VEDANTA IN AMERICA
After the meetings of the Parliament of Religions were concluded, Swanii Vivekananda, as already noted, undertook a series of apostolic campaigns in order to sow the seed of the Vedãntic truths in the ready soil of America. Soon be discovered that the lecture bureau was exploiting him. Further, he did not like its method of advertisement. He was treated as if he were the chief attraction of a circus. The prospectus included his portrait, with the inscription, pro¬claiming his cardinal virtues: "An Orator by Divine Right; a Model Representative of his Race; a Perfect Master of the English Language; the Sensation of the 'World's Fair Parliament." It also described his physical bearing, his height, the colour of his skin, and his clothing. The Swami felt disgusted at being treated like a patent medicine or an elephant in a show. So be severed his relationship with the bureau and arranged his own lectures himself. He accepted invitations from churches, clubs, and private gatherings, and travelled extensively through the Eastern and Midwestern states of America, delivering twelve to fourteen or more lectures a week.
People came in hundreds and in thousands. And what an assorted audience he had to face! There came to his meetings professors from universities, ladies of fine breeding, seekers of truth, and devotees of God with childlike faith. But mixed with these were charlatans, curiosity-seekers, idlers, and vagabonds. It is not true that he met everywhere with favourable conditions. Leon Lands-berg, one of the Swami's American disciples, thus described Vivekananda's tribulations of those days:
The Americans are a receptive nation. That is why the country is a hotbed of all kinds of religious and irreligious monstrosities. There is no theory so absurd, no doctrine so irrational, no claim so extravagant, no fraud so transparent, but can find their numerous believers and a ready market. To satisfy this craving, to feed the credulity of the people, hundreds of societies and sects are born for the salvation of the world, and to enable the prophets to pocket $25 to $100 initiation fees. Hobgoblins, spooks, mahatmas, and ncw prophets were rising every day. In this bedlam of religious cranks, the Swami appeared to teach the lofty religion of the Vedas, the profound philosophy of Vedãnta, the sublime wisdom of the ancient rishis. The most unfavourable environment for such a task!
The Swami met with all kinds of obstacles. The opposition of fanatical Christian missionaries was, of course, one of these. They promised him help if he only would preach their brand of Christianity. When the Swami refused, they circulated all sorts of filthy stories about him, and even succeeded in persuading some of the Americans who had previously invited him to be their guest, to cancel the invitations. But Vivekananda continued to preach the religion of love, renunciation, and truth as taught by Christ, and to show him the highest veneration as a Saviour of mankind. How significant were his words:
"It is well to be born in a church, but it is terrible to die there!" Needless to say, he meant by the word church all organized religious institutions. How like a thunderbolt the words fell upon the ears of his audience when one day he exclaimed: "Christ, Buddha, and Krishna are but waves in the Ocean of Infinite Consciousness that I am!"
Then there were the leaders of the cranky, selfish, and fraudulent organizations, who tried to induce the Swami to embrace their cause, first by promises of support, and then by threats of injuring him if he refused to ally himself with them. But he could be neither bought nor frightened—"the sickle had hit on a stone," as the Polish proverb says.
To all these propositions his only answer was: "I stand for Truth. Truth will never ally itself with falsehood. Even if all the world should be against me, Truth must prevail in the end."
But the more powerful enemies he had to face were among the so-called free-thinkers, embracing the atheists, materialists, agnostics, rationalists, and others of similar breed who opposed anything associated with God or religion. Thinking that they would easily crush his ancient faith by arguments drawn from Western philosophy and science, they organized a meeting in New York and invited the Swami to present his views.
"I shall never forget that memorable evening," wrote an American disciple, "when the Swami appeared single-handed to face the forces of materialism, arrayed in the heaviest armour of law, and reason, and logic, and common sense, of matter, and force, and heredity, and all the stock phrases calculated to awe and terrify the ignorant. Imagine their surprise when they found that, far from being intimidated by these big words, he proved himself a master in wielding their own weapons, and as familiar with the arguments of materialism as with those of Advaita philosophy. He showed them that their much vaunted Western science could not answer the most vita' questions of life and being, that their immutable laws, so much talked of, had no outside existence apart from the human mind, that the very idea of matter was a metaphysical con¬ception, and that it was much despised metaphysics upon which ultimately rested the very basis of their materialism. With an irresistible logic he demon-strated that their knowledge proved itself incorrect, not by comparison with that which was true, but by the very laws upon which it depended for its basis; that pure reason could not help admitting its own limitations and pointed to something beyond reason; and that rationalism, when carried to its last conse-qucnces, must ultimately land us at something which is above matter, above force, above sense, above thought, and even consciousness, and of which all these are but manifestations."
As a result of his explaining the 'imitations of science, a number of people from the group of free-thinkers attended the Swami's meeting the next day and listened to his uplifting utterances on God and religion.
What an uphill work it was for Swami Vivckananda to remove the ignorance, superstition, and perverted ideas about religion in general and Hinduism in particular! No wonder he sometimes felt depressed. In one of these moods he wrote from Detroit, on March 15, 1894, to the Hale sisters in Chicago:
But I do not know—I have become very sad in my heart since I am here. I do not know why. I am wearied of lecturing and all that nonsense. This mixing with hundreds of human animals, male and female, has disturbed me. I will tell you what is to my taste. I cannot write—cannot speak—but I can think deep, and when I am heated can speak fire. But it should be to a select few—a very select few. And let them carry and sow my ideas broadcast if they wifl—not I. It is only a just division of labour. The same man never succeeded in thinking and in casting his thoughts all around. Such thoughts are not worth a penny. . . . I am really not "cyclonic" at all—far from it. What I want is not here—nor can I longer bear this cyclonic atmosphere. Calm, cool, nice, deep, pene-trating, independent, searching thought—a few noble, pure mirrors which will reflect it back, catch it until all of them sound in unison. Let others throw it to the outside world if they will. This is the way to perfcction—to be perfect, to make perfect a few men and women. My idea of doing good is this—to evolve a few giants, and not to strew pearls to the swine and lose time, breath, and energy. . . . Well, I do not care forlec-turing any more. It is too disgusting to bring me to suit anybody's or any audience's fad.Swami Vivekananda became sick of what he termed "the nonsense of public life and newspaper blazoning."
The Swami had sincere admirers and devotees among the Americans, who looked after his comforts, gave him money when he lacked it, and followed his instruction. He was particularly grateful to American women, and wrote many letters to his friends in India paying high praise to their virtues.
In one letter he wrote: "Nowhere in the world are women like those of this country. How pure, independent, self-relying, and kind-hearted! It is the women who are the life and soul of this country. All learning and culture are centred
in them."
In another letter: "[Americans] look with veneration upon women, who play
a most prominent part in their lives. Here this form of worship has attained its perfection—this is the long and short of it. I am almost at my wit's end to see the women of this country. They are Lakshmi, the Goddess of Fortune, in beauty, and Sarasvati, the Goddess of Learning, in virtues—they are the Divine Mother incarnate. If I can raise a thousand such Madonnas—incarna¬tions of the Divine Mother—in our country before I dic, I shall die in peace. Then only will our countrymen become worthy of their name."
Perhaps his admiration reached its highest pitch in a letter to the Mahrj of Khetri, which he wrote in 1894:
American women! A hundred lives would not be sufficient to pay my deep debt of gratitude to you! Last year I came to this country in summer, a wandering preacher of a far distant country, without name, fame, wealth, or learning to recommend me—friendless, helpless, almost in a state of destitution; and riiiirican women befriended me, gave me shelter and food, took me to their homes, and treated me as their own son, their own brother. They stood as my friends even when their own priests were trying to per¬suade them to give up the "dangerous heathen"—even when, day after day, their best friends had told them not to stand by this "unknown foreigner, maybe of dangcrous charactcr." But they are better judges of character and soul—for it is the pure mirror that catches the reflection.
And how many beautiful homes I have seen, how many mothers whose purity of character, whose unselfish love for their children, are beyond expression, how many daughters and pure maidens, "pure as thc icicle on Diana's temple"—and withal much culture, education, and spirituality in the highest sense! Is America, then, only full of wingless angels in the shape of women? There are good and bad everywhere, true—but a nation is not to be judged by its weaklings, called the wicked, for they are only the weeds which lag behind, but by the good, the noble, and the pure, who indicate the national life-current to be flowing clear and vigorous.
And how bitter the Swami felt when he remembered the sad plight of the women of India! He particularly recalled the tragic circumstances under which one of his own sisters had committed suicide. He often thought that the misery of India was largely due to the ill-treatment the Hindus meted out to their womenfolk. Part of the money earned by his lectures was sent to a foundation for Hindu widows at Baranagore. He also conceived the idea of sending to India women teachers from the West for the intellectual regeneration of Hindu women.
Swami Vivekananda showed great respect for the fundamentals of American culture. He studied the country's economic policy, industrial organizations, public instruction, and its museums and art galleries, and wrote to India en¬thusiastically about them. He praised highly the progress of science, hygiene, institutions, and social welfare work. He realized that such noble concepts as the divinity of the soul and the brotherhood of men were mere academic theories in present-day India, whereas America showed how to apply them in life. He fell indignant when he compared the generosity and liberality of the wealthy men of America in the cause of social service, with the apathy of the Indians as far as their own people were concerned.
"No religion on earth," he wrote angrily, "preaches the dignity of humanity in such a lofty strain as Hinduism, and no religion on earth treads upon the necks of the poor and the low in such a fashion as Hinduism. Religion is not at fault, but it is the Pharisees and Sadducees."
How poignant must have been his feelings when he remembered the iniquities of the caste-system! "India's doom was sealed," he wrote, "the very day they invented the word mlechcha8 and stopped from communion with others." When he saw in New York a millionaire woman sitting side by side in a tram-
8 The non-Hindu, with whom all social intercourse is forbidden.
Vivekananda 75
car with a negress with a wash-basket on her lap, he was impressed with the democratic spirit of the Americans. He wanted in India "an organization that will teach the Hindus mutual help and appreciation" after the pattern of Western democracies.
Incessantly he wrote to his Indian devotees about the regeneration of the masses. In a letter dated 1894 he said:
Let each one of us pray, day and night, for the downtrodden millions in India, who are held fast by poverty, priestcraft, and tyranny—pray day and night for them. I care more to preach religion to them than to the high and the rich. I am no metaphysician, no philosopher, nay, no saint. But I am poor, I love the poor. . . . Who feels in India for the three hundred millions of men and women sunken for ever in poverty and igno¬rance? Where is the way out? Who feels for them? Let these people be your God—think of them, work for them, pray for them incessantly—the Lord will show you the way. Him I call a mahätm, a noble soul, whose heart bleeds for the poor; otherwise he is a durãtmã, a wicked soul. . . . So long as the millions live in hunger and ignorance, I hold every man a traitor who, having been educated at their expense, pays not the least heed to them. . . . We are poor, my brothers, we are nobodies, but such have always been the instruments of the Most High.
Never did he forget, in the midst of the comforts and luxuries of America, even when he was borne on the wings of triumph from one city to another, the cause of the Indian masses, whose miseries he had witnessed while wander¬ing as an unknown monk from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin. The prosperity of the new continent only stirred up in his soul deeper commiseration for his own people. He saw with his own eyes what human efforts, intelligence, and earnestness could accomplish to banish from society poverty, superstition, squalor, disease, and other handicaps of human well-being. On August 20, 1893, he wrote to instil courage into the depressed hearts of his devotees in India:
Gird up your loins, my boys! I am called by the Lord for this. . . . The hope lies in you—in the meek, the lowly, but the faithful. Feel for the miserable and look up for help—it shall come. I have travelled twelve years with this load in my heart and this idea in my head. I have gone from door to door of the so-called "rich and great." With a bleeding heart I have crossed half the world to this strange land, seeking help. The Lord is great. I know He will help me. I may perish of cold and hunger in this land, but I bequeath to you young men this sympathy, this struggle for the poor, the ignorant, the oppressed. . . . Go down on your faces before Him and make a great sacrifice, the sacrifice of a whole life for them, for whom He comes from time to time, whom He loves above all—the poor, the lowly, the oppressed. Vow, then, to devote your whole lives to the cause of these three hundred millions, going down and down every day. Glory unto the Lord! We will succeed. Hundreds will fall in the struggle—hundreds will be ready to take it up. Faith—sympathy, fiery faith and fiery sympathy! Life is nothing, death is nothing—hunger nothing, cold nothing. Glory unto the Lord! March on, the Lord is our General. Do not look back to see who falls—forward—onward!
Swami Vivekananda was thoroughly convinced by his intimate knowledge of the Indian people that the life-current of the nation, far from being extinct, was only submerged under the dead weight of ignorance and poverty. India still produced great saints whose message of the Spirit was sorely needed by the Western world. But the precious jewels of spirituality discovered by them
76 Vivekananda
were hidden, in the absence of a jewel-box, in a heap of filth. The West had created the jewel-box, in the form of a healthy society, but it did not have the jewels. Further, it took him no long time to understand that a materialistic culture contained within it the seeds of its own destruction. Again and again he warned the West of its impending danger. The bright glow on the Western horizon might not be the harbinger of a new dawn; it might very well be the red flames of a huge funeral pyre. The Western world was caught in the maze of its incessant activity—in term inable movement without any goal. The hanker¬ing for material comforts, without a higher spiritual goal and a feeling of universal sympathy, might flare up among the nations of the West into jealousy and hatred, which in the end would bring about their own destruction.
Swami Vivekananda was a lover of humanity. Man is the highest manifesta¬tion of God, and this God was being crucified in different ways in the East and the West. Thus he had a double mission to perform in America. He wanted to obtain from the Americans money, scientific knowledge, and technical help for the regeneration of the Indian masses, and, in turn, to give to the Americans the knowledge of the Eternal Spirit to endow their material progress with significance. No false pride could prevent him from learning from America the many features of her social superiority; he also exhorted the Americans not to allow racial arrogance to prevent them from accepting the gift of spiritual¬ity from India. Through this policy of acceptance and mutual respect he dreamt of creating a healthy human society for the ultimate welfare of man's body and soul.
VARIOUS EXPERIENCES AS A TEACHER
The year following the Parliament of Religions the Swami devoted to address¬ing meetings in the vast area spreading from the Mississippi to the Atlantic. In Detroit he spent six wecks, first as a guest of Mrs. John Bagley, widow of the former Governor of Michigan, and then of Thomas W. Palmer, President of the World's Fair Commission, formerly a United States Senator and Amer¬ican Minister to Spain. Mrs. Bagilcy spoke of the Swami's presence at her house as a it continual bencdiction." It was in Detroit that Miss Greenstidel first heard him speak. She later became, under the name of Sister Christine, one of the most dcvoted disciples of the Swami and a collaborator of Sister Nivedita in her work in Calcutta for the educational advancement of Indian women.
After Detroit, he divided his time between Chicago, New York, and Boston, and during the summer of 1894 addressed, by invitation, several meetings of the "Humane Conference" held at Greenacre, Massachusetts. Christian Sci¬entists, spiritualists, faith-healers, and groups representing similar views partici¬pated in the Conference.
The Swami, in the course of a letter to the Hale sisters of Chicago, wrote on July 31, 1894, with his usual humour about the people who attended the meetings:
They have a lively time and sometimes all of them wear what you call your scientific dress the whole day. They have lectures almost every day. One Mr. Colville from Boston is here. He speaks every day, it is said, under spirit control. The editor of the Universal Truth from the top floor of Jimmy Mills has settled herself down here. She is conducting
Vivekananda 77
religious services and holding classes to heal all manner of diseases, and very soon I expect them to be giving eyes to the blind, etc., etc. After all, it is a queer gathering. They do not care much about social laws and are quite frce and happy.
There is a Mr. Wood of Boston here, who is one of the great lights of your scct. But he objects to belonging to the sect of Mrs. Vhir1pooL9 So he calls himself a mental healer of metaphysical, chemico, physicaLreligioso, what-not, etc.
Yesterday there was a tremendous cyclone which gave a good "treatment" to the tents. The big tent under which they held the lectures developed so much spirituality under the treatment that it entirety disappearcd from mortal gaze, and about two hundrcd chairs were dancing about the grounds under spiritual ecstasy. Mrs. Figs of Mills Company gives a class every morning, and Mrs. Mills is jumping all about the place. They are all in high spirits. I am especially glad for Cora, for she suffered a good deal last winter and a little hilarity would do her good. You would be astounded with the liberty they enjoy in the camps, but they are very good and pure peop'e—a little erratic, that is all.
Regarding his own work at Greenacre, the Swami wrote in the same letter:
The other night the camp people all went to steep under a pine tree under which I sit every morning i Ia India and talk to them. Of course I went with them and we had a nice night under the stars, steeping on the lap of Mother Earth, and I enjoyed every bit of it. I cannot describe to you that night's glories—after the year of brutal life that I have led, to steep on the ground, to meditate undcr the tree in the forest! The inn people are more or less well-to-do, and the camp people are healthy, young, sincere, and holy men and women. I teach them all ivoham, ivoharn—"I am Siva, I amSiva"—and they all repeat it, innocent and pure as they are, and brave beyond all bounds, and I am so happy and glorified.
Thank God for making me poor! Thank God for making these children in the tents poor! The dudes and dudines are in the hotel, but iron-bound ncrves, souls of triple steel, and spirits of fire are in the camp. If you had seen them yesterday, when the rain was falling in torrents and the cyclone was overturning everything—hanging on to their tent-strings to keep them from being blown off, and standing on the majesty of their souls, these brave ones—it would have done your hearts good. I would go a hundred miles to see the like of them. Lord bless them!
Never be anxious for me for a moment. I will be taken care of, and if not, I shall know my time has come—and pass out. . . . Now good dreams, good thoughts for you. You are good and noble. Instead of materializing the spirit, i.e. dragging the spiritual to the matcrial plane as these fellers do, convert matter into spirit—catch a glimpse at least, every day, of that world of infinite beauty and peace and purity, the spiritual, and try to live in it day and night. Seek not, touch not with your toes, anything which is uncanny. Let your souls ascend day and night like an unbroken string unto the feet of the Beloved, whose throne is in your own heart, and let the rest take care of them¬selves, i.e. the body and everything else. Life is an evanescent, floating dream; youth and beauty fade. Say day and night: "Thou art my fathcr, my mother, my husband, my love, my Lord, my God—I want nothing but Thee, nothing but Thee, nothing but Thee. Thou in me, I in Thee—I am Thee, Thou art me." Wealth gocs, beauty vanishes, life flies, powers fly—but the Lord abideth for ever, love abideth for ever. If there is glory in keeping the machine in good trim, it is more glorious to withhold the sou' from suffering with the body. That is the only demonstration of your being "not matter"—by 'etting matter atone.
Stick to God. Who cares what comes, in the body or anywhere? Through the terrors
"A reference to Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science.
78 Vivekananda
of evil, say, "My God, my Love!" Through the pangs of death, say, "My God, my Love!" Through all the evils under the sun, say: 'My God, my Love! Thou art here, I see Thee. Thou art with me, I feel Thee. I am Thine, take me. I am not the world's, but Thine—leave Thou not me." Do not go for glass beads, leaving the mine of dia¬monds. This life is a great chance. What! Scekest thou the pleasures of this world? He is the fountain of all bliss. Seek the highest, aim for the highest, and you shall reach the highest.
At Greenacre the Swami became a friend of Dr. Lewis G. Janes, Director of the School of Comparative Religions organized by the Greenacre Conference, and President of the Brooklyn Ethical Association. The following autumn he
lectured in Baltimore and Washington.
During the Swami's visit in New York he was the guest of friends, mostly rich ladies of the metropolitan city. He had not yet started any serious work there. Soon he began to feel a sort of restraint put upon his movements. Very few of his wealthy friends understood the true import of his message; they were interested in him as a novelty from India. Also to them he was the man of the hour. They wanted him to mix with only the exclusive society of "the right people." He chafed under their domination and one day cried: "iva! iva! Has it ever come to pass that a great work has been grown by the rich? It is brain and heart that create, and not purse." He wanted to break away from their power and devote himself to the training of some serious students in the spiritual life. He was fed up with public lectures; now he became eager to mould
silently the characters of individuals. He could no longer bear the yoke of money and all the botheration that came in its train. He would live simply and give freely, like the holy men of India. Soon an opportunity presented
itself.
Dr. Lewis Janes invited the Swami to give a series of lectures on the Hindu
religion before the Brooklyn Ethical Association. On the evening of December 311 1894, he gave his first lecture, and according to the report of the Brooklyn
Standard, the enthusiastic audience, consisting of doctors and lawyers and
judges and teachers, remained spellbound by his eloquent defence of the religion of India. They all acknowledged that Vivekananda was even greater than his
fame. At the end of the meeting they made an insistent demand for regular classes in Brooklyn, to which the Swami agreed. A series of class meetings was held and several public lectures were given at the Pouch Mansion, where the Ethical Association held its meetings. These lectures constituted the begin¬ning of the permanent work in America which the Swami secretly desired.
Soon after, several poor but earnest students rented for the Swami some unfurnished rooms in a poor section of New York City. He lived in one of them. An ordinary room on the second floor of the lodging-house was used for the lectures and classes. The Swami when conducting the meetings sat on the floor, while the ever more numerous auditors seated themselves as best they could, utilizing the marble-topped dresser, the arms of the sofa, and even the corner wash-stand. The door was left open and the overflow filled the hall and sat on the stairs. The Swami, like a typical religious teacher in India, felt himself in his own element. The students, forgetting all the inconveniences,
Vivekananda 79
hung upon every word uttered from the teacher's deep personal experiences or his wide range of knowledge.
The lectures, given every morning and several evenings a week, were free. The rent was paid by the voluntary subscriptions of the students, and the deficit was met by the Swami himself, through the money he earned by giving secular lectures on India. Soon the meeting-place had to be removed downstairs to occupy an entire parlour floor.
He began to instruct several chosen disciples in jnãna-yoga in order to clarify their intellects rcgarding the subtle truths of Vedinta, and also in rãja-yoga to teach them the science of self-control, concentration, and meditation. He was immensely happy with the result of his concentrated work. He enjoined upon these students to follow strict disciplines regarding food, choosing only the simplest. The necessity of chastity was emphasized, and they were warned against psychic and occultpowers. At the same time he broadened their intel¬lectual horizon through the teachings of Vedãntic universality. Daily he medi¬tated with the serious students. Often he would lose all bodily consciousness and, like ri Ramakrishna, have to be brought back to the knowledge of the world through the repctition of certain holy words that he had taught his disciples.
It was sometime about June 1895 when Swami Vivckananda finished writing his famous book Rja-Yoga, which attractcd the attention of the Harvard philosopher \Vifliarn James and was later to rouse the enthusiasm of To'stoy. The book is a translation of Patanjalli's Yoga aphorisms, the Swami adding his own explanations; the introductory chapters written by him are especially illuminating. Patanjab expounded, through these aphorisms, the philosophy of Yoga, the main purpose of which is to show the way of the soul's attaining freedom from the bondage of matter. Various methods of concentration are discussed. The book well served two purposes. First, the Swami demonstrated that religious experiences could stand on the same footing as scientific truths, being based on experimentation, observation, and verification. Therefore genu¬ine spiritual experiences must not be dogmatically discarded as tacking rational evidence. Secondly, the Swami explained lucidly various disciplines of concen¬tration, with the warning, however, that they should not be pursued without the help of a qualified teacher.
Miss S. Ellen Waldo of Brooklyn, a disciple of the Swami, was his amanu¬ensis. She thus described the manner in which he dictated the book:
"In delivering his commentaries on the aphorisms, he would leave me waiting while he entered into deep states of meditation or self-contemplation, to emerge therefrom with some luminous interpretation. I had always to keep the pen dipped in the ink. He might be absorbed for long periods of time, and then suddenly his silence would be broken by some eager expression or some long, deliberate teaching."
===
71
VEDANTA IN AMERICA
After the meetings of the Parliament of Religions were concluded, Swami
Vivekananda, as already noted, undertook a series of apostolic campaigns in order
to sow the seed of the Vedantic truths in the ready soil of America. Soon he
discovered that the lecture bureau was exploiting him. Further, he did not like
its method of advertisement. He was treated as if he were the chief attraction
of a circus. The prospectus included his portrait, with the inscription, pro¬
claiming his cardinal virtues: “An Orator by Divine Right; a Model Repre¬
sentative of his Race; a Perfect Master of the English Language; the Sensation
of the World’s Fair Parliament.” It also described his physical bearing, his
height, the colour of his skin, and his clothing. The Swami felt disgusted at
being treated like a patent medicine or an elephant in a show. So he severed
his relationship with the bureau and arranged his own lectures himself. He
accepted invitations from churches, clubs, and private gatherings, and travelled
extensively through the Eastern and Midwestern states of America, delivering
twelve to fourteen or more lectures a week.
People came in hundreds and in thousands. And what an assorted audience
he had to face! There came to his meetings professors from universities, ladies
of fine breeding, seekers of truth, and devotees of God with childlike faith.
But mixed with these were charlatans, curiosity-seekers, idlers, and vagabonds.
It is not true that he met everywhere with favourable conditions. Leon Lands-
berg, one of the Swami’s American disciples, thus described Vivekananda’s
tribulations of those days:
The Americans are a receptive nation. That is why the country is a hotbed of all kinds
of religious and irreligious monstrosities. There is no theory so absurd, no doctrine so
72
Vivekananda
irrational, no claim so extravagant, no fraud so transparent, but can find their numerous
believers and a ready market. To satisfy this craving, to feed the credulity of the people,
hundreds of societies and sects are born for the salvation of the world, and to enable the
prophets to pocket $25 to $100 initiation fees. Hobgoblins, spooks, mahatmas, and new
prophets were rising every day. In this bedlam of religious cranks, the Swami appeared
to teach the lofty religion of the Vedas, the profound philosophy of Vedanta, the sub¬
lime wisdom of the ancient rishis. The most unfavourable environment for such a task!
The Swami met with all kinds of obstacles. The opposition of fanatical
Christian missionaries was, of course, one of these. They promised him help if
he only would preach their brand of Christianity. When the Swami refused,
they circulated all sorts of filthy stories about him, and even succeeded in per¬
suading some of the Americans who had previously invited him to be their
guest, to cancel the invitations. But Vivekananda continued to preach the
religion of love, renunciation, and truth as taught by Christ, and to show him
the highest veneration as a Saviour of mankind. How significant were his words:
“It is well to be born in a church, but it is terrible to die there!” Needless to
say, he meant by the word church all organized religious institutions. How like
a thunderbolt the words fell upon the ears of his audience when one day he
exclaimed: “Christ, Buddha, and Krishna are but waves in the Ocean of Infinite
Consciousness that I am!”
Then there were the leaders of the cranky, selfish, and fraudulent organiza¬
tions, who tried to induce the Swami to embrace their cause, first by promises
of support, and then by threats of injuring him if he refused to ally himself
with them. But he could be neither bought nor frightened — “the sickle
had hit on a stone,” as the Polish proverb says. To all these propositions his
only answer was: “I stand for Truth. Truth will never ally itself with falsehood.
Even if all the world should be against me, Truth must prevail in the end.”
But the more powerful enemies he had to face were among the so-called
free-thinkers, embracing the atheists, materialists, agnostics, rationalists, and
others of similar breed who opposed anything associated with God or religion.
Thinking that they would easily crush his ancient faith by arguments drawn
from Western philosophy and science, they organized a meeting in New York
and invited the Swami to present his views.
“I shall never forget that memorable evening,” wrote an American disciple,
“when the Swami appeared single-handed to face the forces of materialism,
arrayed in the heaviest armour of law, and reason, and logic, and common
sense, of matter, and force, and heredity, and all the stock phrases calculated
to awe and terrify the ignorant. Imagine their surprise when they found that,
far from being intimidated by these big words, he proved himself a master in
wielding their own weapons, and as familiar with the arguments of materialism
as with those of Advaita philosophy. He showed them that their much vaunted
Western science could not answer the most vital questions of life and being,
that their immutable laws, so much talked of, had no outside existence apart
from the human mind, that the very idea of matter was a metaphysical con¬
ception, and that it was much despised metaphysics upon which ultimately
rested the very basis of their materialism. With an irresistible logic he demon¬
strated that their knowledge proved itself incorrect, not by comparison with
Vivekananda
73
that which was true, but by the very laws upon which it depended for its basis;
that pure reason could not help admitting its own limitations and pointed to
something beyond reason; and that rationalism, when carried to its last conse¬
quences, must ultimately land us at something which is above matter, above
force, above sense, above thought, and even consciousness, and of which all
these are but manifestations/'
As a result of his explaining the limitations of science, a number of people
from the group of free-thinkers attended the Swami’s meeting the next day and
listened to his uplifting utterances on God and religion.
What an uphill work it was for Swami Vivekananda to remove the ignorance,
superstition, and perverted ideas about religion in general and Hinduism in
particular! No wonder he sometimes felt depressed. In one of these moods he
wrote from Detroit, on March 15, 1894, to the Hale sisters in Chicago:
But I do not know — I have become very sad in my heart since I am here. I do not
know why. I am wearied of lecturing and all that nonsense. This mixing with hundreds
of human animals, male and female, has disturbed me. I will tell you what is to my
taste. I cannot write — cannot speak — but I can think deep, and when I am heated can
speak fire. But it should be to a select few — a very select few. And let them carry and
sow my ideas broadcast if they will — not I. It is only a just division of labour. The same
man never succeeded in thinking and in casting his thoughts all around. Such thoughts
are not worth a penny. ... I am really not “cyclonic’' at all — far from it. What I want is
not here — nor can I longer bear this cyclonic atmosphere. Calm, cool, nice, deep, pene¬
trating, independent, searching thought — a few noble, pure mirrors which will reflect it
back, catch it until all of them sound in unison. Let others throw it to the outside world
if they will. This is the way to perfection — to be perfect, to make perfect a few men
and women. My idea of doing good is this — to evolve a few giants, and not to strew
pearls to the swine and lose time, breath, and energy. . . . Well, I do not care for lec¬
turing any more. It is too disgusting to bring me to suit anybody’s or any audience's fad.
Swami Vivekananda became sick of what he termed “the nonsense of public
life and newspaper blazoning.”
The Swami had sincere admirers and devotees among the Americans, who
looked after his comforts, gave him money when he lacked it, and followed his
instruction. He was particularly grateful to American women, and wrote many
letters to his friends in India paying high praise to their virtues.
In one letter he wrote: “Nowhere in the world are women like those of this
country. How pure, independent, self-relying, and kind-hearted! It is the women
who are the life and soul of this country. All learning and culture are centred
in them.”
In another letter: “[Americans] look with veneration upon women, who play
a most prominent part in their lives. Here this form of worship has attained its
perfection — this is the long and short of it. I am almost at my wit’s end to
see the women of this country. They are Lakshmi, the Goddess of Fortune,
in beauty, and Sarasvati, the Goddess of Learning, in virtues — they are the
Divine Mother incarnate. If I can raise a thousand such Madonnas — incarna¬
tions of the Divine Mother — in our country before I die, I shall die in peace.
Then only will our countrymen become worthy of their name.”
74
Vivekananda
Perhaps his admiration reached its highest pitch in a letter to the Maharaja
of Khetri, which he wrote in 1894:
American women! A hundred lives would not be sufficient to pay my deep debt of
gratitude to you! Last year I came to this country in summer, a wandering preacher of
a far distant country, without name, fame, wealth, or learning to recommend me —
friendless, helpless, almost in a state of destitution; and zvmcrican women befriended me,
gave me shelter and food, took me to their homes, and treated me as their own son, their
own brother. They stood as my friends even when their own priests were trying to per¬
suade them to give up the “dangerous heathen” — even when, day after day, their best
friends had told them not to stand by this “unknown foreigner, maybe of dangerous
character.” But they are better judges of character and soul — for it is the pure mirror
that catches the reflection.
And how many beautiful homes I have seen, how many mothers whose purity of
character, whose unselfish love for their children, are beyond expression, how many
daughters and pure maidens, “pure as the icicle on Diana’s temple” — and withal much
culture, education, and spirituality in the highest sense! Is America, then, only full of
wingless angels in the shape of women? There are good and bad everywhere, true — but
a nation is not to be judged by its weaklings, called the wicked, for they are only the
weeds which lag behind, but by the good, the noble, and the pure, who indicate the
national life-current to be flowing clear and vigorous.
And how bitter the Swami felt when he remembered the sad plight of the
women of India! He particularly recalled the tragic circumstances under which
one of his own sisters had committed suicide. He often thought that the misery
of India was largely due to the ill-treatment the Hindus meted out to their
womenfolk. Part of the money earned by his lectures was sent to a foundation
for Hindu widows at Baranagore. He also conceived the idea of sending to
India women teachers from the West for the intellectual regeneration of Hindu
women.
Swami Vivekananda showed great respect for the fundamentals of American
culture. He studied the country’s economic policy, industrial organizations,
public instruction, and its museums and art galleries, and wrote to India en¬
thusiastically about them. He praised highly the progress of science, hygiene,
institutions, and social welfare work. He realized that such noble concepts as the
divinity of the soul and the brotherhood of men were mere academic theories in
present-day India, whereas America showed how to apply them in life. He felt
indignant when he compared the generosity and liberality of the wealthy men of
America in the cause of social service, with the apathy of the Indians as far as
their own people were concerned.
“No religion on earth,” he wrote angrily, “preaches the dignity of humanity
in such a lofty strain as Hinduism, and no religion on earth treads upon the
necks of the poor and the low in such a fashion as Hinduism. Religion is not
at fault, but it is the Pharisees and Sadducees.”
How poignant must have been his feelings when he remembered the iniqui¬
ties of the caste-system! “India’s doom was sealed,” he wrote, “the very day
they invented the word mlechcha 8 and stopped from communion with others.”
When he saw in New York a millionaire woman sitting side by side in a tram-
8 The non-Hindu, with whom all social intercourse is forbidden.
Vivekananda
75
car with a negress with a wash-basket on her lap, he was impressed with the
democratic spirit of the Americans. He wanted in India “an organization that
will teach the Hindus mutual help and appreciation” after the pattern of
Western democracies.
Incessantly he wrote to his Indian devotees about the regeneration of the
masses. In a letter dated 1894 he said:
Let each one of us pray, day and night, for the downtrodden millions in India, who
are held fast by poverty, priestcraft, and tyranny — pray day and night for them. I care
more to preach religion to them than to the high and the rich. I am no metaphysician,
no philosopher, nay, no saint. But I am poor, I love the poor. . . . Who feels in India
for the three hundred millions of men and women sunken for ever in poverty and igno¬
rance? Where is the way out? Who feels for them? Let these people be your God —
think of them, work for them, pray for them incessantly — the Lord will show you the
way. Him I call a mahatma, a noble soul, whose heart bleeds for the poor; otherwise he
is a duratma, a wicked soul. ... So long as the millions live in hunger and ignorance,
I hold every man a traitor who, having been educated at their expense, pays not the least
heed to them. . . . We are poor, my brothers, we are nobodies, but such have always
been the instruments of the Most High.
Never did he forget, in the midst of the comforts and luxuries of America,
even when he was borne on the wings of triumph from one city to another,
the cause of the Indian masses, whose miseries he had witnessed while wander¬
ing as an unknown monk from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin. The prosperity
of the new continent only stirred up in his soul deeper commiseration for his
own people. He saw with his own eyes what human efforts, intelligence, and
earnestness could accomplish to banish from society poverty, superstition,
squalor, disease, and other handicaps of human well-being. On August 20, 1893,
he wrote to instil courage into the depressed hearts of his devotees in India:
Gird up your loins, my boys! I am called by the Lord for this. . . . The hope lies in
you — in the meek, the lowly, but the faithful. Feel for the miserable and look up for
help — it shall come. I have travelled twelve years with this load in my heart and this
idea in my head. I have gone from door to door of the so-called “rich and great.” With
a bleeding heart I have crossed half the world to this strange land, seeking help. The
Lord is great. I know He will help me. I may perish of cold and hunger in this land, but
I bequeath to you young men this sympathy, this struggle for the poor, the ignorant,
the oppressed. . . . Go down on your faces before Him and make a great sacrifice, the
sacrifice of a whole life for them, for whom He comes from time to time, whom He
loves above all — the poor, the lowly, the oppressed. Vow, then, to devote your whole
lives to the cause of these three hundred millions, going down and down every day.
Glory unto the Lord! We will succeed. Hundreds will fall in the struggle — hundreds will
be ready to take it up. Faith — sympathy, fiery faith and fiery sympathy! Life is nothing,
death is nothing — hunger nothing, cold nothing. Glory unto the Lord! March on, the
Lord is our General. Do not look back to see who falls — forward — onward!
Swami Vivekananda was thoroughly convinced by his intimate knowledge of
the Indian people that the life-current of the nation, far from being extinct,
was only submerged under the dead weight of ignorance and poverty. India
still produced great saints whose message of the Spirit was sorely needed by
the Western world. But the precious jewels of spirituality discovered by them
76
Vivekananda
were hidden, in the absence of a jewel-box, in a heap of filth. The West had
created the jewel-box, in the form of a healthy society, but it did not have the
jewels. Further, it took him no long time to understand that a materialistic
culture contained within it the seeds of its own destruction. Again and again
he warned the West of its impending danger. The bright glow on the Western
horizon might not be the harbinger of a new dawn; it might very well be the
red flames of a huge funeral pyre. The Western world was caught in the maze
of its incessant activity — interminable movement without any goal. The hanker¬
ing for material comforts, without a higher spiritual goal and a feeling of
universal sympathy, might flare up among the nations of the West into
jealousy and hatred, which in the end would bring about their own destruction.
Swami Vivekananda was a lover of humanity. Man is the highest manifesta¬
tion of God, and this God was being crucified in different ways in the East
and the West. Thus he had a double mission to perform in America. He wanted
to obtain from the Americans money, scientific knowledge, and technical help
for the regeneration of the Indian masses, and, in turn, to give to the Americans
the knowledge of the Eternal Spirit to endow their material progress with
significance. No false pride could prevent him from learning from America
the many features of her social superiority; he also exhorted the Americans
not to allow racial arrogance to prevent them from accepting the gift of spiritual¬
ity from India. Through this policy of acceptance and mutual respect he dreamt
of creating a healthy human society for the ultimate welfare of man’s body
and soul.
VARIOUS EXPERIENCES AS A TEACHER
The year following the Parliament of Religions the Swami devoted to address¬
ing meetings in the vast area spreading from the Mississippi to the Atlantic.
In Detroit he spent six weeks, first as a guest of Mrs. John Bagley, widow of
the former Governor of Michigan, and then of Thomas W. Palmer, President
of the World’s Fair Commission, formerly a United States Senator and Amer¬
ican Minister to Spain. Mrs. Bagley spoke of the Swami’s presence at her house
as a “continual benediction.” It was in Detroit that Miss Greenstidel first heard
him speak. She later became, under the name of Sister Christine, one of the
most devoted disciples of the Swami and a collaborator of Sister Nivedita in
her work in Calcutta for the educational advancement of Indian women.
After Detroit, he divided his time between Chicago, New York, and Boston,
and during the summer of 1894 addressed, by invitation, several meetings of
the “Humane Conference” held at Greenacre, Massachusetts. Christian Sci¬
entists, spiritualists, faith-healers, and groups representing similar views partici¬
pated in the Conference.
The Swami, in the course of a letter to the Hale sisters of Chicago, wrote
on July 31, 1894, with his usual humour about the people who attended the
meetings:
They have a lively time and sometimes all of them wear what you call your scientific
dress the whole day. They have lectures almost every day. One Mr. Colville from Boston
is here. He speaks every day, it is said, under spirit control. The editor of the Universal
Truth from the top floor of Jimmy Mills has settled herself down here. She is conducting
Vivekananda
77
religious services and holding classes to heal all manner of diseases, and very soon I expect
them to be giving eyes to the blind, etc., etc. After all, it is a queer gathering. They do not
care much about social laws and are quite free and happy. . . .
There is a Mr. Wood of Boston here, who is one of the great lights of your sect. But
he objects to belonging to the sect of Mrs. Whirlpool.9 So he calls himself a mental
healer of metaphysical, chemico, physical-religioso, what-not, etc.
Yesterday there was a tremendous cyclone which gave a good “treatment” to the tents.
The big tent under which they held the lectures developed so much spirituality under
the treatment that it entirely disappeared from mortal gaze, and about two hundred
chairs were dancing about the grounds under spiritual ecstasy. Mrs. Figs of Mills
Company gives a class every morning, and Mrs. Mills is jumping all about the place.
They are all in high spirits. I am especially glad for Cora, for she suffered a good deal
last winter and a little hilarity would do her good. You would be astounded with the
liberty they enjoy in the camps, but they are very good and pure people — a little erratic,
that is all.
Regarding his own work at Greenacre, the Swami wrote in the same letter:
The other night the camp people all went to sleep under a pine tree under which I
sit every morning a la India and talk to them. Of course I went with them and we had
a nice night under the stars, sleeping on the lap of Mother Earth, and I enjoyed every
bit of it. I cannot describe to you that night’s glories — after the year of brutal life that
I have led, to sleep on the ground, to meditate under the tree in the forest! The inn
people are more or less well-to-do, and the camp people are healthy, young, sincere, and
holy men and women. I teach them all Sivoham, Sivoham — “I am Siva, I am Siva” —
and they all repeat it, innocent and pure as they are, and brave beyond all bounds, and
I am so happy and glorified.
Thank God for making me poor! Thank God for making these children in the tents
poor! The dudes and dudines are in the hotel, but iron-bound nerves, souls of triple
steel, and spirits of fire are in the camp. If you had seen them yesterday, when the rain
was falling in torrents and the cyclone was overturning everything — hanging on to their
tent-strings to keep them from being blown off, and standing on the majesty of their
souls, these brave ones — it would have done your hearts good. I would go a hundred
miles to see the like of them. Lord bless them! . . .
Never be anxious for me for a moment. I will be taken care of, and if not, I shall
know my time has come — and pass out. . . . Now good dreams, good thoughts for you.
You are good and noble. Instead of materializing the spirit, i.e. dragging the spiritual to
the material plane as these fellers do, convert matter into spirit — catch a glimpse at
least, every day, of that world of infinite beauty and peace and purity, the spiritual,
and try to live in it day and night. Seek not, touch not with your toes, anything which
is uncanny. Let your souls ascend day and night like an unbroken string unto the feet
of the Beloved, whose throne is in your own heart, and let the rest take care of them¬
selves, i.e. the body and everything else. Life is an evanescent, floating dream; youth
and beauty fade. Say day and night: “Thou art my father, my mother, my husband,
my love, my Lord, my God — I want nothing but Thee, nothing but Thee, nothing but
Thee. Thou in me, I in Thee — I am Thee, Thou art me.” Wealth goes, beauty vanishes,
life flies, powers fly — but the Lord abideth for ever, love abideth for ever. If there is glory
in keeping the machine in good trim, it is more glorious to withhold the soul from
suffering with the body. That is the only demonstration of your being “not matter” —
by letting matter alone.
Stick to God. Who cares what comes, in the body or anywhere? Through the terrors
9 A reference to Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science.
78
Vivekananda
of evil, say, "My God, my Love!” Through the pangs of death, say, "My God, my
Love!” Through all the evils under the sun, say: "My God, my Love! Thou art here,
I see Thee. Thou art with me, I feel Thee. I am Thine, take me. I am not the world s,
but Thine — leave Thou not me.” Do not go for glass beads, leaving the mine of dia¬
monds. This life is a great chance. What! Seekest thou the pleasures of this world? He
is the fountain of all bliss. Seek the highest, aim for the highest, and you shall reach
the highest.
At Greenacre the Swami became a friend of Dr. Lewis G. Janes, Director of
the School of Comparative Religions organized by the Greenacre Conference,
and President of the Brooklyn Ethical Association. The following autumn he
lectured in Baltimore and Washington.
During the Swami’s visit in New York he was the guest of friends, mostly rich
ladies of the metropolitan city. Lie had not yet started any serious work there.
Soon he began to feel a sort of restraint put upon his movements. Very few
of his wealthy friends understood the true import of his message; they were
interested in him as a novelty from India. Also to them he was the man of the
hour. They wanted him to mix with only the exclusive society of “the right
people.” He chafed under their domination and one day cried: “Siva! Siva!
Has it ever come to pass that a great work has been grown by the rich? It
is brain and heart that create, and not purse.” He wanted to break away from
their power and devote himself to the training of some serious students in the
spiritual life. He was fed up with public lectures; now he became eager to mould
silently the characters of individuals. He could no longer bear the yoke of
money and all the botheration that came in its train. He would live simply
and give freely, like the holy men of India. Soon an opportunity presented
itself.
Dr. Lewis Janes invited the Swami to give a series of lectures on the Hindu
religion before the Brooklyn Ethical Association. On the evening of December
31, 1894, he gave his first lecture, and according to the report of the Brooklyn
Standard , the enthusiastic audience, consisting of doctors and lawyers and
judges and teachers, remained spellbound by his eloquent defence of the religion
of India. They all acknowledged that Vivekananda was even greater than his
fame. At the end of the meeting they made an insistent demand for regular
classes in Brooklyn, to which the Swami agreed. A series of class meetings
was held and several public lectures were given at the Pouch Mansion, where
the Ethical Association held its meetings. These lectures constituted the begin¬
ning of the permanent work in America which the Swami secretly desired.
Soon after, several poor but earnest students rented for the Swami some
unfurnished rooms in a poor section of New York City. He lived in one of
them. An ordinary room on the second floor of the lodging-house was used
for the lectures and classes. The Swami when conducting the meetings sat
on the floor, while the ever more numerous auditors seated themselves as best
they could, utilizing the marble-topped dresser, the arms of the sofa, and even
the corner wash-stand. The door was left open and the overflow filled the hall
and sat on the stairs. The Swami, like a typical religious teacher in India, felt
himself in his own element. The students, forgetting all the inconveniences,
Vivekananda 79
hung upon every word uttered from the teacher’s deep personal experiences
or his wide range of knowledge.
The lectures, given every morning and several evenings a week, were free.
The rent was paid by the voluntary subscriptions of the students, and the
deficit was met by the Swami himself, through the money he earned by giving
secular lectures on India. Soon the meeting-place had to be removed downstairs
to occupy an entire parlour floor.
He began to instruct several chosen disciples in jnana-yoga in order to clarify
their intellects regarding the subtle truths of Vedanta, and also in raja-yoga to
teach them the science of self-control, concentration, and meditation. He was
immensely happy with the result of his concentrated work. He enjoined upon
these students to follow strict disciplines regarding food, choosing only the
simplest. The necessity of chastity was emphasized, and they were warned
against psychic and occult powers. At the same time he broadened their intel¬
lectual horizon through the teachings of Vedantic universality. Daily he medi¬
tated with the serious students. Often he would lose all bodily consciousness and,
like Sri Ramakrishna, have to be brought back to the knowledge of the world
through the repetition of certain holy words that he had taught his disciples.
It was sometime about June 1895 when Swami Vivekananda finished writing
his famous book Raj a-Yoga, which attracted the attention of the Harvard
philosopher William fames and was later to rouse the enthusiasm of Tolstoy.
The book is a translation of Patanjali’s Yoga aphorisms, the Swami adding
his own explanations; the introductory chapters written by him are especially
illuminating. Patanjali expounded, through these aphorisms, the philosophy
of Yoga, the main purpose of which is to show the way of the soul’s attaining
freedom from the bondage of matter. Various methods of concentration are
discussed. The book well served two purposes. First, the Swami demonstrated
that religious experiences could stand on the same footing as scientific truths,
being based on experimentation, observation, and verification. Therefore genu¬
ine spiritual experiences must not be dogmatically discarded as lacking rational
evidence. Secondly, the Swami explained lucidly various disciplines of concen¬
tration, with the warning, however, that they should not be pursued without
the help of a qualified teacher.
Miss S. Ellen Waldo of Brooklyn, a disciple of the Swami, was his amanu¬
ensis. She thus described the manner in which he dictated the book:
“In delivering his commentaries on the aphorisms, he would leave me waiting
while he entered into deep states of meditation or self-contemplation, to emerge
therefrom with some luminous interpretation. I had always to keep the pen
dipped in the ink. He might be absorbed for long periods of time, and then
suddenly his silence would be broken by some eager expression or some long,
deliberate teaching.”
