not all that could be desired by the Church,
and he was watched and rebuked by the authorities. Their worst
suspicions were confirmed when in 1870 he associated himself with
those who vehemendy protested the doctrine of papal infallibility,
which had been affirmed in July of that year at the First Vatican
Council. He was excommunicated for this intransigence. A little later,
he broke with the Roman Catholic church altogether and took to a lay
life. He went to Geneva and then to London, where in 1872 he
married an American woman. He then, with his wife, settled in Paris,
where he founded an Old Catholic church. ("Old Catholic" was the
designation assumed by those Roman Catholics who
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had refused to accept the dogma of papal infallibility. Their church
was, in fact, a part of the Jansenist church in Holland, which had
existed for 150 years independent of the Papacy.) Later still, he
became a free-lance and, in some quarters, a revered lecturer,
preaching a religion that he held to be universal. "After having
separated myself by slow and painful degrees from a decadent
Catholicism," he wrote, "I will even say from a Christianity which
had become meanly and narrowly literal, I belong now to no sect,
large or small, but to the Holy Church of God-to the Church
Universal, which embraces all men and even worlds.'43
Although Pere Hyacinthe-now plain Monsieur Charles Loyson-
had no longer been a monk when he had married, nor a Roman
Catholic priest, his marriage had nonetheless created a sensation in
France. In the eyes of thousands of the orthodox devout he had still
been the great ascetic preacher who had taken vows of lifelong
celibacy. He might defy the Pope; but never should he break his
vows. As Swamiji wrote: "The Protestants received him with honour,
but the Catholics began to hate him. . . They hate the very sight of a
married priest; no Catholic would ever tolerate the preaching of
religion by a man with family." They blamed the woman behind the
deed. "All French people, of both sexes," Swamiji reported, "lay the
whole blame on the wife; they say, `That woman has spoilt one of our
great ascetic monks.' Madame Loyson is really in a sorry
predicament-specially as they live in Paris, in a Catholic country." 44
Madame Loyson appears to have been an ambitious, somewhat
overzealous woman, who saw in her husband a reformer of the
Catholic church and in herself his prophetess. "[She] had perhaps
seen many visions that Loyson might possibly turn out to be a second
Martin Luther, and overthrow the Pope's throne-into the
Mediterranean," Swamiji wrote. "But nothing of the kind took place;
and the only result was, as the French say, that he was placed
between two stools. But Madame Loyson still cherishes her curious
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329
She did not, perhaps, care much for Swamiji; he and her husband,
whom Swamiji always called by his old, priestly name, Pere
Hyacinthe, would engage in lengthy talks about "various religions
and creeds." "When I discuss with the old man such topics as
renunciation and monasticism etc "., Swamiji wrote, "all those long-
cherished sentiments wake up in his aged breast, and his wife most
probably smarts all the while." Yet Swamiji had no censure for the
old man or his marriage. "I hear all and keep silent," he wrote. " . . .
old Pere Hyacinthe is a really sweet-natured and peaceful man, he is
happy with his wife and family-and what can the whole French
people have to say against this?"45
To return to Miss Thursby's letter to her sister Ina-she writes that
Mrs. Jackson was delighted with Swamiji, whom she met at Pdre
Hyacinthe's. This was Mrs. James Jackson, an old friend of Miss
Thursby's who had lived in Paris for many years at 15 avenue
d'Antin-a house that has been described in The Life of Emma Thursby
by Richard M. Gipson as palatial. There, in earlier years, she had held
salons and musicales, to which had come people not only of fashion
but of fame: artists, musicians, writers. Mrs. Jackson was, it would
seem, something of an artist herself, now and then enclosing in her
letters to Miss Thursby small colored drawings from her own hand.
Her delight in Swamiji leads one to suppose that she extended her
hospitality to him and introduced him to a number of her illustrious
friends.
Miss Thursby's letter also discloses another facet of Swamiji's
Paris life. "He gave a talk at the Exposition," she wrote!46 Since it
seems certain that this letter was written in August, at least a week
(possibly two weeks) before Swamiji spoke at the Congress of the
History of Religions on September 7, it seems equally certain that his
"talk at the Exposition" was a separate lecture. As for details
regarding it, one can only guess, at the present writing, that he spoke
under the auspices of the International Association for the
Advancement of Science, Arts and Education, a section of the Paris
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330
of which Professor Patrick Geddes was the Secretary of both the
British Group and the American Group and Mr. Francis H. Leggett
the Treasurer of the American Group. One must wait for further
research to confirm or reject this guess and to bring to light further
information. In the meanwhile, it can be said that Swamiji, as usual,
filled his days with more activity than has been known.
Of the many and various parties and gatherings that he no doubt
attended during his stay in France, we know at present (or at least we
think we know) only of one, and this from a most wonderful letter he
wrote to Betty Leggett. The party, clearly, was not an "at-home":
rather, it was an informal gathering of intimate friends, among whom
were Josephine MacLeod, "Dr. James" [Dr. Lewis G. Janes?), Mr.
and Mrs. Patrick Geddes, Mrs. Ole Bull, and Sister Nivedita. In the
absence of Mr. and Mrs. Leggett, who had gone to Kreuznach, a
health resort in Germany, for a nonmagnetic treatment of Betty
Leggett's leg, Joe was hostess, and this was the kind of informal party
that she, unlike her sister, was apt to give. Swamiji's letter to Betty
Leggett was dated September 3 and written the day after the party. ("I
hear you are having an easy time the last week or so," he wrote in a
heretofore unpublished passage.47 "We are not to be out-done-so we
intended to have a better time yesterday. We had a congress of cranks
here in this house.") He went on to parody, without the slightest
malice but with the incisive selectivity of a master mimic or
caricaturist, the foibles and idiosyncrasies of some of those present at
the "congress." There was, for instance, Mrs. Bull earnestly
explaining how the only panacea for all the difficulties in the world
"was a right understanding of the proper persons, and then to find
liberty in love and freedom in liberty and motherhood, brotherhood,
fatherhood, Godhood, love in freedom and freedom in love, in the
right holding up of the true ideal in sex"48-a passage which could
almost have come from one of her own letters. (A serene round-
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331
Bull's. On his third day in Paris, Dr. Janes wrote with sly humor to
his wife: "I think I can already find my way about better than Mrs.
Bull, who took us by very round-about ways from her rooms to ours,
and to the Exposition yesterday morning.") 49
There was Sister Nivedita proclaiming, "It is chutney, chutney and
Kali [Bengal chutney to be made and sold by her Hindu widows and
girls; and Kali, the Divine Mother, of whom she was forever talking
to startled Westerners], that will remove all difficulties of life, and
make it easy for us to swallow all the evils, and relish what is good."
Swamiji did not rest here in poking fun at his fervent disciple. "She
stopped all of a sudden," he went on, "and vehemently asserted that
she was not going to speak any further, as she had been obstructed by
a certain male animal in the audience in her speech. She was sure one
man in the audience had his head turned towards the window and
was not paying the attention proper to a lady, and though as to herself
she believed in the equality of the sexes, yet she wanted to know the
reason of that disgusting man's want of due respect for women. Then
one and all declared that they had been giving her the most undivided
attention, and all above the equal right, her due, but to no purpose.
Margot would have nothing to do with that horrible crowd and sat
down."
Then there was Patrick Geddes, to whose sociological theories and
writings Nivedita had earlier in the summer devoted her time and
energy. Swamiji had him spinning out as his panacea for the world's
ills one of his complicated and semimystical "sequences," as Geddes
called them. "The Scotch delegate vehemently objected [to Mrs.
Bull's solution]," Swamiji wrote, "and said that as the hunter chased
the goatherd, the goatherd the shepherd, the shepherd the peasant and
the peasant drove the fisher into the sea, now, we wanted to fish out
of the deep that fisher and let him fall upon the peasant, the peasant
upon the shepherd and so on; and the web of life will be completed
and we will be all happy."50

332
 The "Dr. James" of this letter (as published) is, I venture to say,
almost certainly Dr. Lewis G. Janes, and not Professor William
James, as has been thought. There are several reasons for my belief.
First, the gentleman in question was, Swamiji wrote, "entirely
occupied with the evolution of Meltonian blisters."51 Dr. Lewis G.
Janes, who was an ardent evolutionist, thus giving the point to
Swamiji's turn of phrase, was currently a victim of the magnetic
ministrations of she who was now Mrs. Walden, His diary for the
preceding week reads:

Aug. 28 secured diagnosis and treatment from Mrs. Walden.

Aug. 29 second treatment. Very powerful and ought to be
effective.
Aug. 30 Went for treatment after breakfast and received it
good and strong.
Aug. 31 Walked to 6 Place des Etats Unis and took my
treatment-a powerful one, leaving the skin smarting over the
stomach.
Sept. 1 Went for treatment after breakfast-milder than
yesterday:
Sept. 3 Went to Mrs. Walden for my last treatment, which
was thorough and more than skin deep.52

Describing the "Dr. James" of the "cranks' congress" Swamiji

continues: "Moreover, his great Master, Herbert Spencer, not having
investigated the subject before him, he would stick to golden
silence."53 As was well known, Dr. Lewis G. Janes was an ardent
follower of Herbert Spencer, swinging like a satellite, some said,
around the great Spencerian orb. Professor William James, on the
other hand, particularly and explicitly disliked Herbert Spencer's
ponderous and "wooden" system of thought.54 Spencer, to say the
least, was not his orb, and Swamiji would not have made such a
mistake. Nor can the passage be taken as a piece of sarcasm, for such
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handedness would not have been in accord with Swamiji's keen and
buoyant wit.
It is true that Professor William James (he was always addressed
and referred to as "Professor James," never as "Dr. James") had at
one time been a guest at the Leggetts' house. He had also suffered
Mrs. Walden's cure, making him look like an American flag (he had
written to Mrs. Bull) and begetting in him a slight feverishness. 55 But
this he had written a month or so earlier from Ostend, Belgium,
where, as one learns from a letter of Miss Thursby's, Mrs. Walden
was staying "with some patients,"56 and it does not seem likely that
the Professor would twice undergo the harrowing experience of her
treatments-even if he had been in Paris at the beginning of
September.*
But however that may be, the "congress of cranks" ended,
Swamiji reported, in "a confusion of voices" with everyone on his
feet vehemently upholding his own panacea until practical Joe, who
had been playing the role of spectator the while, threatened "to be the
hunter for the time and chase them all out of the house if they did not
stop their nonsense." "Then was peace and calm restored," Swamiji
concluded, "and I hasten to write you about it."57
In this conclusion one finds a revealing comment upon the absent
Betty Leggett herself, for no one who had not a keen sense of humor
could have called forth this gem of a letter. There was more to it than
I have here mentioned, but, originally supplied by Mrs. Frances
Leggett, it has been published first in Vedanta and the West
(November-December 1953), later in volume six of the Complete
Works (1956), and again, with commentary, in Swami
Vidyatmananda's article in Prabuddha Bharata (March 1967). The
reader can readily find the text.
But before leaving this much-published letter one thing more
should here be said and a question asked. Its date, September 3, poses
something of a problem, for there exist two other letters bearing this
same date; one is from Mrs. Bull to Miss Emma Thursby, 58 and the
other is from Sister Nivedita to Miss
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MacLeod.59 Both are written from Brittany. Mrs. Bull's letter makes
no mention of her having been in Paris the day before; on the
contrary, she writes that she and Sister Nivedita had just returned to
Perros-Guirec (on the evening of September 1) from a visit to
Guingamp, an old sight-worthy Breton town. In Nivedita's letter to
Miss MacLeod it is clear that the two had not seen each other for
some time and did not plan to do so until the latter came to Brittany.
Again, in a letter Nivedita wrote to Miss MacLeod from Guingamp
on September I nothing is said of an imminent visit to Paris. 60 Could
the date on Swamiji's letter have been incorrect? Possibly; but
another date would not help us, for there seems to have been no day
in August, September, or October of tg1900 on which all the guests
of the "cranks' congress" were in Paris. Mrs. Bull, for instance, had
left Paris for Brittany on July 21. All available records tend to show
that she did not return even for a day before Nivedita followed her in
mid-August. And Nivedita did not return at all. Might we not think,
then, that the entire gathering was invented by Swamiji from start to
finish, that it was pure and wonderful parody, devised solely for the
entertainment of Betty Leggett, who, exiled in a German health
resort, was much in need of cheering and who would certainly have
understood the fun?

Assuming the date of Swamiji's letter to Betty Leggett was

correct, he was evidently still living at the Leggetts' house on
September 3, but within a week-the exact day is not known -he
moved to the lodgings of Jules Bois. (According to Miss MacLeod's
memory, Swamiji "stayed some weeks [at 6 place des Etats-Unis]
until he went to stay with Mr. Gerald Nobel, a bachelor."61 Perhaps
Swamiji did indeed stay again with M. Nobel for a few days at the
end of August or the beginning of September, but there is, to my
knowledge, nothing to bear this out. From the material available to us
at present it would
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appear, in fact, that he moved directly from the Leggetts' to the rooms
of Jules Bois.)
"Yesterday," Swamiji wrote in a letter of September 1 to Swami
Turiyananda, "I went to see the house of the gentleman with whom I
shall stay. He is a poor scholar, has his room filled with books and
lives in a flat on the fifth floor. And as there are no lifts in this
country as in America, one has to climb up and down. But it is no
longer trying to me." Swamiji's dream of "settling down somewhere
and spending my time among books" was at last being realized-at
least for the moment. And one can imagine that after the continual
festivities at the Leggetts' he looked forward to the relative obscurity
and quiet of a fifth-floor flat. "There is a beautiful public park round
the house," he continued in his letter. "The gentleman cannot speak
English; that is a further reason for my going. I shall have to speak
French perforce. It is all Mother's will. . . . "62
Jules Bois (whose name one is today hard put to find in histories
or encyclopedias) was in 1900 enjoying a certain fame as a writer.
His best known book, which had been first published in 1895 when
he was twenty-four (a second edition had come out two years later),
was a scholarly work of more than four hundred pages entitled Le
Satanisme et la magie, avec une etude de J, K'. Huysmans. (Joris Karl
Huysmans, the famous French novelist, was a typical "decadent"-a
term applied to a school of French writers for their leanings toward
the hyperesthetic.) Before 1900, M. Bois had also written, among
other things, a dramatic sketch in verse entitled Les Noces dSatan; a
novel, L'Eternelle Poupee; and a fairly large and well-selling work,
L'Au-dela et les forces inconnues ("The next world and unknown
forces").
Jules Bois's interests clearly ran to the occult, a not unusual
preoccupation in late-nineteenth-century France, and his fascination
with unknown forces extended to--or possibly was an extension of-an
interest in metaphysics and religion. "Up to the time I met Swami
Vivekananda] in Paris and London,
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not as a dilettante but as an earnest explorer of the unknown, I had
associated with Brahmans, Buddhists, pundits, and deified
sannyasins," M. Bois was to write in an article on the Hindu Cults,
which appeared in March of 1927 in the then well-known American
magazine, Forum. (The article was the fifth in a series Bois was
writing on "The New Religions of America.") His early interest in
religion had led him to follow the debates of the Parliament of
Religions in Chicago through contemporary journals. "One
declaration which arrested my attention," he wrote in the same
article, "was that of the young Hindu prophet promulgating a
`universal religion'. Though profound, his address was beautifully
incisive; a refreshing contrast to the usual pronouncements of that
kind, which are apt to be gelatinous. These sentences bore the stamp
of genius, and they dwelt in my mind until the day when I received
an invitation to meet the swami himself at the home of a rich
American friend in Paris."63
This rich American friend was almost certainly either Francis or
Betty Leggett, the latter of whom M. Bois may have met during one
of her earlier trips abroad. The occasion t which Bois was invited
may have been Swamiji's discourse on "Hindu Religion and
Philosophy," which, as we have seen, took place on August 24.
Recounting his first meeting with Swamiji, M. Bois continues:

After an informal conference Vivekananda approached me as

though we had known each other for a long time. A brief
conversation followed, at the end of which he startled me by
proposing to come and live with me. Expressing my sense of the
honor his suggestion implied, I reminded him of the luxury and
attention he was enjoying and explained that I was only a young
writer who could offer him very little in the way of comfort.
"I am a monk and a mendicant," was his reply. "I can sleep
on the ground or on the floor. Our luxury will be the wisdom of
the masters. I will bring my pipe with me,
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 and upon its incense will rise the verses of the Vedas and
Upanishads."64
It is unlikely that Swamiji uttered that last sentence in any
language, but it was true indeed that the comfort and luxury of a
Parisian house such as the Leggetts' and the discomforts and
inconveniences of a poor flat such as that of Jules Bois were to him
equally welcome.
"The next day," M. Bois went on, slightly distorting the facts, "the
swami arrived with a small valise." According to Swamiji, he first
went to Bois's flat on August 31 and this, as he wrote to Swami
Turiyananda, only to see the place, not to stay there. 65 But however
that may be, it was probably only a matter of a few days before he
moved in with the young Frenchman. And there he lived for at least
four weeks in all, surrounded by books, in an atmosphere of study,
often left to himself for long hours of flawless quiet.
In his Forum article, Jules Bois gives a picture of Swamiji during
those weeks, and although he casts a mist of poetry over his
remembered friendship with the Hindu monk, one can, I believe,
catch through that mist a glimpse of Swamiji himself, his presence
solid, immense.

At that time [Bois wrote] I was living in the rue Gazan,

facing the Parc Montsouris. There, far from the hum and drum
of the city, the days flowed by in unbroken calm and a quasi-
solitude. From the balcony one looked out over a miniature
Switzerland of hills, valleys, and artificial lakes bathed in
radiant sunlight. At the close of the day, after having attended to
my own affairs, I would find Vivekananda there, scarcely
having moved from the spot where I had left him, but having
smoked and meditated much. This monk of Shiva had gone up
and down the earth, preaching his alluring but terrible gospel,
proclaiming the illusion of the external world and our
personality, and the reality of one single Being behind the
multiform
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 appearance of things and creatures. Marvelous evenings in the
pure intoxication of metaphysics and nature! The perfume of
young flowers and the grave Hindu plain-song; a Parisian spring
and a breeze from the Ganges; the semi-obscure glamour of the
stars, while the messenger of the old Barattha [Bharata], with his
dark nimbus of hair, his imposing carriage, his prominent eyes
now widely open, now veiled by heavy lids, sat like a Buddha of
the Himalayas transported to a suburb on the Seine. It was not
the India of the fakirs and the cranks, but the magical land of
beauty and wisdom. And the five yogas, transmitted from time
immemorial by the guru (master) to the chela (disciple) revealed
once more, this time to a young French poet, their methods for
the experimental union of the individual with himself first and
then with the divine.66

Swamiji was evidently fond of this young French poet. He stayed

with him (as far as we know at present) through most of September
and October, took him along to Brittany and later included him in the
party that toured through southern Europe and the Near East. In his
memoirs of that trip he wrote in praise of the young Frenchman.
"Monsieur Jules Bois is a famous writer; he is particularly an adept in
the discovery of historical truths in the different religions and
superstitions. He has written a famous book putting into historical
form the devil-worship, sorcery, necromancy, incantation, and such
other rites that were in vogue in Mediaeval Europe and the traces of
them that obtain to this day. He is a good poet, and is an advocate of
the Indian Vedantic ideas that have crept into the great French poets,
such as Victor Hugo and Lamartine, and others, and the great German
poets, such as Goethe, Schiller, and the rest. The influence of
Vedanta on European poetry and philosophy is very great. . . . M.
Jules Bois is very modest and gentle, and though a man of ordinary
means, he very cordially received me as a guest into his house in
Paris."67
To jump ahead of our present story, Swamiji was delighted
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to have an opportunity to repay M. Bois's hospitality in February of:.
1901"I am ever so glad to hear that Bois is coming to Calcutta. Send
him immediately to the Math," he wrote to Josephine MacLeod, who
was at the time in India. "I will be here. If possible I will keep him
here for a few days and then let him go again to Nepal."68 Four
months later Swamiji again mentions his friend. "Jules Bois went as
far as Lahore, being prevented from entering Nepal," he wrote to Joe.
"I learn from the papers that he could not bear the heat and fell ill;
then he took ship et bon voyage. He did not write me a single line
since we met in the Math."69 That is all. One does not hear again of
Jules Bois in Swamiji's published letters.
M. Bois, however, wrote about his visit to Belur Math in a chapter
("L'Extase") of his book on India, Visions de l'inde, published in Paris
in 1903. There is not much of interest in this chapter (which one can
find in translation in Prabuddha Bharata of March 1918),
particularly as one suspects that the author tended to sacrifice fact to
fancy. For instance, he quotes a sannyasin (or brahmacharin) of the
Math, who had offered him some betel leaf, as having said with a
smile: "Narcoties are smoked or chewed all over India. For us, life is
a dream and what you call dream among yourselves is for us the sole
reality. . . . "70 Such hazy notions of Indian philosophy are sprinkled
throughout Jules Bois's chapter, giving it, to be sure, a dreamlike
quality. Yet in those days Eastern philosophy as he had understood it
was to him far superior in depth and wisdom to the "brutalising
dream" of the West, and his admiration for Swamiji was genuine. "He
incarnated for me -with his genius and his perilous frenzy-," he wrote
in this same chapter, "that India which I cherish as the Fatherland of
my dreams-the Eden where lives the Ideal."71
One is thus surprised to read at the close of his 1927 Forum article
a repudiation of Vedanta and an affirmation of the Christian religion
he had learned at his mother's knee and which, as he declared
elsewhere in this article, had "passed
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beyond [oriental creeds and forms]." His appreciation of Swamiji was
now left-handed:

To Vivekananda I owe much in human enlightenment [he

wrote], In his company for months I enjoyed the unique
privilege of having met in one man something of Marcus
Aurelius, Epictetus, and perhaps of Buddha himself. To him I
am indebted, by contrast, for a deeper adoration of the Christian
truth. In the efforts we made together to tear away, by the mere
force of mind, the unliftable veil, I became convinced of the
futility and insufficiency of human reason confronting the
absolute. Despair is at the end of Stoicism, however heroic it
may be. The early teaching which my mother whispered to me
stood out as holding more practical wisdom, in its impulses of
simple faith and homely love, than all the dicta of the greatest
sages.72

So much for Jules Bois. We need not enter here into a discussion
of the religious views he held in his middle age and aired in his
Forum article. Those pronouncements were thoroughly examined in
an editorial that appeared in Prabuddha Bharata of May 1927-an
article the interested reader will find under the title "A French Critic
on the Vedanta Movement." All that really concerns us at the present
point in our story is that in the autumn of 1900 Jules Bois, then young
and idealistic, filled Swamiji's need for a quiet, book-lined room and
a restful atmosphere. Swamiji for his part satisfied the young man's
long-held desire to know him.

Swamiji may have been already settled in M. Bois's fifth-floor

flat when he spoke at the Congress of the History of Religions on the
morning of Friday, September 7. This Congress was an affair of six
days only (September 3 through September 8) and was not at all
comparable to the momentous and renowned Parliament of Religious
that had been held in Chicago seven
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years earlier. "The Chicago Parliament of Religions was a grand
affair," Swamiji pointed out in a Bengali letter to the Udbodhan, "and
the representatives of many religious sects from all parts of the world
were present at it. This Congress, on the other hand, was attended
only by such scholars as devote themselves to the study of the origin
and the history of different religions. . . . At the Chicago Parliament .
. . the Roman Catholics expected to establish their superiority over
the Protestants without much opposition; . . . They hoped to make
firm their own position. But the result proving otherwise, . . . the
Roman Catholics are now particularly opposed to the repetition of
any such gathering. France is a Roman Catholic country; hence, in
spite of the earnest wish of the authorities, no religious congress was
convened on account of the vehement opposition on the part of the
Roman Catholic world."73 In his Prophets of the New India Romain
Rolland echoes Swamiji's account. "This was no Parliament of
Religions as at Chicago," he writes. "The Catholic power would not
have allowed it. It was purely a historical and scientific Congress. At
the point of liberation at which Vivekananda's life had arrived," he
added, "his intellectual interest, but not his true passion or entire
being, could find nourishment in it."74
As Swami Vidyatmananda has brought to light in his informative
article "Vivekananda at the Paris Congress, 1900" (Prabuddha
Bharata, March, April 1969), Swamiji's talk at the Congress was
given at a sectional meeting held in the Sorbonne at the School of
Higher Studies in one or another of the four or five small rooms of
the Department of Historical and Philological Sciences. He spoke
twice that morning of September 7, both times in rebuttal of the
misinformed pedantry of two of the Western speakers-professors
both.
In his first talk, Swamiji explained the nonphallic, Vedic, and
Buddhistic origins of the Shiva-Linga and the ShalagramaShila
(symbols of Hindu worship into which Western scholars persistently
read anatomical significance).
In his second talk, he dwelt "on the historic evolution of
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the religious ideas in India,"75 spiritedly upholding the conclusions of
Indian scholars over those of Western scholars in regard to things
Indian.
Whether Swamiji spoke in French or in English is not known. A
brief item that appeared in the Indian Minor of July 3, 1900, and was
repeated in the Indian Spectator of July 8, read: "Swami
Vivekananda has been invited to represent Hinduism and Vedanta in
the Paris Exhibition, and the Swami will deliver an address in
French."76 But in what language he actually spoke we have no
knowledge; nor do we know to what extent he persuaded the learned
gentlemen of the Congress. It is probable, however, that in whatever
language he presented his views many of his listeners went on
thinking much as they had always thought. In his letter to the
Udbodhan he wryly remarked at its close:
"After the lecture, many present . . . assured the Swami that the
old days of Sanskrit Antiquarianism were past and gone. The views
of modern Sanskrit scholars were largely the same as those of the
Swami's, they said. They believed also, that there was much true
history in the Puranas and the traditions of India. Lastly, the learned
President, admitting all other points of the Swami's lecture, disagreed
on one point only, namely, on the contemporaneousness of the Gita
with the Mahabharata. But the only reason he adduced was that the
Western scholars were mostly of the opinion that the Gita was not a
part of the Mahabharata."77 (In connection with this sort of thinking
on the part of both Westerners and Hindus Swamiji had once
remarked with the biting sarcasm of which he was past master,
"Without the sanction of the European how can Krishna live? He
cannot! . . . What [texts]the Europeans do not want must be thrown
off. They are interpolations!")78

The Paris summer was drawing to an end; the American

contingent was disappearing. Immediately after the Congress, Dr.
Janes left France to visit Herbert Spencer in Brighton,
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England. (Almost exactly a year later, Dr. Janes was to die suddenly-
and unseasonably, for he was not an elderly man-at Greenacre,
Maine. His last words, it is said, were, "It is a beautiful world,"79 and
one did not know if this was a memory of a life well spent or a
prevision of a life to come.) Mr. and Mrs. Leggett were still in
Germany. On September 6 or 7 (Mrs. Bull wrote to Miss Thursby)
Miss MacLeod was expected in Brittany-specifically, in the little
fishing village of Perros-Guirec near Lannion, where Mrs. Bull had
taken a house (or houses).
With the departure of her aunt, Alberta Sturges became hostess at
6 place des Etats-Unis. Twenty-one years old, she was attractive,
blessed with a happy and open disposition, ready to see good in
everyone, learning to see the bad with charity and love. "Life is full
of inherent joy and sorrow-and each mail brings me some new story
of the one or the other " she was to write to Mrs. Bull in December of
1900. "I think this world is so full of grief and happiness that there is
only room for affection in it now. So I am trying to love everything -
even what until now I haven't liked. Everything lies in the way one
looks at things-doesn't it? So tho quicker we put kindly spectacles on
the better." Alberta's spectacles were sunny as well as kindly. "My
life is such a happy one," she wrote to Mrs. Bull a month or so later,
"that one plan and delight only gives precedence to a better one." 80
Now, joyously, all on her own, Alberta gave a small, candlelit
dinner at her parents' house on September 10. The guests, as one
learns from a letter she wrote to her mother, were Swamiji, the Duke
of Newcastle, his sister Princess Doria, and a Lady Anglesey. This
elegant little dinner was a great success. The next day Alberta wrote
to her Aunt Joe ("Tante" she called her) that Swamiji had been in a
splendid mood and as jolly as could be. 81 Swamiji's festive mood,
with its unfailing magic, was, of course, the making of the evening.
To her mother Alberta reported that everyone had had a lovely time,
that the Duke of Newcastle had asked questions of Swamiji,
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 responding to him with interest and sympathy, and that because of
this the princess had been radiant. 82
Under the impression that Swamiji was in a mood to enjoy the
effervescent cultural and intellectual life of Paris, Alberta regretted-a
call that had come to him from Brittany. In her letter of September c I
to Miss MacLeod she reproached "Tante" for having asked him to the
provinces. Swamiji, too, seemed loath to go. All in a breath, Alberta
listed the reasons for his reluctance: he was nervous, and so, too, was
Mrs. Bull; he enjoyed seeing Paris; he was meeting all the artists and
thinkers; he had entered into the spirit of the French mind; he was
learning the French language; he was well and happy and was doing
good work. He would have refused to go to Brittany, she went on, if
Jules Bois had not also been asked, but Bois, being poor, had jumped
at the chance, and now Swamiji could not disappoint him. But, then,
Alberta conceded, something good would doubtless come of this
unfortunate invitation.
Miss MacLeod thought so, as did Mrs. Bull. Apart from wanting
Swamiji's company, they had their reasons for asking him to Brittany.
His young English disciple, whom they both looked upon as a
daughter, whom they both loved, was suffering the torment of
estrangement from her guru. Sister Nivedita, who had been in Paris to
greet Swamiji when he arrived, had found him aloof, withdrawn,
suddenly indifferent to her work and to herself. The day after his
arrival she, together with Miss MacLeod and Gerald Nobel, had
lunched with him at the famed Restaurant Russe on the first landing
of the Eiffel Tower.83 She had perhaps seen him on other occasions,
but soon-in the second week of August-she had fled to Brittany, sick
at heart, possibly bewildered.
It has been said by her biographers that Sister Nivedita
misinterpreted Swamiji's general mood of withdrawal as personal
indifference toward herself and her work. 'To quote Pravrajika
Atmaprana: "At a time when Nivedita's life current was gradually
taking the form of a rapid torrent, that of the Swami was mingling
with the infinite ocean of peace, without a
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ripple, a breath. While Nivedita was rushing forward with full vigour,
the Swami was drifting about in the will-current of Mother. So his
changed attitude was beyond Nivedita's comprehension. It perplexed
and irritated her."84
Yes, but there would surely have been a vast difference in
expression between Swamiji's general mood of withdrawal and his
personal coolness-a difference which he himself could have made
quite clear and which one as perceptive as Nivedita could not have
failed to detect. She was not, I believe, mistaken in her interpretation
of his attitude. It appears, in fact, that Swamiji had been explicit and
that she herself had been distant. One finds clear indications of this in
a passage of a letter Nivedita wrote to Miss MacLeod around this
time:

I was not worthy or ready to accept the personal in him with

the loving welcome that it should have had. . . . Swami has cut
me off by a well-deserved stroke. . . , How strange! Who would
have believed a week ago that today I should stand to Him in
Miss Muller's position-only cut off by His act-not my own-and
yet it has happened-and is well somehow. I have now nothing to
live for but Him, and those Hindu women of the future who are
to be His. And this is absolutely true today and never has been
before-Is it not strange? Yet I do not feel that I can send Him a
letter or a messenger or treat Him otherwise than as if He were
literally dead. 85

Nivedita's many weeks in Paris of "discipleship" (as she called it)

to Fatrick Geddes had been weeks of frustration and anguish. Her
effort to work for the sociologist had proved, all in all, a source of
pain both to herself and to him. She had longed to help him. She had
worked earnestly and steadily, living in a monkish garret of the
Geddeses' Paris house.

Here is this soul [she wrote to Miss MacLeod in July], surely

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 accept its gifts (for I cannot call his companionship and thought
anything but a priceless gift), and only begging in return, like
the humblest beggar too, not as one who had a right, that one
should be the voice or the hand that his thought and heart
require. And when I fail, as I do at each point---cataloguing and
indexing, lecture-reporting, report-making, all alike-he only
sighs and says, "Well, I am sure you could do it in three
months"! I feel torn to pieces. . . . I am at bottom totally
divergent and you know this appalling sincerity of mine. I
cannot be a reporter: it is not that I will not; it is that I cannot.
When I try I disappoint him so much, because I am not even a
good stenographer. Think of it, Yum-Yum! . . . I believe our
friend is asking the impossible of the world, and I am fool
enough to feel that I would die to give it to him, with the utmost
joy. As I cannot die, and could not help if I did, I shall go on
struggling with my expression and adding to the disappointment
in his, till the moment Swami's signal comes. But I wish he had
not those exquisite hopes at the beginning of discipleship. Each
one is a thorn now. 86
Considering Nivedita's involvement with Professor Geddes's
work, one cannot be reasonably surprised at her inability to accord
Swamiji a wholehearted welcome, nor can one be surprised at a
certain coolness on his part. Surely he would have seen in her
preoccupation with Professor Geddes an indication that her mind was
moving away from the work he had given her and had painstakingly
trained her for. With the benefit of hindsight one can, I believe,
clearly see this curious Geddes episode as a turning point in
Nivedita's life and thought; how much more clearly would not
Swamiji have at once seen the turn of his disciple's mind. And how
keen must have been his disappointment, his hurt. He at once gave
her the freedom to work in her own way, to find her own truth, her
own mode of service. It was a freedom he knew she would,
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in any case, be bound to take, compelled by her own nature had,
indeed, already taken.
Swamiji's act shocked Nivedita into a fervent rededication of
herself to his will and to "those Hindu women of the future who are
to be His." Yet it was too late, or so she thought, to tell him of this.
The situation was unbearable. Soothingly, Mrs. Bull invited her to the
Breton coast, and from there she finally wrote to her guru. It is said
by Pravrajika Atmaprana that in this letter, which I have not seen,
Nivedita "complained, she blamed, and she sought for guidance and
solicitude."87 A measure of her suffering may also be gathered from
Lizelle Raymond‘s description of the letter in The Dedicated as
"clumsily written." Sister Nivedita's letters were sometimes obscure,
but seldom were they clumsy. Only great stress, one thinks, could
make them so. Her words had come forth, perhaps, from both a
contrite heart and a rebellious mind and had fallen all over
themselves in confusion. It was perhaps this letter she was to write of
to Miss MacLeod:

I wish I had not struck back at Swami in writing my last

letter to him! Hours after-I knew that I could have said it all so
very differently-for when I cried out hour after hour, "But why
did you do it that way, Swami?" the answer came back, "Why
did you hurt Him? The same law!" But now I do not attach
undue importance to the one more than to the other. Some day
all will be made right-in life or in death. It does not matter
which.88

Swamiji's reply, dated August 25, can be found in volume six of

the Complete Works. After explaining that he had resigned the
presidentship of both the Ramakrishna Math and the Ramakrishna
Mission and had no more connection with the work-"I am done with
everyone here and in India"-he went on to answer Nivedita directly,
sternly:

Your letter indicates that I am jealous of your new friends.#

348
 You must know once for all I am born without jealousy,
without avarice, without the desire to rule-whatever other vices I
am born with.
I never directed you before; now, after I am nobody in the
work, I have no direction whatever. I only know this much: So
long as you serve `Mother' with a whole heart, She will be your
guide.
I never had any jealousy about what friends you made. I
never criticised my brethren for mixing up in anything. Only I
do believe the Western people have the peculiarity of trying to
force upon others whatever seems good to them, forgetting that
what is good for you may not be good for others. As such I am
afraid you would try to force upon others whatever turn your
mind might take in contact with new friends. That was the only
reason I sometimes tried to stop any particular influence and
nothing else.
You are free, have your own choice, your own work. . . 89

There could be no reply to this, no appeal. Whether or not

Nivedita answered is not certain, and, in any case, except for a
postcard, Swamiji did not, as far as we know, write to her again that
year. (The letters in volume six of the Complete Works which are said
to have been written to Nivedita on August 28 and December 19 of
1900, turn out to have been written, rather, to Sister Christine.) 90
Nivedita's "freedom" seemed stark and irreversible. It was at this
point that Mrs. Bull, perhaps partly out of concern for her, invited
Swamiji to Perros-Guirec for a few days. Miss MacLeod added her
own plea that he come.

Almost two months earlier (on July 21) Sara Bull had given up
her Paris apartment at 235 rue du Faubourg-Saint Honore and, along
with her inseparable companion Marian #

349
Briggs, had taken the night train to Lannion, Brittany, some three
hundred miles to the west. From there they had traveled the short
distance to Tregastel-Plage, a small village in the department of Cote
du Nord, where Mrs. Bull had rented a house from a Mlle de Wolska.
(This Mlle de Wolska, whom Swamiji was undoubtedly to meet
during his stay at PerrosGuirec, was a friend of Josephine MacLeod's
and seems to have owned a number of houses in Brittany. Miss
MacLeod had met her in New York in 1897 and, as she wrote to Mrs.
Bull, had found her "our sort," by which she meant that she would
appreciate Swamiji. "[She] is going to translate Raja Yoga," Miss
MacLeod wrote. "She is all enthusiasm over our Vedanta and its
prophet.... I like her more and more."91 Whether or not Mlle de
Wolska translated Raja Yoga, I do not know; one does know,
however, that she was a highly entertaining conversationalist. "I wish
you could hear Mdlle de Wolska talk for a while," Dr. Janes wrote to
his wife from Perros-Guirec. "She is a character. She serves up the
local priests in good shape, and is thoroughly alive to the super-
stitions of the people though she is a Catholic herself. Her portraiture
of the English on our walk to Tregastel was too funny for
anything.")92

The Breton coast with its huge pink and grey boulders, its brisk
salt air, and its country life suited Mrs. Bull so well that she decided
to stay on. "It is the real peasant country," she wrote to Emma
Thursby from Tregastel, "and one feels the druidic past as the great
boulders with their massive bulk loom up against the sky between
one and the mountain isles beyond. . . . It is so thoroughly sea air that
I do not know if you would like it with the harvesting that is going on
now. . . . [But] there are fresh eggs and good milk to be had & you &
I can always get on with these when nature is so lovely." 93 Mrs. Bull
soon moved some nine miles east to the small fishing village of
Perros-Guirec, which was then becoming popular as a resort town
and was not devoid, as Miss Thursby was to write, of "all kinds of
interesting people-poets, artists, etc."94 At
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350
Perros-Guirec Mlle de Wolska also owned a small house, named Ker
Anna, into which Mrs. Bull, her entourage, and her guests moved in
the early part of August. Toward the end of that month she rented
another house in Perros-Guirec, known as "the House of the
Sacristan," and about the first of September, as one learns from the
letters of Dr. Janes and Miss Thursby, both of whom numbered
among her August guests, she moved her household to yet another,
and larger, villa.
"I slept last night for the first time in the house of the Sacristan,"
Dr. Janes wrote to his wife on August 22, "which Mrs. Bull will
occupy until the first of September. Then she is going to the
`mysterious villa,' as Mrs. Briggs calls it-an old place with high walls,
round towers, quaint gables and a beautiful garden."95
One might suppose from this that it was in the "mysterious villa"
that Swamiji lived during his stay in Brittany, but Mrs. Bull's
arrangements were not so simple as Dr. Janes makes out. In an
August letter to her sister Ina, Miss Thursby mentions that her
hostess had taken two villas at Perros-Guirec for September; and on
September 20 she wrote to Ina from the Pyrenees, "Mrs. Bull has
taken a third villa to entertain Mr. [John] Lund [a long-time and close
Norwegian friend of the Bull family] and his daughter, and the
Swami and friend."96 In connection with this third villa, Mrs. Bull
had written to Emma Thursby on Wednesday, September 17, "The
adjoining cottage makes everything easy. I have room now for all
until October 1st." And in this same letter she wrote, "I expect Swami
and his friend M. Bois this evening."97
Little is known of Swamiji's visit of almost two weeks in the little
fishing village on the jagged and boulder-strewn coast of Brittany,
but one may be almost certain that it was restful. In 1900 he saw, of
course, a Brittany that no longer exists-a country where the people
lived and worked and prayed much as they had done for generations
past. The twentieth century had not yet made its inroads, for good or
ill, into the old traditions, beliefs, and customs. In an earlier letter to
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his wife, Dr. Janes wrote of this part of France, through which he had
passed on his way to Paris from Le Havre:`The grey stone houses
looked as if they had stepped out of a picture-book, and so did the
peasant women in their bright dresses and sabots, the peasant men in
their blouses, and the priests in the square hats, long black coats, and
white cassocks."98 (He was here describing Normandy; but
neighboring Brittany was not different in its picture-book color and
charm.)
The life in Perros-Guirec was simple, and good hostess that she
was, Mrs. Bull would not have unnecessarily fussed over her guests
nor have forced entertainment upon them. She would have allowed
Swamiji to relax, to walk by the sea on the cliffs or beaches, to follow
the country lanes and roads, to visit the old churches and shrines, to
take treatments, if he wished, from the ever-present Mrs. Walden
(who, it so happened, was just then living in a nearby chateau trying
to work a miracle on the half mad son of an aged countess), 99 to
remain silent or to talk, as he wished, to be alone or not, as the spirit
moved him. On some warm night he may have taken the same walk
that Nivedita had written of in August to Miss MacLeod: "Two or
three of us came down the little lane a night or two ago, in the dark,
and as we reached the threshold [of a religious community] we heard
the clear tones of a chant, in a woman's voice. We stood still and
listened and then came the response of a man's voice. And on and on
it went, solemn and grand in the black night and the starlight."100
Unhappily for us, almost everyone to whom Swamiji ordinarily
wrote long and informative letters was there with him, and these
people themselves-Sara Bull, Josephine MacLeod, and Sister
Nivedita had no need to write confiding letters to one another. Nor
does one find in either Miss MacLeod's or Sister Nivedita's published
memoirs much that pertains to Brittany. It is stated in the Life, and
repeated elsewhere, that Swamiji spoke of Lord Buddha a great deal
in Perros-Guirec, but the source of this information is not given, and
although the references and quotations in the Life have
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352
been taken from Nivedita's The Master as I Saw Him, she herself
gives no hint where or when Swamiji had told these stories or
expressed these views of Buddha. Indeed, as far as I know, there
exists no direct information about his conversations and moods
during this period at Brittany.
However, from a letter he wrote to Swami Turiyananda from "the
seacoast of France" it is clear that he was not feeling well. "My body
and mind are broken down," he confessed; "I need rest badly."101
From this same letter, which was concerned with the trust deed of the
Belur Math, it is also clear that one facet of his mind was thunderous.
Even in the act of retiring, Swamiji had causes for annoyance; even
as he rejoiced, he raged. Indeed, who could ever know Swamiji? At
one and the same time Alberta found him "jolly as could be," taking
an interest in everything, Jules Bois found him plunged immovably in
meditation for hours on end, Nivedita found him withdrawn,
indifferent, Swami Turiyananda found him in a fury of impatience.
One can only describe the different aspects of his life and nature
consecutively, but one should remember that they were somehow
simultaneous, that each was as real as the others, and that all-even his
storms -were lit by the steadily luminous and altogether indescribable
depths of his being.
To refresh the reader's memory about the Belur Math trust deed:
As early as July of 1899, perhaps earlier, Swamiji had considered
making a trust of the Math. To judge from the letter he had written on
December 12 of 1899 to Mrs. Bull, this was primarily a matter of
legal necessity. As has been pointed out earlier, the property of the
Math, being nominally owned by Swamiji (rather than by a religious
organization), was subject to taxation, and those of his fellow
countrymen who opposed his ideas planned to take full advantage of
this technicality and thus bring the Math to ruin. Under these
circumstances, it was essential that Swamiji deed the property to a
number of trustees. Over and above such legal considerations,
however, he knew, as so many of his letters make clear,
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that the time had come for him to cut his bonds, to turn over the
government and responsibility of the Ramakrishna Math and the
Ramakrishna Mission to his brother monks, and to stand free. But in
laying down his leadership, Swamiji naturally wanted to do so in the
best possible way for the future.
On January 17 of 1900 he had written to Mrs. Bull: "I want to
make out a trust-deed of the Math in the names of Saradananda,
Brahmananda and, yourself. I will do it as soon as I get the papers
from Saradananda. Then I am quits."102At this time he had evidently
already sent his instructions to Swami Saradananda, and, as we have
seen, he wrote his last will in early July during his visit to Detroit.*
On July 19 Swami Saradananda mailed from India a draft of the trust
deeds (which involved the Math funds as well as its real property),
together with other pertinent papers, to Swamiji, in care of .Mr.
Leggett. The trust deeds had been drawn up according to the Math's
understanding of Swamiji's wishes, but when the papers reached him
in Paris about a month later; he was much annoyed by the wording of
the drafts. Nevertheless, he signed them and returned them.
"I gave Mrs. Bull a chance to draw her money [Rs. 35,000] out of
the Math," he wrote to Sister Nivedita in his letter of August 25; "and
she did not say anything about it, and [as] the trust-deeds were
waiting here to be executed, I got them executed duly at the British
consulate and they are on their way to India now." 103

"I have not reserved any right or ownership for myself," he wrote
to Swami Turiyananda a few days later (September 1). "You now
possess everything, and will manage all work by the Master's
grace."104 In this particular letter to Swami Turiyananda Swamiji
seemed agreeable enough; but evidence that he was not satisfied, to
say the least, with the wording of the trust deed appears in the
Bengali version of this same letter to Swami Turiyananda from "the
seacoast of France." In the Bengali edition of the Complete Works,
the letter (there dated, wrongly, "August, 1900") is given with
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354
fewer omissions than in the English edition. A translation of the
passages that reveal Swamiji's displeasure reads as follows:

I have cut myself off by a will. Now I am writing to say that

nobody will have sole power. All will be done in accordance
with the view of the majority. . . . If a trust deed on similar lines
can be executed, then I am free. . . . Now you people do what
you please. I have finished my part of the work. I was indebted
to Guru Maharaj[Sri Ramakrishna]. I have paid off this debt by
working out my life. How can I tell you any of this? They have
sent me a draft of a document in which they are the boss of
everything. And I have signed [agreed to] everything of it
except this their becoming the boss of everything. Gangadhar
[Swami Akhandananda], you, Kali [Swami Abhedananda],
Sashi [Swami Ramakrishnananda], the new boys, I have pushed
them aside, and I have made Rakhal and Baburam [Swami
Brahmananda and Swami Premananda] the boss of them all. My
Master used to consider them great. This is his work, therefore I
have held up my soul and signed this. I am now going to do my
work. I have paid off my debt to Guru Maharaj by crushing out
my life. He has no longer any claim on me. Whatever work you
are doing is the work of Guru Maharaj. Go on doing it. What I
had to do I have done. Finished. So therefore do not write to me
anything about it. Nor tell me; I have no yes or no opinion about
it. Henceforth that is how it will be.105

Later, on his return to India, Swamiji found he had misjudged the

situation. On December 26 he wrote to Miss MacLeod-who, like
Mrs. Bull, had all along disapproved of his harsh scoldings of his
gurubhais, but who, also like Mrs. Bull, had small conception of the
profundity and constancy of his love for them and of the immense
importance of their future work-"They [his brother disciples] have
worked all right as
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far as they could; I am glad, and feel myself quite a fool on account
of my nervous chagrin. They are as good and as faithful as ever, and
they are in good health. Write all this to Mrs. Bull and tell her she
was always right and I was wrong, and I beg a hundred thousand
pardons of her."106 As for the trust deed, a new draft was prepared in
Calcutta to Swamiji's satisfaction. Later still, because of legal
necessity, the deed was again redrafted and on January 30, 1901, was
executed.107
But in September of 1900 when he came to Brittany, Swamiji was
annoyed and impatient in some part of his mind. It is possible that
Nivedita, distressed to start with, took his air of general displeasure
as an intensification of his coolness toward herself; her own attitude,
thus compounded, could have reached a low level of despair; indeed,
some two years later she would refer to those days as "that anguish in
Brittany."108 But for people like Nivedita days of anguish invariably
brought with them needed lessons-in this instance, the meaning of
true discipleship, of true single-pointed dedication: "I find," she wrote
to Josephine MacLeod from Brittany, "that it is necessary not only to
love [my beloved Father] better than oneself, but also to love no one
else. And that is hard; I hope to achieve someday!"109 It was a step;
the agony of her estrangement with Swamiji had brought with it, also,
the strength to face, without wavering, a future grief-a grief that
would make her achievement of loyalty and love complete. But
however that would be, during those days in Brittany Swamiji's deep,
unalterable affection for his disciple, her own unhappiness over what
she felt to be his indifference, and her emotional recommitment to his
work brought about a reconciliation of sorts. Swamiji wrote a poem
for his spiritual daughter:

The mother's heart, the hero's will,

The sweetness of the southern breeze,
The sacred charm and strength that dwell
On Aryan altars, flaming, free;
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 All these be yours, and many more
No ancient soul could dream before--
Be thou to India's future son
The mistress, servant, friend in one. 110

Yet, his warmth of heart notwithstanding, it is clear from

subsequent events that in Brittany Swamiji did not give Nivedita
advice, did not discuss her work with her, was not even altogether
certain that her mind and heart were fully committed, that they would
not turn into other channels, become absorbed in other interests. He
did not retract his words: "You are free, have your own choice, your
own work. . . ." On the eve of her departure from Perros-Guirec,
Nivedita appears to have been brokenhearted still.
"Don't you remember the night in Brittany before I left for
England," she was to write to Mrs. Bull at the end of 1906, "-when I
told you how I was going out into the unknown-to Sri R.K. and
Mother-away from the `Father' who had become so beloved-and you
were so kind and good?"111
The circumstances of Swamiji's farewell to his spiritual daughter,
which took place on that same night, were, as were so many incidents
in his life, lighted with the unstudied charm and grace that attend the
spiritually great at every turn. In her penetrating and sensitive book
The Master as I Saw Him, which she was to complete in 1910,
Nivedita caught this element of poetry in her often-quoted account of
the scene:

When I said good-bye to him in Brittany in September, 1900,

I was on the eve of returning alone to England, there to find
friends and means, if possible, for the Indian work. I knew
nothing as yet of the length of my stay. I had no plans. And the
thought may have crossed his [Swamiji's] mind that old ties
were perilous to a foreign allegiance. He had seen so many
betrayals of honour that he seemed always to be ready for a new
desertion. In any case, the moment was critical to the fate of the
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357
 did not fail to realise. Suddenly, on my last evening in Brittany,
when supper was some time over, and the darkness had fallen, I
heard him at the door of my little arbour-study, calling me into
the garden. I came out, and found him waiting to give me his
blessing, before leaving, with a man-friend, for the cottage
where they were both housed.
"There is a peculiar sect of Mohammedans," he said, when
he saw me, "who are reported to be so fanatical that they take
each new-born babe, and expose it, saying, `If God made thee,
perish! If Ali made thee, live!' Now this which they say to the
child, I say, but in the opposite sense, to you, to-night `Go forth
into the world, and there, if I made you, be destroyed! If Mother
made you, live !' "
Yet he came again next morning, soon after dawn, to say
farewell, and in my last memory of him in Europe, I look back
once more from the peasant market-cart, and see his form
against the morning sky, as he stands on the road outside our
cottage at Lannion [actually PerrosGuirec], with hands uplifted,
in that Eastern salutation which is also benediction. 112

Swamiji would not see his spiritual daughter again until March of
1902.

According to a passage from a letter that Sister Nivedita was to

write to Mrs. Bull in January of 1906, she was to look back upon
Swamiji's words in the garden at Perros-Guirec as "his apostolic
charge to me."113 It is true that his words had pointedly stressed the
divine aspect of the task he had given her, but in what way they were
an "apostolic charge" is not clear, nor does Nivedita herself seem to
have thought them so at the time. As is well known, the path she was
to choose, for a while at least, had very little to do with the education
of Hindu women and, because of its involvement in Indian politics,
was incompatible with the policies of the Ramakrishna
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Order. It was not until after Swamiji's death that his thought, welling
up in her, became the truly dominant motive of her life and that she
became a strong vessel for his ideas and a sensitive instrument of his
will.
In London many distractions and influences entered Nivedita's
life, many enthusiasms, attachments, and impassioned convictions,
and precisely because these were centered around India and were not
by any means less than noble, they were all the more diverting. Easily
they could seem ordained and Right; and easily they could have led
her away altogether from the great life and work for which Swamiji
had meticulously trained her. Even a call to India in the early part of
1901 from Sri Sarada Devi through Yum Yum left her undecided,
and in England there were, of course, friends who urged her to stay
on. Both Mrs. Bull and Mr. Romesh Chandra Dutt, an eminent and
highly respected Indian Civil Servant, then retired and living in
London, with whom Nivedita had become well acquainted, wrote to
Swamiji imploring him to allow Nivedita to continue her work in
England. Swamiji may have earlier taken a dim but hands-off view of
Nivedita's prolonged stay in London. (In February he had written to
Mrs. Bull, "Glad to learn about Margo's success, but, says Joe, it is
not financially paying; there is the rub. Mere continuance is of little
value, and it is a far cry from London to Calcutta.") 114 But now,
learning from Mr. Dutt of the substantial work she was doing, he
wrote to her from Belur Math on April 4 of 1901:

Dear Margot:

A letter came just now from Mr. R. Dutt-praising you and

your work in England very much and asking me to wish you to
stop longer in England.
It requires no imagination to learn that I am overjoyed at all
the news about you Mr. Dutt so kindly sends.
Of course you stay as long as you think you are working
well. Yum had some talk about you with Mother [Sri
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 Sarada Devi] and she desired you to come over---of course it
was only her love and anxiety to see you-that was all, but poor
Yum has been much too serious for once and hence all these
letters. However I am glad it should happen, as I learnt so much
about your work form Mr. Dutt, & he can't be accused of a
relative's blind love. 115

On the same day Swamiji wrote to Mr. Dutt himself:

Dear Sir--
I am so very glad to learn from a person of your authority of
the good work Sister Nivedita is doing in England. I join in
earnest prayer with the hopes you entertain of her future services
to India by her pen.
I have not the least desire that she would leave her present
field of utility and come over to India.
I am under a deep debt of gratitude to you Sir for your
befriending my child-and hope you will never cease to advise
her as to the length of her stay in England and the line of work
she ought to undertake.
Her book on Kali has been very popular in India. The debt
our Motherland already owes you is immense and we are
anxiously waiting the new book of yours [on Indian
economics].116

To Mrs. Bull he had written on March 29, "My advice to Margot

would be to mature her plans in England and work them out [at] good
length before she comes back. Good solid work must wait "117
And so Nivedita stayed on, writing articles, giving talks, working
with not entirely impersonal ardor for Dr. J. C. Bose's extraordinary
experiments in plant physiology, renewing her friendship with the
Patrick Geddeses, visiting Mrs. Bull's home in Norway for a long
vacation. "I don't know when Nivedita comes to India," Swamiji
would write to Mary Hale in August of 1900, "or if she ever comes
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 Meanwhile, her concept of her mission was changing. "To my
great horror," she wrote to Josephine MacLeod from Norway,

Freedom has meant something to me, for my life has come to

include many elements that Swamiji would probably not have
put there. They are all for him, however, I trust, in the end-and
he will not hold me less his child than before. . . . You must not
think from all this that I cherish any idea of going out to tea with
the Brahmos when I get back [to India]. Not at all. I belong to
my work-to the women-and to the girls-even as you have said.
And I belong to Hinduism more than I ever did. But I see the
political need so clearly too! That is all I mean and to that I must
be true.ll9

And again,

About India, do you think it too much if I say that I feel as if

I had something new that no one ever had before? When I read
Swami on Hinduism again, I am staggered at the vastness of it-
then I recover and think perhaps the very weight of his
acquirements interferes with the short sharp view and the clear
ringing word that India needs most at this moment. Perhaps my
very ignorance and want of depth is my best weapon. Not that I
do not think Swami's is the master word and for all time. I do
think that-but I see with terrible distinctness that it is too big for
any one generation. It needs a point. . . .
How silly I think it now to do anything in England for India I
cannot tell you! What utter waste of time! Do you think
ravening wolves can be made gentle as babes? Can be made
polite and sweet as little girls? That is what work in England for
India means. . . .
Oh Yum, in India now we want, what do we not want? We
want the very dust of the earth to carry our message
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 for us. . . . When I think of our needs I am in despair but when I
remember that the time is ripe, and the Mother works, not we, I
take courage again. . . .
My task is to see and to make others see. The rest does itself.
The vision is the great crisis. . . .
. . . I must work out the vision that is granted to me. 120

And so at long last, at the very end of 1901, impelled by a driving

sense of her mission for India, Nivedita left England on the
Mombassa, together with Mrs. Ole Bull and Romesh Chandra Dutt.
The ship docked in Madras on February 3. 'The following day, she
and Mr. Dutt were accorded a large public reception, complete with
an address of welcome. In reply, she gave a long and stirring talk. 121
She spoke primarily in praise of India's great son, Dr. Jagadis
Chandra Bose, in whose work and personality she had become
absorbed during her stay in England and in whose scientific genius
she felt India might see proof of its intellectual superiority to the
West. Her address was so fervently and so eloquently pro-Indian and
nationalistic that the British police thenceforth kept a baleful and
wary eye on her activities. From Madras the party sailed, still on the
Mombassa, to Calcutta.
Swamiji, who was at the time in Benares, welcomed Nivedita by
letter with deep affection and blessing;

Over-joyed to receive your letter, more so that you come

with unimpaired will and recuperated health.
In a previous letter I have written you what little I had to
suggest. I have no other instructions except in reply to your
suggestion of having Sadananda to work with. I am very very
sorry to state; he no longer belongs to me....
. . . I do not wish to ask him to do anything. It is a long long
story. . . . The long and short of it is that I recommend you none-
not one-except Brahmananda. . . . If you have to ask my advice
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 your business-Brahmananda is the only one. I recommend none
else, none else; with this my conscience is clear.
Do just as "Mother" directs. I would help you if I could-but I
am only a bundle of rags and with only one eye at that-but you
have all my blessings-all-and more if I had.
I do not complain. I must be a sacrifice and a willing one. . . .
All my powers come unto you-may Mother Herself be your
hands and mind. It is immense power-irresistible that I pray for
you and, if possible, along with it infinite peace.
You have been true as steel and faithful as one's image -you
did not get ahead or become rebel the moment you got rich
friends to back you. You have my last blessings. If there was
any truth in Shri Ramakrishna, may He take you into His
leading-even as He did me, nay a thousand times more. 122

Later on, as Sister Christine was to tell a swami of the

Ramakrishna Order, Swamiji was to scold Nivedita severely for her
political involvements, until, unable to bear more, she begged him to
stop. He made it clear that she could not be associated with both the
Ramakrishna Math and the political movements of the time. She must
decide to give up one or the other. She told him she would think
about it; but before she could give him her answer, Swamiji died.

Shortly thereafter Swami Brahmananda gave Sister Nivedita the

same choice, and on July 18 she resigned from the Order. "If Albert
[Alberta Sturges] is writing to Mrs. Roethlesberger, would she send
her a piece of paper or something from me and ask her to hold it and
try to send me a message as to whether I am really on the right path
or not?" she had written to Yum in an anguished passage two days
earlier. "It is all so different from what it was meant to be-and Swami
was so
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angry two months ago, and the men [Swami Brahmananda, Swami
Saradananda, and other monks of the Order] are so sure I ought to do
what He told me-and yet I cannot do differently from this. I have
become the idea-and could die more easily than submit "123 And a
week or so later, "I think my task is to awake a nation, not to
influence a few women. . . . I may not succeed. You do not realise as
I do-you cannot the hopelessness of the task-and my own utter
inadequacy. But ought this to make any difference? I see-therefore
ought I not to act? Must we not throw ourselves now into the great
Ocean of Mother-and leave it to Her whether we come to land or
not?"124
But the question as to whether she was on the right path or not
was not easily answered. More than four years later Nivedita was
still tormenting herself. On December 26, 1906, she wrote to Mrs.
Bull:

When I think what Swamiji planned what my life should be,

and how different I have made it, I feel utterly broken-hearted.
If one could stand the hot weather all the year round, we could
take women into our homes as He wished. But one can't, And I
suppose it is really true that one can't-and not mere selfishness-
for these illnesses have proved it. Don't be impatient with me,
dear friend! . . . Sometimes I think this is only the fast attempt-
and I shall be allowed to try again and again-Christianity was
1100 years old, before it produced S. Francis-1500 before St.
Teresa. Who knows how often they had tried and felt that they
were failures? But again, I don't see any hint of such
achievement-but rather a descent to lower levels. Well! Well! I'll
hold on and try. But there seems no path for me here, except
silence and submission even in matters where I feel an
overwhelming need to choose my own path and assert my own
ideal. But oh! Am I betraying a trust? Am I? Am I? Who can
answer that for me?"125
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 Time has answered. As the years passed after Swamiji's death all
the many blessings he had bestowed upon his great souled spiritual
daughter, the training he had given her, and the insights he had
granted became deeply and harmoniously established within her and,
as is well known, bore wonderful fruit. During her visit to the West in
1899 and 1900 Nivedita changed, there is no question; but she was
not destroyed.
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 NOTES FOR CHAPTER ELEVEN

p. 327 *One indication of Patrick Geddes‘s esteem for Swamiji is

that he wrote a foreword (an avant-propos) to a French
translation by ―S. W.‖ of Swamiji‘s Raja Yoga. ―S. W.‖ was
very likely M.me Sophie Wallerstein, a friend of Miss
macLeod‘s and Sister Nivedita‘s (see Letters of Sister
Nivedita, 2:1053). The book was published in Paris in 1910
by Publications Theosophiques.

p. 334 *What I would like to think of a s a clincher to the argument

in these pages – that the ―Dr. James‖ in Swamiji‘s published
letter of September 3, 1900, is actually Dr. Lewis G. Janes –
is contained in a recently investigated typescript of the
original letter (Leggett Collection). Here the person in
question is mentioned twice – once as ―Dr. Jane‖ and once as
―Dr. Jain.‖ Over both names as editor has written ―James,‖
firmly crossing out the original ―Jane‖ and ―Jain‖ – a name
that clearly range no bell at the time in that editor‘s mind.
Can we doubt today that Swamiji, who often had trouble with
the spelling of names, meant ―Janes‖ and not ―James‖?

p.354 *A copy of this will has been found among Mrs. Bull‘s
papers. Dated July 6, 1900, and later drawn up in proper legal
form and signed and witnessed in New York, it was actually
Swamiji‘s last will and testament. According to it, he left
everything he owned to Swami Brahmananda, Swami
Saradananda, Sister Nivedita, Francis H. Leggett, and Mrs.
Ole Bull, to share and share alike, and to ―use said property
for the purpose of carrying on the religious work in
furthering the
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 p. 354 teachings of the late Rama Krishna Paramahamsa.‖
He also
(cont.) appointed those five legatees as ―executrices and executors.‖
Before he died, however, the Trust Deed in its final form
vested Swamiji‘s property in a Board of Trustees, consisting
of eleven of his brother disciples (see Swami
Gambhirananda, History of Ramakrishna Math and
Ramakrishna Mission, thrid edition, page 115). Although the
will seems to have been still valid it was not probated for
many years because of legal comlications (the New York
Probate Clerk, for instance, was unable to understand that a
sannyasin had not kith or kin), and in the end, to everyone‘s
satisfaction, it was not probated at all (see Letters of Sister
Nivedita, 2:1111).
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 CHAPTER TWELVE

HOMEWARD BOUND-II

The exact date of the early morning when Swamiji stood, his
hands "uplifted in that Eastern salutation which is also benediction,"
as the peasant market-cart carried his "daughter" down the road and
out of sight, is not known. It is certain, however, that he left Perros-
Guirec at the end of September. It is known that he visited Mont-
Saint-Michel on September 29, the feast of the Archangel Michael,
when pilgrims flock to this ancient and famous abbey built on a tiny
island of granite off the coast of Normandy. Through the centuries
the abbey and its church, the construction of which was commenced
in the year 1708, have been enlarged, creating their little mountain
and crowding over it, until the whole island looks as though it has
been carved into a fortress-shrine, or, again, as though the shrine
itself had risen from the sea or, when the tide is out, from the
gleaming sand flats that stretch to the horizon.
Possibly Swamiji stayed overnight at an inn in the little village
nestled at the foot of the abbey and then traveled on to : Paris. Mrs.
Bull very probably went on to Paris too, for this had been her plan. "I
will join you [in Paris] the 1st day of October," she had written to
Miss Thursby on September 13. , Further, one finds Nivedita
addressing two letters to her , apartment at 235 rue du Faubourg-
Saint-Honore, one dated September 29 and the other October 3. It is,
in fact, possible : that Mrs. Bull gave up her various houses in Perros-
Guirec at the end of September, planning shortly to join Nivedita : in
England. "I go to London direct from Paris," she had told Miss
Thursby.1
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But to know Mrs. Bull's plans is one thing and to know her actual
whereabouts in October of 1900 is another, and until more
information comes to light we cannot be certain of the latter. We do
know, however, that Swamiji and M. Jules Bois intended to visit
Brittany for four or five days in mid October; and almost certainly
they did so. It is possible that Miss MacLeod, rather than Mrs. Bull,
was their hostess at this time, and in any event, it is clear that the
letter of invitation did not come from Mrs. Bull. In Prabuddha
Bharata of July 1949 one finds a translation of M. Bois's reply to it,
which has in part:

Mademoiselle, I have received your kind letter and thank you

very much for your charming invitation. The Swami and I are
thinking of leaving Paris on Monday, next week, to join you
again in Lannion. . . . The Swami and I are too happy for words
to meet you again in such good health and in such a beautiful
country.2

Actually Miss MacLeod (assuming she was the "Mademoiselle"

here addressed) was not in particularly good health. She was, in fact,
in a state of malaise and. fatigue, for her unusual. "I had a lovely
letter from Yum last night," Sister Nivedita wrote in her letter of
October 3 to Mrs. Bull. "It is so pathetic to hear her speak of want of
rest."3 For the next year or two thereafter one reads again and again in
Sister Nivedita's letters of "Yum's" poor health. What was wrong,
specifically, is never said, but whatever the trouble may have been it
would have been natural for Joe to stay on for a part of October in
Brittany, where the fresh sea air was like a tonic and where there was
nothing to do but rest. It would also have been natural for her to
invite Swamiji and M. Bois to be her guests.
As far as I am aware, no details are known of Swamiji's October
visit to Brittany, except that its dates, as Swami Vidyatmananda has
deduced, were very probably October 15,
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369
a Monday, to October 19 or 20. One supposes that everyone
concerned enjoyed those four or five days.
Swamiji added a postscript to M. Bois's letter to "Mademoiselle."
It was his first attempt to write a note in French, and it was all his
own. (M. Bois assured "Mademoiselle" that he did not even look at
what Swamiji had written, let alone correct it.) One can find the note
in its original French in Prabuddha Bharata of July 1949. The
translation, which is in the Complete Works, reads in part: "... I am
having the best of times after many years. I find life here with Mr.
Bois very satisfactory-the books, the calm, and the absence of every-
thing that usually troubles me. But I don't know what kind of destiny
is waiting for me now. . . . "4
Was this not an expression of the same serenity and peace that
Swamiji had written of in his letter of September 1 to Swami
Turiyananda? The "scholar's life" amidst books and calm that he had
long wanted had come to him, and with it must have come the
"intense meditation and repetition of the Lord's name" of which he
had earlier written-perhaps becoming now even more intense, for
calm surroundings always brought meditation to Swamiji. The very
sight, for instance, of a replica of a dungeon-cage at Mont-Saint-
Michel, an iron and wood cage about eight feet square and eight feet
high, once suspended betwixt ceiling and floor and in which men had
been confined in almost unrelieved solitude-a sight to chill the blood
and send shivers down the ordinary spine-only reminded Swamiji of
the hermit's cell. "What a wonderful place for meditation!" 5 he was
heard to murmur.
Though perhaps not so desirable as a dungeon-cage, M. Bois's
rooms, quiet and often solitary, were also a good place to meditate,
and thus one finds Swamiji's mind bounding upward in these October
days to its own serene level. On October 14, 1900, the day before he
and M. Bois left for their second visit to Brittany, he wrote to Sister
Christine in French. It was a long and beautiful letter, and Swamiji's
French (I have seen an early copy of the original) seems quite
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an advance over the short, slightly stiff postscript to "Mademoiselle"
of a week earlier. To Christine he also expressed his happiness, but
wrote of a lingering shadow on its perfection: "Je suis heureux, oui, je
le suis vraiment, mais le nuage ne m'a quitte tout it fait. It revient
malheureusement quelquefois mais il n'a pas I'aspect de morbidite
qu'il avait autrefois." "I am happy, yes, I really am, but the cloud has
not completely left me. Unfortunately it returns at times but it has not
the air of gloom it formerly had."6
This was the cloud that had followed Swamiji from India and that
he had spoken of so often as two years of "torture," physical and
mental. Virtually it had passed. One tends to think of Swamiji's
moods in terms of the sky or the sea, and one pictures now a vault of
almost unbroken blue, only a tendril of white cloud crosses the sun
now and then-the last remnants of a gigantic storm. But in speaking
of Swamiji's moods, one again remembers how different was his
psychology from ours. He had lived on both sides of that storm at
once: in the untouched infinity of light and space above it, and in the
heart of its lightning-rent, wind-torn darkness. It is perhaps im-
possible to say fully what the genesis of that turbulence was; but, as I
wrote at the beginning of this book, it was obviously caused on one
level by the frustration of trying to move and lift the massive, tamas-
ridden thought of the world and of attempting to introduce a new path
and to set in motion-in the short span of a year or two-the machinery
by which his work and message would be carried forward for
centuries and centuries to come. "I must," he had written in 1897, " . .
. put in a lever for the good of humanity, in India at least, which no
power can drive back." This, actually, he had fully accomplished; the
work he had done in so short a time was incredible, the victories he
had achieved were tremendous and far-reaching. Yet, he was
impatient of delay, of obstacles and opposition. He who saw so
clearly that which needed to be done, and why and how, he who
lived in eternity could not but feel torment at the slow unfolding in
time of his great vision
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and achievement. And his impatience, as well, as his incessant work,
told on nerves exquisitely tuned to receive and transmit the most
subtle of spiritual impulses.
Sister Nivedita, closer to Swamiji, in some respects, than any of
his other disciples or friends, more sensitive to his moods, and, in
later years at least, more appreciative of the enormous scope of his
ideal and the difficulty of his task, was to write in a letter of 1903 of
"the bitter sense of failure" under which he had worked all the last
years of his life.7 She would have meant, one thinks, the years she
knew him in India and the West until the fall of 1899 when she left
him in Ridgely Manor, for after that she had seen him only briefly
from time to time. True, there had been an impatient mood in
Brittany, but on the whole the "cloud" had slowly begun to move
away after the close of 1899. Sister Nivedita was herself to write in
The Master as I Saw Him:

The outstanding impression made by the Swami's bearing,

during all these months of European and American life, was one
of almost complete indifference to his surroundings. Current
estimates of value left him entirely unaffected. He was never in
any way startled or incredulous under success, being too deeply
convinced of the greatness of the Power that worked through
him, to be surprised by it. But neither was he unnerved by
external failure. Both victory and defeat would come and go. He
was their witness. "Why should I care, if the world itself were to
disappear?" he said once. "According to my philosophy, that,
you know, would be a very good thing! But in fact," he added,
in tones suddenly graver, "all that is against me must be with me
in the end. Am I not HER soldier?"8

The soaring peace and freedom that Swamiji had experienced and
given expression to in Alameda was now, in Paris, mirrored in the
world of events. His last teaching-lecture in
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the West had been given; his leadership of the Ramakrishna Math
and the Ramakrishna Mission had been laid aside like the spear and
shield of an indomitable warrior who knows that however bitter his
failures may have seemed, his main, crucial battles had been won.
Even his financial problems had been solved: he had earned enough
for the Math's security and, in addition, had repaid the money he had
borrowed to buy his mother a house. "I believe I have told you that
Swami has paid back the money which he took from the Math fund,"
Swami Saradananda wrote to Mrs. Bull on November 15 of 1900,
"and has also sent money for his Law suits. He told me to let you
know this as soon as possible."9 (The lawsuits were no doubt those he
had brought against his aunt, who would not give his mother
possession of the house. "He left everything in order," Sister Nivedita
was to write to Miss MacLeod shortly after his death. "On Sunday
[June 29, 1902] He told me that the lawsuit with the family that had
been hanging over Him for 3 years was compromised by them
voluntarily in His favor-and He was satisfied at last! It was the same
with everything.")10
In Paris Swamiji's life was falling into order, smoothing itself into
a sea that perfectly mirrored the sky. He felt no farther need to work-
neither for the sake of teaching nor for the sake of earning money.
"The call has come from Above," he had said to Swami Turiyananda
(most likely in New York): "`Come away, just come away-no need of
troubling your head to teach others.' It is now the will of the Grand
Old Lady that the play should be over." (The "Grand Old Lady" was
a figure in a children's game, to touch whom put one outside the
play.)11
In his letter of August 25, after signing the first draft of the trust
deed, he wrote to Nivedita: "Now I am free, as I have kept no power
or authority or position for me in the work. I also have resigned the
Presidentship of the Ramakrishna Mission. The Math etc., belong
now to the immediate disciples of Ramakrishna except myself. The
Presidentship is now
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Brahmananda's-next it will fall on Premananda etc., etc., in turn. I am
so glad a whole load is off me, now I am happy."
And in his letter of October 14 to Sister Christine, he wrote in
French:
I am sending all the money I earned in America to India.
Now I am free, the begging monk as before. I have also resigned
from the presidentship of the Monastery. Thank God, I am free!
It is no more for me to carry such a responsibility. I am so
nervous and so weak.
"As the birds which have slept in the branches of a tree wake
up, singing when the dawn comes, and soar up into the deep
blue sky, so is the end of my life."
I have had many difficulties, and also some very great
successes. But all my difficulties and suffering count for
nothing, as I have succeeded. I have attained my aim. I have
found the pearl for which I dived into the ocean of life. I have
been rewarded. I am pleased.
Thus it seems to me that a new chapter of my life is opening.
It seems to me that Mother will now lead me slowly and softly.
No more effort on roads full of obstacles, now it is the bed
prepared with birds' down. Do you understand that? Believe me,
I feel quite sure.12
It was not, of course, Swamiji's position as leader of the
Ramakrishna Order that had tied him, as it were, to the earth and a
mission; it was his heart-his all-embracing love that expressed itself
in his detailed concern for individuals as well as in his boundless
compassion for the whole of mankind. This bond too-the bond by
which the Divine Mother had "made a slave"13 of him-was breaking.
Since leaving California he had been struggling to rid himself of all
emotion. "I am determined to get rid of all sentimentalism, and
emotionalism," he had written in June of 1900 from New York to
Mary Hale "and hang me if you ever find me emotional. I am the Ad-
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374
belongs to matter and superstition and bondage. I am only existence
and knowledge. . . . Don't for a moment worry on my account.
`Mother' looks after me. She is bringing me fast out of the hell of
emotionalism, and bringing me into the light of pure reason. . . , "14
"Non-attachment has always been there," he added in a postscript.
"It has come in a minute. Very soon I shall stand where no sentiment
can touch me. No feeling."15
"Swami is all against bhakti and emotion now," Sister Nivedita
had written from New York in the same month to Miss MacLeod, "-
determined to banish it, he says."16
One is inclined to doubt that Swamiji fully succeeded in this. "If
in this hell of a world one can bring a little joy and peace even for a
day into the heart of a single person, that much alone is true; this I
have learnt after suffering all my life; all else is mere moonshine. . . .
"17 Thus he was to write to Swami Brahmananda a few months before
his death. There was no end, in any sense, to his love. Yet, at the
same time, there was no bondage in it for anyone. He himself,
however much he might deplore his "emotionalism," stood entirely,
consciously free. One is here reminded of how he had turned on
Sister Nivedita in New York in June of 1900 when she had "offered
him advice that struck him as wrong." "I wish you could have seen
him!" she wrote to Miss MacLeod. "It was worth the offense to catch
such a glimpse! He said, `Remember that I am free-free-born free!'
And then he talked of the Mother and of how he wished the work and
the world would break to pieces that he might go and sit down in the
Himalayas and meditate."18
Yet, leadership was implicit in Swamiji's very being. Whatever his
legal position in the Ramakrishna Math and the Ramakrishna Mission
was to be during the last year or so of his life, he remained the leader;
it could not have been otherwise. Nor could he lay down his concern
for the work. "It was on the last Sunday before the end," Nivedita
writes in The Master as I Saw Him, "that he said to one of his
disciples, `You
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know the Work is always my weak point! When I think that might
come to an end, I am all undone!"' 19
Nonetheless, Swamiji's life was henceforth to be quiet-lived for
the most part at Belur Math and in the depth of God consciousness.
He was to go on a pilgrimage with his mother in the spring of 1901,
making up to her at last the pain that he had caused her--or thought he
had caused her-by his renunciation of the world and that he had
always felt so keenly; he was to become absorbed in caring for and
playing with his pet animals at Belur Math-an antelope, a stork,
ducks and geese, a dog-gazing upon them, Swami Akhandananda
recalled, with an indescribable expression of love. ("Witnessing this
sight," the Swami said, "one would be reminded of how Sri Krishna
would play with his treasured cows.") 20 He was to hold scriptural
classes for the monks and to insist upon strict discipline and hard
austerity in the Math's routine; he was once, in 1901, to send several
of his brothers into the depths of meditation-perhaps into samadhi or
ecstasy-by his power-charged cry in the courtyard of the Math: "Here
is the unveiled presence of the Brahman . . . Ah! here is the Brahman
as palpable as a fruit in one's palm. Don't you see? Here!" 21
"He became radiant looking," Sister Nivedita wrote of his last
days to a friend, "just as he used to be in London.... And the
wonderful divine light somehow never ceased to grow brighter and
brighter, whatever might be the state of mind or nerves: '22
Thus he was to live the closing year or so of his life, drifting on
the current of the Divine Mother, walking immersed in God, until his
final, premeditated homecoming of Mahasamadhi.

That journey homeward began in France-not only in Swamiji's

reiterated cry "Now I am free!" but in his actual journey back to his
motherland. "I shall travel with Madame calve, Miss MacLeod, and
M. Jules Bois," he wrote in his
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letter of October 14 to Sister Christine. "I shall be the guest of
Madame Calve, the famous singer. We shall go to Constantinople,
the Near East, Greece, and Egypt."23 At what time this trip was first
planned is not certain. Mention of it is found in a letter to Swami
Turiyananda, dated in the Complete Works "September." But this
date, broad though it is, does not seem to be correct. To judge from
internal evidence, the letter was written in the latter half of October,
1900. Thus "September" cannot, I believe, stand as evidence for
anything at all. Nor does Miss MacLeod's reminiscence about the
genesis of the plan enlighten us about its time. The place, however, is
clear. "One day at luncheon in Paris," she writes, "Madame Emma
Calve, the singer, said she was going to Egypt for the winter. So as I
suggested accompanying her, she at once turned to Swami and said,
`Will you come to Egypt with us as my guest?' He accepted." 24 Thus
was the journey born.

Who planned the route is not known. But it is possible that

Swamiji suggested the roundabout trip to Egypt, for, ever a lover of
man, ever a fascinated student and observer of the ways of human
life, he would have wanted to tour through as much of the Western
world as possible. Earlier, he had seen Switzerland, Germany, and
Italy (and, of course, the United States, England, and France) ; now
he would see Austria, the Balkan countries, Asia Minor, Greece,
Egypt. He intended to return to Paris by way of Italy, touching at
cities he had not visited before.
―On our way back, we shall visit Venice," he wrote in his letter of
October 14 to Sister Christine. "It may be that I shall give a few
lectures in Paris after my return, but they will be in English with an
interpreter. I have no time any more, nor the power to study a new
language at my age` I am an old man, isn't it?"25 But Swamiji did not,
as we know, return to Paris; nor did any of his later plans to leave
India again -to go to England with Mrs. Sevier or to Japan with a Mr.
Okakura-take shape. This trip was his leave-taking of the world at
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 During his last days in Paris Swamiji appears to have stayed at the
home of his friend Gerald Nobel, where Mrs. Bull's companion
Marian Briggs was also spending a few days. It is through Mrs.
Briggs's eyes that we see Swamiji meeting, not for the first time, the
brilliant and charming Hiram Maxim, with whom, as with Patrick
Geddes, he had had many long and no doubt far-ranging talks. In a
letter Mrs. Briggs wrote to Mrs. Bull on October 22 from 66 rue
Ampere, we find Swamiji and Maxim going at it for hours on end
and, surely, to their hearts' content.

Yesterday [she wrote] Mr. Maxim, who is wild over Swami-

and who can be most useful to him-took us all to meet a
Russian-Zarahoff [?] his name was-and he is giving Miss
MacLeod many letters in Constantinople. From there we all
went to Mr. Achingleus [?] to a lovely lunch. We sat down to
the table about one o'clock and did not rise again till after four-
Swami and Mr. Maxim talking all the time. 26

Earlier in this same letter Mrs. Briggs mentioned that on the day
following the lunch Swamiji was "sitting by the open fire reading Mr.
Maxim's manuscript." What manuscript this was, one does not know,
but it is very likely that the two friends met once again to discuss the
ideas it contained and to take a final leave of each other.
There was very little time left. Swamiji made a last tour of the
Paris Exposition, and one wonders if, as he did so, he thought of the
World's Fair at Chicago and the Parliament of Religions, at which,
seven years earlier, he had ignited the consciousness of the West. Did
he remember how he had stood before a multitude of people and set
them all cheering with his simple "Sisters and Brothers of America"?
He and the West had met at the World's Fair at Chicago; at the Inter-
national Exposition in Paris they said farewell. Both fairs had
heralded the entry of Western civilization into an era
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that would bring changes in man's individual and collective life on
earth far beyond anyone's most optimistic, most pessimistic, most
fantastic dream. Swamiji had walked through both fairs: in the door
of one, so to speak, and out the door of the other; people had turned
to stare at so much majesty, at so much strangeness. Yet he was as
much a part of the coming age as were the awesome scientific
exhibits and displays that foreshadowed it and that demanded a new
type of human being to match their power, to develop their potential
good, to control their latent evil, and, in the end, to transcend them
utterly. Swamiji was that new type. By his example he showed man
what he must become, and by his precepts he taught him how to
attain that unprecedented, theretofore undreamed, stature and
dimension.
As he walked now for the last time through the grounds of the
Paris Exposition did he think of such things? One does not know.
Possibly his thoughts moved far beyond the world and his mission in
it; or possibly he left an immense heartache not for mankind's agonies
but for its pathetic prides and glories.
It was a dreary day, overcast and rainy. Many of the temporary
buildings were being demolished. "Everything on earth has an end,"
he wrote in his Memoirs. "Once again I took a round over the Paris
Exposition today. . . . The breaking up of the Exhibition is a big
affair. The streets of this heaven on earth, the Eden-like Paris, will be
filled with knee deep mud and mortar. With the exception of one or
two main buildings, all the houses and their parts are but a display of
wood and rags and whitewashing just as the whole world is! And
when they are demolished, the lime-dust flies about and is
suffocating; rags and sand etc. make the streets exceedingly dirty;
and, if it rains in addition, it is an awful mess." 27

On the overcast evening of October 24, Swamiji and his party

boarded the famed Orient Express, one of the great trains
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of the era. Their trip was to be as unspectacular in event as it was
undramatic in motive. But according to the New York World, and
perhaps according to Mme Calve as well, it was to be the trip of the
century. On November 11, a Sunday, the World printed a full-page
story steeped in pathos, glamour, malice, falsehood, and the "mystery
of the East," all of which were so dear to journalists of the day. The
text surrounded a large line drawing of a prettified Calve seated
daintily atop an ornately caparisoned camel, which haughty beast is
being escorted across the desert by a Bedouin; the Pyramids and the
Sphinx are seen in the background. In the bottom left-hand corner is a
small photograph of Swamiji in a round frame with tassels, and in the
upper right-hand corner is a similarly framed photograph of Mme
Calve. The extraordinary banner headlines and text (some portions of
which I have quoted earlier) read in part:

STRANGEST OF PILGRIMAGES-CALVE'S
FLIGHT FOR HEALTH TO THE MYSTIC EAST.
* * *
Brilliant Singer Abandons Her Stage Career and Seeks the
Shrines of Buddha with Mrs. Francis H. Leggett of ,New York,
and Princess Demidoff, Under Charge of the Swami
Vivekananda, Whose Occult Soirees at the Paris Home of the
Leggetts Have Been a Social Sensation.

Smitten by Disease for Which the Surgeon's Knife Is the Only

Cure, the Greatest of Operatic Carmens Rebelled with All the
Ardor of Her Passionate Nature, and .Now Seeks in the Mystic
Lore of the East Relief from the Terrible Death that Menaces
Her. By Sailing yacht She Goes to Smyrna; She May Sing Before
the Sultan; She Will Cross the Desert Upon Camel-Back and
Will Reach the Snowy Himalayas Only After Long and Strange
Wanderings, for Every Phase of Which She Has Appropriate
Costumes.

380
 (Special Correspondent of the Sunday World.)
Paris, Nov. 1

Mme. Calve, a fugitive from the surgeon's knife, has broken

all her operatic contracts and turned her back on Christendom to
immerse herself in the mystery of thc East.
Greatest of Carmens, incarnation of passion on the stage,
swayed absolutely by the impulses of her warm Southern blood
and artist's temperament, the terror of physical pain and possible
death has driven her into thc remote places of the world, there to
seek the aid of occult forces against the malady for which
Western science can prescribe nothing better than the knife.
Her guide, philosopher and friend in this remarkable
expedition is the Swami Vivekananda, the learned and
handsome Hindoo monk who lectured and made converts in this
country during the year of the World's Fair.
Doubtless as these lines are being read the self exiled prima
donna and her swarthy tutor will be journeying on camels across
the desert from Smyrna to Jerusalem, attended with all the pomp
and magnificence of a modern Queen of Sheba, for that is part
of the odd programme.
With her and the Swami are the Princess Demidoff of Russia,
Mrs. Francis H. Leggett of New York and her sister, Miss
MacLeod. It would not be easy to imagine a stranger assortment
of human beings. The story of the Swami Vivekananda and his
influence over the Leggetts and how the Leggetts came into
association with such a mighty social power as Princess
Demidoff and such a queen of music as Calve-this story of
modern Paris, with its climax to the tune of camel bells, is
worthy of Balzac.
First as to the Swami. He went to America with all the
prestige of the highest Hindu caste and all the fascination of a
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 The Swami lectured and talked in Chicago, and there was no
more picturesque figure at the congress of religions, and none
round which the ladies thronged so eagerly.
Picture a sturdy figure of majestic mien draped in an orange-
red robe-the habit of his priestly order-and crowned with an
elaborate turban and you have the Swami Vivekananda.
That one caught a glimpse of American trousers beneath the
robe did not disillusionize his admirers of the susceptible sex.
Indeed they seldom looked beyond his eyes. . . .
His male converts were fewer, but some of them were almost
as enthusiastic as the women. The most zealous was Francis H.
Leggett, the rich grocer.
Not less ardent than Mr. Leggett in pursuit of the Vedanta
Philosophy was his fiancee, Mrs. William Sturgis, of Chicago, a
beautiful widow many years his junior, who was formerly Miss
McLeod, of New York.
Mr. Leggett was anxious that the marriage ceremony
between Mrs. Sturgis and himself should be performed by the
Swami, but he waived this desire as a concession to American
ideas of propriety.
At the earnest request of the bride and bridegroom the Swami
accompanied them on their wedding tour, and from that day to
this they had religiously refrained from eating red meat and
other foods pronounced by the Swami unfavorable to the higher
spiritual development. . . .
[The correspondent here tells of Mrs. Walden, and then
continues:]
Into this singular brew of humanity [at the Leggetts' Paris
house] was projected Calve.
Calve, the creature of impulse, the daughter of earth, the
passionate, heedless, gypsy-souled songstress, all temperament,
all fierce emotion, greatest of Carmens because she is Carmen.
Heedless no longer. Poor, tortured, Frightened Calve,
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 all her joys in life turned into terror of the surgeon's knife!
The fiat had gone forth. Fear pursued her night and day. Her
very vitality, her very lack of self discipline were her enemies.
Her fancy pictured an operation in colors of unimaginable
horror. . . .

The article goes on in this vein for another long column, telling
how the party set sail from Paris on a chartered yacht bound for
Naples, then Athens, then Smyrna-the whole thing the concoction of
some fevered journalist, and believed word by word, one can be sure,
by many a fevered reader.
But let us return to the real world and the real trip. The assortment
of human beings who actually comprised Calve's party (or, as I shall
call it, Swamiji's party) was stranger than dreamed of by even the
correspondent of the New York World. In place of Princess Demidoff
and Mrs. Francis Leggett were the far more odd (from a journalistic
viewpoint at least) Jules Bois, the then famous delver into medieval
satanism, necromancy, and the like, and Pure Hyacinthe (Charles
Loyson) the renowned ex-Carmelite monk, and his wife. (M. and
Mme Loyson were not, actually, members of the party; they were,
rather, co-travelers. The "very aged" Pere Hyacinthe, as Swamiji
writes in his Memoirs, was on his way to Jerusalem "to try to
establish cordial relations among the Christians and Mussalmans.")28

As has been mentioned in an earlier chapter, Swamiji's "Memoirs

of European Travel" (or, in the original Bengali, Parivrajak) was
begun when he left India in June of 1899. In its first part, as we have
seen, Swamiji takes his reader from the mouth of the Hooghly River,
where his ship set sail, to London, where it finally docked, giving
along the way a feast of information. The second half of the Memoirs
was written for the most part in Constantinople and describes the trip
through Europe. Again Swamiji fills the pages (some thirty-two of
them, including an addenda) .with information and penetrating
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comment from the endlessly varied and voluminous library of his
mind. As far as I know, these pages constitute our only source of
detailed information about the journey, from its beginning in Paris up
to the travelers' departure from Greece.
The Orient Express was a magnificently furnished and fitted
train-de-Luxe, consisting from Paris to Vienna of five cars-two
sleepers, a diner, and two baggage cars-and for the remainder of the
journey of three, having dropped one sleeper and one baggage car in
Vienna. Its two-berth compartments were paneled in inlaid mahogany
and were luxuriously carpeted and appointed; its seats were
upholstered in velvet, with antimacassars of fine Brussels lace; its
windows were draped in red damask; its dining car gleamed with
crystal and silver; its cuisine was epicurean. This embodiment of
imperial elegance, its teakwood sides painted a royal blue and
emblazoned with a coat of arms, swept at a stately forty miles an hour
through France, Germany, and Austria-Hungary, slowing to a more
cautious thirty miles an hour through Serbia, Bulgaria, and the
European part of Turkey to the Bosporus-a journey, all told, of 1750
miles, during the course of which the cars changed locomotives
twenty-one times.
On the first night (October 24) the Orient Express passed through
eastern France, and much of the next day through the southern part of
Germany. In the summer of 1896, Swamiji had, as he writes, seen
Germany thoroughly. He knew its tone and feel, so unlike that of
France. "Germany, after France," he wrote, "produces quite a jarring
effect. . . . On one side is the artistic workmanship of the dark-haired,
comparatively short-statured, luxurious, highly civilized French
people, to whom art means life; and on the other, the clumsy daubing,
the unskillful manipulation, of tawny-haired, tall, gigantic German. . .
. The German muscle can go on striking small blows untiringly, till
death; the French have tender, feminine bodies, but when they do
concentrate and strike, it is a sledgehammer blow, and is irresistible."
But heavy-handed, plodding, and persistent, Germany was
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the dominant power in Europe. " `On the one hand the moon is
setting,' " Swamiji wrote (quoting from Kalidasa's Shakuntala), "-the
world-encompassing France is slowly consuming herself in the fire of
contemplated retribution-while on the other hand, centralised, young
and mighty Germany has begun her upward march above the horizon
with rapid strides.. . . Germany is fast multiplying her population, and
is exceptionally hardy. Today Germany is the dictator to all Europe,
her place is above all! . . . The German army is the foremost in
reputation, and Germany has vowed to become foremost in her navy
also. German manufacture of commodities has beaten even
England!"29
The train reached the frontiers of Austria in the afternoon of
October 25 and that evening, Vienna, where-after the splendid
disembarkment of two archdukes, who were met by a guard of
officers "in laced uniforms" and soldiers "with feathered caps"-
Swamiji's party was allowed to alight. Their luggage was searched
For tobacco (a procedure gone through at every border and,
presumably, at any point of destination) ; they paid whatever duty
was charged and took a waiting carriage to a hotel, where
reservations had been made in advance. 30 (The Loysons did not stop
over in Vienna but went straight through to Constantinople.)
In their memoirs, Swamiji and Miss MacLeod differ in regard to
the length of time spent at various places. According to Miss
MacLeod, they stayed in Vienna for two days; according to Swamiji,
for three days, which, he wrote, "were sufficient to tire me." Two
days or three, they were spent for the most part in sight-seeing-going
through the Schonbrunn Palace, the Museum, the Art Gallery. Of
such places, Swamiji enjoyed most the Scientific Museum, "an
institution of great benefit to the student." But there was nothing,
perhaps, that was not of interest to him and upon which he could not
throw a good deal of light.
To travel with Swamiji must have been an education in itself. To
him the past was a living part of the present, and in
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the present he clearly read the future. Indeed, he seemed to see man's
history on earth as a vast, animated tapestry of interrelated figures,
some dark, some bright, some seething with vitality, some lying for
the time quiescent, others charging over the edge of destruction. His
informed analysis of European politics and power struggles, of trends
and undercurrents, was as lucid and detached as though he were
viewing his age from some far future time. The Schonbrunn Palace,
for instance, put him in mind of the whole pageant of Austrian
history-its powerful, prestigious, and glamorous past, its declining
present, and its probable eclipse in the future. The Palace put Swamiji
in mind also of Napoleon, who, though asserting that he would
originate a mighty dynasty of his own, was yet careful to marry the
daughter of the Emperor of Austria. And thus, Swamiji writes, "that
hero fell into this abyss of family prestige"-a Hapsburg abyss that
swallowed his only son, the "Young Eagle," holding him virtually a
prisoner in the Palace until, brokenhearted, he died. This was
l'Aiglon, the hero of Edmond Rostand's play, over whose tragic fate
Sarah Bernhardt was currently making all Paris weep.
Swamiji, whose eyes saw things precisely as they were, had no
illusions in regard to the state of Western civilization. While many
idealists of that period were happy in the thought that the rationality,
moral uprightness, and general excellence of European culture
precluded the very possibility of war, he saw that a large-scale war
was not only possible but probable. Europe was, in fact, armed to the
teeth with all manner of modern weapons, including Hiram Maxim's
deadly machine gun; conscription (except in England) was universal.
"Throughout Europe there is a craze for soldiers-soldiers
everywhere," he wrote. "In the present times, a huge wave of
nationalism is sweeping over Europe, where people speaking the
same tongue, professing the same religion and belonging to the same
race want to unite together. Wherever such union is being effectively
accomplished, there is great power being
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manifested; and where this is impossible, death is inevitable. After
the death of the present Austrian Emperor (Franz Josef I, who died in
1916], Germany will surely try to absorb the German-speaking
portion of the Austrian Empire-and Russia and others are sure to
oppose her; so there is the possibility of a dreadful war."31 It was a
prophecy fulfilled in its essential points to the letter.
"Vienna," Swamiji wrote, "is a small city after the model of
Paris." Yet Paris was Paris, and no other city could compare. "To
visit Europe after Paris is like tasting an inferior preparation after a
sumptuous feast-that dress, and style of eating, that same fashion
everywhere; throughout the land you meet with that same black suit,
and the same queer hat-disgusting! Besides, you have clouds above,
and this swarm of people with black hats and black coats below-one
feels suffocated, as it were."32 In the respectable uniformity of Europe
he saw inevitable decay, a fate worse, perhaps, and more irreparable,
than war. "It is a law of nature," he wrote, "that such [samenesses] are
the symptoms of death." India, he pointed out, provided an example
of people following the same customs for centuries and gradually
becoming thereby mere automata. "The Europeans too will share the
same fate! `... They will become like so many machines, will
gradually tread the path their forefathers have trod,' and as an
inevitable consequence of that-they will rot and die!"33
On the evening of October 28, the party again boarded the Orient
Express and traveled for two nights and a day through the Balkan
countries to Constantinople. The train stopped for a time, allowing
the passengers to alight, in various cities along the way, such as
Budapest, which Swamiji found "very neat and beautiful," and
Belgrade. But for the most part, sightseeing was done from the train
windows. The ragged, mud-hut poverty of the Balkan countryside
reminded Swamiji of India-though in some respects he found it
worse. "As they are Christians," he wrote, "they must have a number
of hogs; and a single hog will make a place more dirty than two hun-
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dred barbarous men will be able to do."34 Yet this poverty was worth
the freedom it was paying for. "Freedom with but one meal a day and
tattered rags on, is a million times better than slavery in gold chains.
A slave suffers the miseries of hell both here and hereafter."35 It was
clear to Swamiji, however, that the precious, hard-won and costly
freedom of the Balkan countries was to be short-lived. "After much
bloodshed," he wrote of Serbia and Bulgaria, "they have thrown off
the yoke of Turkey; but along with this they have got a serious
disadvantage-they must construct their army after the European
model, otherwise the existence of not one of them is safe for a day.
Of course, sooner or later they will all one day be absorbed by
Russia."36
In the Hungarian peasant he saw the serpent-worshiping nomads
of Turkestan, those ancient tribes of central Asia that had moved
down into India centuries earlier, conquering the land and absorbing
the religion of Buddhism, and whose homeland had in turn been
permeated with Buddhism and Hinduism. Later, other tribes from the
area north of Kashmir had moved west, one section going north of
the Caspian Sea into Europe, where they had founded the kingdom of
Hungary and had become Christians; another section wandering
along the south shore of the Caspian into Persia and Asia Minor,
where in time they had become Mohammedans. The latter were to
invade India in hordes, destroying the ancient culture that they had
once, in forgotten days, revered and made their own. Here was a tale
of many strands, which Swamiji not only wrote of in his Memoirs
but perhaps brought to life for his traveling companions as the Orient
Express crossed Hungary, in whose Christianity, he said, "one may
even now trace on research the strata of serpent worship and of
Buddhism."37
Swamiji's Memoirs, as published in the Udbodhan, end with him
discovering in the Balkan countries-to his surprise and no doubt to
his delight-chilies so hot as "to beat even your Madrasis."38 The
remaining portion, as published in the Complete Works, consists, the
editor tells us, in "jottings . . . found
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among Swamiji's papers." It is from these addenda that one can
follow him in Constantinople and thence to Athens.
If I have calculated correctly, the Orient Express arrived in
Constantinople (now Istanbul) on the morning of Tuesday, October
30. How many days Swamiji and his party remained here is not
certain. According to the Memoirs, their stay seems to have lasted
only two or three days; but according to Miss MacLeod, they stopped
over for nine days-and this, I would think, is the more probable
length of time.
That ancient center of two great empires-Byzantine and, later,
Ottoman-with its layers of religious history and culture, could not but
have been of interest to Swamiji, yet his notes tell very little of his
stay there. On their arrival, the travelers had "great trouble" with the
octroi, or local tax officers, who, searching for seditious literature as
well as for tobacco, entered into a quarrel with Mme Calve and Jules
Bois over their books. In the end, two books were confiscated. That
matter settled, the party took a carriage and saw the town--old and
new. "In the evening," Swamiji writes, "we went to visit Woods
Pasha."39 (One has been tempted to identify this Woods Pasha with
Jules Bois. It has been found, however, that a real person named
Woods Pasha was living at the time in Constantinople. Although all
we know of him is that he had at least a faint connection with India,
this tends to establish him as the person Swamiji went to see.) Next,
one finds Swamiji and Miss MacLeod hiring a boat on the extremely
cold and windy second day of their visit and crossing the Bosporus in
order to visit Pere Hyacinthe who, with his wife, had arrived in Con-
stantinople ahead of the others and who was staying at the American
College of Girls at Scutari (now Uskudar). Swamiji and the crusading
ex-monk had a long talk (surely in French) about American colleges,
which, in view of the setting, was a natural enough subject to have
picked.
"The police," Swamiji wrote, "have prohibited Pere Hyacinthe's
lectures; so I too cannot lecture."40 But one learns from A Bosporus
Adventure by Mary Mills Patrick (which is
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quoted in "Swami Vivekananda and Pere Hyacinthe Loyson" by
Swami Vidyatmananda) that the government did not prevent the
renowned and immensely popular Pere Hyacinthe from lecturing at
the college.41 Nor, accordingly, did Swamiji feel reluctant to lecture
on Hinduism in the college chapel on Friday, November 2. This last
piece of information comes from an entry in Pere Hyacinthe's journal,
portions of which are quoted for the first time in Swami
Vidyatmananda's article.42
Additional information about Swamiji's lecture at Scutari comes
from a small travel diary of Mme Calve's, in which (as Swami
Vidyatmananda informs us in his article "Swami Vivekananda in the
Near East, 1900")43 she noted that Jules Bois also spoke that day,
"[giving] his lecture after that of the Swami and of Loyson, on the
same subject: three philosophers: Carlyle, Emmerson [sic] and
Nietsche." According to a further notation by Calve, Swamiji spoke
(very likely in French despite his protests) also of Descartes and
Spinoza. She wrote in part:

He explains to us Descartes, Spinoza, Nietsche. The latter

wants to aid the elite, the superman, to develop, [thereby]
preventing the unenlightened from killing a Christ or a Galileo,
creating thus an aristocracy of the intelligence. Spinoza-
idealistic pantheism-God in everything. Philosophy deals with
the romance of the soul of the universe.44

This was hardly Hinduism. But perhaps, in keeping with Loyson's

"universal religion," the assigned theme for the lectures that day was
the comparison of diverse lines of world thought. In any case,
Swamiji's talk appears to have been philosophical and scholarly in
tone and content, such that Mme CaIve could not (it would seem)
entirely follow it. We learn even less from the memoirs of a Madame
Halide Edib, who had been in the audience as a young student and
devotee of Pere Hyacinthe. "I was captivated by [the Brahmanist's]
artistic manner " she wrote, "but even at that age I could feel
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that he had a certain quality of make-up and that he appealed to one's
senses rather than to one's head and heart-the opposite of all that was
so evident in Pere Hyacinthe's addresses."45 Of what Swamiji said we
are given not a hint. Unfortunately, Emma Calve's and Halide Edib's
are the only known eyewitness accounts of what was very likely a
unique lecture. Where else did Swamiji speak at any length on
Western philosophers and philosophy?
According to the Life, Swamiji spoke also in Constantinople:
"Several private conversaziones and drawing-room lectures were . . .
arranged for him at which he spoke on the religion of Vedanta to
select audiences." Some of these talks were perhaps arranged by the
French charge d'affaires, whom, the Life tells us, Swamiji met,
together with other notables, through the introductory letters of
Hiram Maxim46-and those, perhaps, of Mr. Maxim's Russian friend
Zarahoff.
Swamiji was evidently in good spirits in Constantinople. "Dear
Alberta," he wrote from there on a picture postcard, "How are you? I
am having a grand Turkish time, Yours, Vivekananda."47 He chose
other postcards also and, like any traveler, wrote brief messages on
them, letting his friends know he thought of them. Aside from the
card for Alberta, we know of three others: two for Sister Christine
and one for Sister Nivedita. Those to Christine (the first from
Constantinople and the second, dated November 11, from Athens)
read: "Dear Christine-I am having good time here so I hope you also
are having in Detroit-yours t[rul]y Vivekananda"48 and "Great fun I
write without the possibility of being written to as I am changing
place all the time. How do you do? Vivekananda"49 For Nivedita he
chose a card in Constantinople that pictured a group of dervishes. His
message: "Dear Margot -the blessings of the howling dervishes go
with you-yours in the Lord-Vivekananda. P.S. All love to Mrs. Bull.
V"50 (These words, few though they were, filled Nivedita with joy.
"Swami's dear `blessings of the howling dervishes' were the first he
ever sent me without [my] asking," she wrote from
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London on November 15 to Miss MacLeod, "and made me feel the
happiness of indeed being a child.")51
As far as we know, those postcards-all, surely, bringing joy to
those to whom he sent them-were Swamiji's only correspondence
during the entire trip, except for a published letter written from Port
Tewfick, to which I shall refer later. One could, of course, call his
Memoirs a correspondence of sorts, and indeed the writing of this
long travel-letter for the Udbodhan must have left him little time in
Constantinople for anything else.
Yet he had time to talk (in French) with Pere Hyacinthe, as we
learn from excerpts from the latter's diary, which, as noted earlier,
have been made available to us by Swami Vidyatmananda in his
article "Swami Vivekananda and Pere Hyacinthe Loyson." I quote
here briefly from Loyson's diary, in which he either paraphrased or
(as it would sometimes seem) directly and accurately quoted
Swamiji's words:

October 31, 1900

[Swamiji:] . . . "In America the races are divided even in the
church, which ought to unite them, whites and blacks. Islam
brings them together. From this standpoint [i.e., the mixture of
races], what one sees in the streets and mosques of
Constantinople is beautiful. The Turks practice equality and the
brotherhood of man. The four castes of India-priests, warriors,
merchants, and workers-represent the sequence of history.
Europe and America find themselves in the epoch of the basest
of castes, that of merchants, who produce nothing but live by
lying and stealing, and will be replaced by the reign, perhaps
terrible, of the workers. Later, social harmony will be reborn,
and there will prevail a superior fusion of the four castes."

November 1, 1900
. . . "It is the responsibility of men like you," the Swami
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 said to me, "to hurry up these times [of social harmony]. Let
them arrive by pacific ways and not as a result of catastrophes."

November 3, 1900

[Swamiji:] . . . According to the law of the superior castes,

marriage consists in a rigorous monogamy: a single wife and the
same for always, even after death. The marriage act is sublime,
sacred; one prepares oneself for it by prayer and fasting. The
great religious duties-pilgrimages, for example-can be carried
out only by man and wife together, not by widowers or widows,
or the unmarried. The king, at his investiture, may not take his
place on the throne except in company with the queen, she like
him having received the royal anointing. If he mounts alone, he
is not king.52

As Swami Vidyatmananda has pointed out, Swamiji's remarks in

that last entry must have been his indirect and compassionate way of
reassuring the erstwhile monk about his marriage. Indeed, his words
were more than a reassurance; coming as they did from the lips of
one so close to God, they were a kind of absolution and blessing-or,
if one prefers, a breaking of bondage-and one feels sure that the
saintly old man (who up till then had been nagged by a sense of
transgression) was at last set free.
According to a cautious notation in the Brahmavadin of December
1900, Swamiji "appears to have left Constantinople on the 10th
November for Athens."53 And from the Addenda to his Memoirs one
learns a few details about the trip to Greece. For, instance, the
travelers, who still numbered four (Pere Hyacinthe and his wife
remained in Constantinople), left the city at ten in the morning
(Swamiji does not mention the date) and sailed on placid waters for a
day and a night across the Sea of Marmara, putting in once at an
island to visit a Greek Orthodox monastery. They sailed on through
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and into the Aegean, where, on the shore of another island, they came
upon the ruins of a temple, dedicated, Swamiji guessed, to the god of
the sea. From 'there they sailed to Port Piraeus (near Athens), where
the voyage ended.

The party stayed in Greece for three or four days (Swamiji says
three, Miss MacLeod says four), seeing all that should be seen: the
Acropolis, the Parthenon, the Temple of Zeus, the Theater of
Dionysus. On a separate day, they visited the town of Eleusis, where
in ancient times the sacred rites of the Eleusinian Mysteries had been
celebrated. During his visits to the Louvre in Paris, Swamiji had
learned a great deal about Greek art and its different periods-a
knowledge which must have added to his and his companions'
pleasure. The wonderful talks would have gone on; there was simply
no end to what Swamiji knew, and all of it he could make fascinating.
In a brief unpublished passage of her unpublished papers Mme
Calve relived. those unforgettable hours-"the best in her life."
Quoting decades later from a 1900 diary, she wrote:

To live close to the Swami is a perpetual source of in-

spiration; we live in an intense spiritual atmosphere. For him
every occasion inspires parables, quotations, ranging from
Hindu mythology to the profoundest philosophy. Sometimes he
is gay, full of fun, ready with rapid repartee, joking and laughing
like a child. He is inexhaustible in telling us interesting stories.
He possesses a voice like a cello, with low vibrations that one
cannot forget, and which fills both lecture halls and hearts. 54

Possibly it was on November 13 or 14 that the party left Athens,

boarding the Russian ship the Czar and setting sail for Egypt. At this
point the Memoirs come to an end; but it is just at this point that
Emma Calve's published autobiography, My Life, takes up the story,
giving us a glimpse (not as intimate as the above paragraph, but
informing nonetheless) of Swamiji in Cairo. This portion of her book
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394
trip during which Swamiji was her guest can also be found in
Reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda,55 but I have taken the
following extract from the Saturday Evening Post of September 9,
1922, where it was first published, translated by Rosamond Gilder
from the French:

With the swami and some of his friends and followers I went
upon a most remarkable trip, through Turkey, Egypt and Greece.
Our party included the swami; Father Hyacinthe Loyson; his
wife, a Bostonian; Miss McL., of Chicago, ardent swamist and
charming, enthusiastic woman; and myself, the song bird of the
troupe. [Miss MacLeod was more of New York than of
Chicago; and Mme Calve forgets that Jules Bois was also a
member of the party. I mention these inaccuracies only that the
record may be kept straight.]
What a pilgrimage it was! Science, philosophy and history
had no secrets from the swami. I listened with all my ears to the
wise and learned discourse that went on around me. I did not
attempt to join in their arguments, but I sang on all occasions, as
is my custom. [It is said that Swamiji liked her to sing for him
the rousing "Marseillaise."] The swami would discuss all sorts
of questions with Father Loyson, who was a scholar and a
theologian of repute. It was interesting to see that the swami was
able to give the exact text of a document, the date of a church
council, when Father Loyson himself was not certain. . . .
When we were in Greece we visited Eleusis. He explained its
mysteries to us and led us from altar to altar, from temple to
temple, describing the processions that were held in each place,
intoning the ancient prayers, showing us the priestly rites.
Later, in Egypt, one unforgettable night, he led us again into
the past, speaking to us in mystic, moving words, under the
shadow of the silent Sphinx.
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The swami was always absorbingly interesting, even under
ordinary conditions. He fascinated his hearers with his magic
tongue. Again and again we would miss our train, sitting calmly
in a station waiting room, enthralled by his discourse and quite
oblivious to the lapse of time. Even Miss McL., the most
sensible among us, would forget the hour and we would in
consequence find ourselves stranded far from our destination at
the most inconvenient times and places.
One day we lost our way in Cairo. I suppose we had been
talking too intently. At any rate, we found ourselves in a squalid,
ill-smelling street, where half clad women lolled from windows
and sprawled on doorsteps.
The swami noticed nothing until a particularly noisy group of
women on a bench in the shadow of a dilapidated building
began laughing and calling to him. One of the ladies of our party
tried to hurry us along, but the swami detached himself gently
from our group and approached the women on the bench.
"Poor children!" he said. "Poor creatures! They have put their
divinity in their beauty. Look at them now!" [According to Mme
Calve's account of this incident to her friend Mme Paul Verdier,
Swamiji's words were: "Poor child, she has forgotten who she is
and has put her divinity into her body."]
He began to weep, as Jesus might have done before the
woman taken in adultery. The women were silenced and
abashed. One of them leaned forward and kissed the hem of his
robe, murmuring brokenly in Spanish, "Hombre de Dios,
hombre de Dios!" (Man of God!) Another, with a sudden
gesture of modesty and fear, threw her arm in front of her face
as though she would screen her shrinking soul from those pure
eyes.
This marvelous journey proved to be almost the last occasion
on which I was to see the swami. Shortly afterward he
announced that he was to return to his own
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 country. He felt that his end was approaching and he wished to
go back to the community of which he was director and where
he had spent his youth. . . ,

It should be mentioned that Emma Calve and Josephine MacLeod

each told Mme Paul Verdier, who knew them both well, more details
in regard to Swamiji's departure for his motherland than are to be
found in their respective memoirs. I quote directly from the late Mme
Verdier's notes, which she generously supplied:

According to what both Josephine MacLeod and Calve told

me, Calve met the party in Egypt where she had an engagement
to sing. It is possible that she had left the party somewhere en
route [probably in Greece], and joined it again in Egypt. When
she arrived, Miss MacLeod told her that she would find Swamiji
in a sad, depressed mood. Calve asked what the matter was, and
Tantine said, "He wants to go back to India." So CaIve saw
Swamiji and found him sad. Calve was very outspoken and free.
She asked him why he felt sad, and he answered that he wanted
to go back to India to be with his brother monks. At these
words, Calve answered, "Why, Swamiji, if it is only that, I'll pay
your fare; it is nothing! But why do you want to leave us?"
Then his eyes filled with tears, he was so moved by her
spontaneous generosity. (She was very generous, like the great
artist that she was.) And he told her then-these are her words to
me-" `I want to go back to India to die and want to be with my
brothers.' " She was aghast and said something like-"But
Swamiji you cannot die, we need you"-I forget her exact words.
Then he said he would die the 4th of July. . ..
Later Calve accepted a singing engagement which took her
over the world, She told me that she particularly wanted to go to
India, as she wanted to check herself on
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 the date of Swamiji's death. She found that just as he had told
her (so she said) he died on the 4th of July. 56

Whatever reason Swamiji may have had for returning to India-and

there appears to have been more than one reason -his decision had
been an unexpected one. At Luxor and Karnak, up the Nile, lay the
ruins of ancient Thebes, which Miss MacLeod wanted to visit. But
Swamiji was not tempted. He longed suddenly for his motherland,
and Joe, as she later told her niece Frances Leggett, who wrote of the
incident in Late and Soon, made no effort to detain him. 57 Coming to
Joe one morning in Cairo, Swamiji said to her, "I must leave
immediately. I must go back to India." And, as she later told it, she
had answered with a full, though regretful heart, "Yes, go." It was
after this, of course, that Mme Calve, also with a full heart, made his
return possible.
(That is the way Miss MacLeod looked back upon this occasion,
and the way she wrote of it in her memoirs. But as she related it at the
time, it was not so much a full heart as lack of energy that prevented
her from detaining Swamiji. There is no doubt, however, that her
heart was full, for such was her nature. Seeing his desire to return to
India, she would not have tried to detain him, even if she could have-
which possibility is indeed highly doubtful. Swamiji was suddenly
certain of his next move; nothing would have kept him from making
it.)
It is said that he had a strong intuition that Captain Sevier was
dying and that this made him anxious to hurry home. More probably,
for Captain Sevier had actually died almost a month earlier, belated
news of his illness caught up with the travelers in Egypt, and Swamiji
knew through ordinary channels that the time was short. Captain
James Henry Sevier and his wife, Charlotte, were the English
disciples of whom he had written to Sister Nivedita in July of 1897
(before her first journey to India) : "the Seviers are the only English
people who do not hate the natives. . . . Mr. and Mrs. Sevier are the

398
only persons who did not come to patronise us."58They had gone to
India with Swamiji at the end of 1896, and there they had remained,
dedicating their lives to his work. In 1898 they had bought the land at
Mayavati where the Advaita Ashrama was to be located and had lived
there, improving the grounds and helping to establish the center.
Captain Sevier (he was a retired army captain) had died on October
28, 1900, the day Swamiji had left Vienna. But there was no way for
Swamiji to know that he was already too late.

There was perhaps another, more compelling reason for his

longing to return to India-a reason to which he had given words
months earlier when he had written to Joe from Alameda: "Now I
again hear his voice; the same old voice thrilling my soul. Bonds are
breaking-love dying, work becoming tasteless-the glamour is off life.
Now only the voice of the Master calling--I come, Lord, I come.--
`Let the dead bury the dead, follow thou Me.'-- I come, my beloved
Lord, I come.' Yes, I come. Nirvana is before me. I feel it at times,
the same infinite ocean of peace, without a ripple, a breath."59 Had
not that voice gone on calling? Now, so close to Asia-the air of the
East surrounding him-Swamiji could care for nothing but to turn his
steps homeward.
A heretofore unpublished letter from Miss MacLeod to Mrs. Bull
speaks of his sudden decision and departure. The letter was dated
"Thanksgiving," which fell that year on November 29. It read in part:

Thanksgiving on The Nile.

Dearest S. S
Your postal card from Paris reached me just now, telling of
Mrs. Alcock's illness. [Mrs. Alcock was a relative of Mrs.
Bull's] . . . I am alone on the Nile. Swamiji returned to India on
Sunday last-& is due there Dec. 6th the full-moon--
He was eager to go-& I was too poorly to urge him to stay-
even Luxor & Karnac failed to induce him to remain over-
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 Mlle. Calve is in Cairo-but joins me in a day or so-to go to
Assouan, the first Cataract--
I may remain in Southern Egypt some time-I have no plans.-I
am somewhat better but feel it will take the entire winter in quiet
to recoup--
The Nile service under Cook is delightful-we are only 14.
passengers-taking 12 days to go up to the first Cataract -have
some excursion on donkeys every day. . . .
Mr. Bois is in Luxor, & goes to Palestine, before returning to
Paris. We all had just one month together.
.....
I had a letter From Mr. Sturdy.
Do write me some news-gossip-anything.!! Isn't that a good
sign [of returning health] ?
Swamiji was not very well-had another heart attack -& was
radiant about going to India-bless him.
I've had a sweet letter from Margot.
Lovingly as ever 60 Jojo

As far as I know, Miss MacLeod's information that Swamiji had

had a heart attack-and this not the first-is the only word we have on
the subject. But she mentions these attacks so casually that one can
barely believe they were serious, if they were heart attacks at all. In
any event, Swamiji does not appear to have been particularly ill at
this point in his trip.
(It should be mentioned, however, that there is no known
photograph of Swamiji at this period by which we might guess at his
state of health. The two photographs sometimes said to have been
taken in Constantinople and Cairo, perhaps because he wears in both
a fezlike hat, were actually taken in England in the fall of 1895 and
subsequently published in a London newspaper, with credit given to a
local photographic studio.)
It would seem that Swamiji traveled overland from Cairo, or from
nearby EI Giza, to Port Tewfick (or Tawfiq) near Suez at the south
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board a steamer to Bombay (the Italian Rubattino, coming from
Naples). The ship, as it happened, was late, but inasmuch as there
was some confusion about his ticket, the delay was fortunate. "Mr.
Gaze's agent gave me all the wrong directions," he wrote from Port
Tewfick to Miss MacLeod. "In the first place, there was nobody here
to tell me a thing, not to speak of receiving me. Secondly, I was not
told that I had to change my Gaze's ticket for a steamer one at the
agent's office, and that was at Suez, not here. It was good one way,
therefore, that the steamer was late; so I went to see the agent of the
steamer and he told me to exchange Gaze's pass for a regular ticket. I
hope to board the steamer some time tonight. I am well and happy
and am enjoying the fun immensely. How is Mademoiselle? Where is
Bois? Give my everlasting gratitude and good wishes to Mme Calve.
She is a good lady."61
As far as we know, Swamiji did indeed board the ship that night
and sail away down the Gulf of Suez into the Red Sea, headed for
home at last. The date was November 26, 1900.
His departure astonished everyone. But the ripple of news spread
over the world as slowly as a ship's passage; it would not reach India
before Swamiji himself.

For Swamiji the voyage of eleven or twelve days to India was

uneventful, but for at least one of his fellow passengers, a nonplussed
American missionary by the name of Reeves Calkins, it was a voyage
not soon to be forgotten. Mr. Calkins's memories of his talks with
Swamiji and of Swamiji's easy squelching of an ill-advised
conspiracy of passengers to get the better of him in debate can be
found in Reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda, there reprinted from
the March 1923 issue of Prabuddha Bharata, which magazine had
taken the article from a Bombay journal. It is a valuable account, for
Swamiji's gigantic personality bursts a11 the bounds of Mr. Calkins's
prejudice. Despite himself, the missionary portrayed the great
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soul and vast heart of the Hindu monk. One sees brilliance flashing
from him in debate; his answers to those who attempted to "draw"
him "sparkled with epigram and apt quotation"; at the table "his
conversation was like Ganga at high flood." But at other times
walking on the deck at night in friendship with the missionary-
Swamiji seems to have been barely able to keep his mind on a level
where talk of any kind was possible. "The mysticism of Vivekananda
was a fascination and wonder," Mr. Calkins wrote. "For it was not
affected. When our conversation touched, as it was bound to, on the
hidden things of the spirit, his heavy eyelids would droop slowly and
he wandered, even in my presence, into some mystic realm where I
was not invited."62
The Rubattino, late at Port Tewfick, was no doubt late at Bombay
as well, docking perhaps on December 6 or 7. The connections with
the train to Calcutta, the Bombay Howrah Express, were not good,
and thus Swamiji had a wait of many hours at the railway station.
Travelling incognito and in European dress, he was not recognized-
except by one man, a professor from Madras. It was because of this
chance encounter (which has not, I believe, been heretofore known
of) that one learns of a view in connection with his work that he had
perhaps arrived at during his visit to England. Many years later, in the
early twenties, the professor told a young monk at the Ramakrishna
Math in Madras of that meeting. He had never before spoken with
Swamiji, but had heard his lectures in Madras in February of 1897
and had been much impressed by their fire and boldness of spirit.
Astonished to find the Swami in a Bombay railway station, he
approached him, saluted him, and told him how deeply stirred he had
been by his heroic, vitalizing ideas. They fell to talking, and during
the course of conversation the man asked Swamiji about his work in
London. Swamiji's reply voiced a conviction that has not, as far as I
know, been recorded elsewhere. He no doubt spoke with emphasis,
for his words etched themselves indelibly upon the professor's mind.
"Until India becomes politically
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free," Swamiji said, "there is not the slightest chance that our religion
will be appreciated by the English people. Not the slightest chance." 63
The story of Swamiji's totally unexpected appearance at the Belur
Math on the evening of Sunday, December 9, is well known to the
readers of his biographies. I have had the good fortune, however, to
see an unpublished eye-witness account of that memorable event,
which differs in some details from the published versions. At the
beginning of this book I mentioned the Indian journal kept by Swami
Chidrupananda in 1934 and 1935. During the course of his stay at
Belur Math, the Swami (then Alfred Clifion) often had long talks
with Swami Shuddhananda, and these talks he promptly wrote down
in his journal while memory was still fresh. It was on a moonlit night
in January of 1935 that Swami Shuddhananda, walking back and
forth across the court of the Math with the young American, told of
Swamiji's home coming on that evening so many years before. The
bell had been rung at the Math for supper, he related, and the
sannyasins and brahmacharins had gathered in the dining hall, when a
servant came running in to announce that a European gentleman, a
sahib, had vaulted the low wall (as it was in those early days), had
walked hurriedly across the field, and was even then approaching the
building! What European would act in this informal, urgent fashion,
and what could his business be? Some of the swamis went outside to
inquire. And then suddenly, when they saw who the sahib was, an
incredulous, joyful cry went up. It was at this point that Swami
Shuddhananda also went outside. "He was standing right over there,"
he said, pointing out a spot just in front of the building where Sri
Ramakrishna's relics were enshrined. "When I saw all the others
saluting him, I came closer and discovered who it was. Then I, too,
saluted him. He had come by carriage from the Howrah station and
on the way had heard the dinner bell. He said he was afraid that if he
did not jump the wall there
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would be no dinner left. We took him into the dining hall [to the vast
surprise and joy of the monks still seated there]. A place was
prepared for him, and he was served his supper [a heaping plate of his
favorite khichuri], and he told us about his trip."64 Indeed it is said in
other accounts that, surrounded once again by his beloved brother
monks and his disciples, Swamiji talked late into the night, telling of
his trip, telling of many things-a talk certainly full of treasure, but
one which nobody, so overjoyed were they all, managed to record.
Thus Swami Vivekananda, the World Teacher who had given his
light fully, unstintingly to man, who had given enough, he said, for
fifteen hundred years, came home at last, his journey done.
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 APPENDIX

Article from The Alameda Encinal, April 5, 1900

(See chapter nine, section one.)

TRUE RELIGION

Hindu Philosopher Gives His Ideas.

Last evening the Swami Vivekananda gave the first of a series of

three public lectures at Tucker Hall on "The Development of
Religious Ideas."
The speaker dwelt briefly on the similarity of ideas in the minds of
orthodox Christians, Mohammedans and Hindus with regard to the
origin of their religions. Each believed his particular prophet or
teacher to have been inspired in some mysterious way by a God or
Gods, who as it were, regulated or influenced the affairs of this world
from a distance. The modern scientific mind; on the contrary, instead
of seeking for outside or supernatural causes for phenomena
endeavored to find cause in the thing or condition itself.
While at first glance this method of investigation might seem to
take from religion some of its vital elements, yet in reality it resulted
in man finding that the spiritual attributes of deity and the states of
mind producing heaven and hell were all within himself, and
although the result of this rational modern inquiry might appear to
contradict much that had been handed down in the old religious
writings such as Bible, Koran and Vedas, yet the contradiction was
more apparent than real, for the prophets and teachers of old had true
perceptions, but were mistaken only in attributing their experiences to
outside agencies, instead of realizing them to be the development and
expression of elements in their own souls before unknown and
unrecognized.
The lecturer traced some of the common beliefs regarding
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location of heavens and hells, of various burial rites and customs, and
he spoke of the impressions made on the primitive mind that resulted
in a personification of the active natural forces in the phenomena with
which we are surrounded.
The next lecture will be given to-morrow . . . evening [Friday,
April 6]. The subject will be "The Formation of God Ideals."

406