Some two furlongs out in the ocean from the tip of the mainland, where the Mother's temple is, are two rocks, known for the last few decades as the Vivekananda Rocks. According to the Puranas, the larger and farther of these two is the one that has been sanctified by the blessed feet (Shripada) of the Divine Mother; For it was here that, as Devi Kanya, She did Tapasya (disciplines and austerities) to win the hand of the Great God, Shiva. Hence the rock has long been considered by Shaktas a place highly favourable for spiritual practices._x000d_ After worshipping the Mother in the temple, it was to this holy rock that the Swami wanted to go for meditation. But how could he go? He had not a single pice for the boatman._x000d_ Without more ado he plunged into those shark-infested waters and swam across. About him the ocean tossed, but in his mind was greater turbulence.

The single minded monk had become transformed into a reformer, a nation-builder, a world-architect. His soul brooded with tenderness and anguish over India's poverty. What use is a religion, he thought, from which the masses are excluded? Everywhere and at all times he saw that the poor had been oppressed by whatever power the changes of fortune had set over them. The dominance of the priesthood, the despotism o[ caste, the merciless divisions which these created in the social body, making outcasts of religion the majority of its followers-these the Swami saw as almost insurmountable barriers to the progress of the Indian nation. His heart throbbed for the masses, great in their endurance. He seemed to enter, in some high mode of feeling, their world. In their sufferings he found himself sharing; by their degradation he found himself humiliated. He longed to throw in his lot with theirs. Agony was in his soul when he thought how those who prided themselves on being the custodians of religion had held down the masses through the ages.

In his letter of March 19, 1894, to Swami Ramakrishnananda, written from Chicago, one catches something of the ardour of the Swami's meditation on the rock:_x000d_ In view of all this, specially of the poverty and ignorance, I got no sleep. At Cape Comorin, sitting in Mother Kumari's temple, sitting on the last bit of Indian rock, I hit upon a plan: We are so many sannyasis wandering about, and teaching the people metaphysics-it is all madness. Did not our Master use to say, "An empty stomach is no good for religion"? That those poor people are leading the life of brutes, is simply due to ignorance. We have for all ages been sucking their blood and trampling them underfoot._x000d_ But what was the remedy? The clear-eyed Swami saw that renunciation and service must be the twin ideals of India. If the national life could be intensified in these channels, everything else would be taken care of. Renunciation alone had always been the great dynamo of strength in India. So at this critical time he looked to the men of renunciation to uphold the cause of India's downtrodden masses. The plan he hit upon was this-to continue the same letter:_x000d_ Suppose some disinterested sannyasis, bent on doing good to others, go from village to village, disseminating education and seeking in various ways to better the condition of all down to the Chandala [outcaste], through oral teaching, and by means of maps, cameras, globes, and such other accessories can't that bring forth good in time? All these plans I cannot write out in this short letter. The long and short of it is-if the mountain does not come to Mohammed, Mohammed must go to the mountain. The poor are too poor to come to schools and Pathashalas; and they will gain nothing by reading poetry and all that sort of thing. We as a nation have lost our individuality, and that is the cause of all mischief in India. We have to give back to the nation its lost individuality and raise the masses. The Hindu, the Mohammedan, the Christian, all have trampled them underfoot. Again the force to raise them must come from inside, that is, from the orthodox Hindus. In every country the evils exist not with, but against, religion. Religion, therefore, is not to blame, but men._x000d_ What could he do, a penniless sannyasi? In the midst of despair, inspiration came to him. He had travelled the length and breadth of India: he was sure that in every town he could find at least a dozen young men who would help him in the service of the masses. But where was the money to come from? He asked for help: he got only lip sympathy. "Selfishness personified are they to spend anything!" the Swami exclaimed. In his anguish he looked out over the ocean. A ray of light shot across his vision. Yes, he would go to America in the name of India's millions. There he would earn money by the power of his brain. Returning to India, he would devote himself to the regeneration of his countrymen or die in the attempt. Shri Ramakrishna would show him the way, even if nobody in the world would help the work.

Here, then, at Kanyakumari was the culmination of days and months of thought on the problems of the Indian masses; here the longing to find a way by which the wrongs inflicted on them could be righted, was fulfilled. He gazed over the waters through a mist of tears. His heart went out to the Master and to the Mother in prayer. From this moment his life was consecrated to the service of India, but particularly to the service of her outcast Narayanas, her starving Narayanas, her millions of oppressed Narayanas. To him, in this hour, even the direct experience of Brahman in the Nirvikalpa Samadhi, and the bliss attending it, became subservient to the overwhelming desire to give himself utterly for the good of the Indian people. His soul was caught up in the vision of Narayana Himself, the Lord of the Universe, transcendent, yet immanent in all beings whose boundless love makes no distinction between high and low, pure and vile, rich and poor. To him religion was no longer a special province of human endeavour: it embraced the whole scheme of things-the Vedas, the sages, asceticism and meditation, the Supreme Vision, and the people, their lives, their hopes, their misery and poverty and sorrows. He saw that religion, without concern for the poor and suffering, was so much dry straw. Yes indeed, at Kanyakumari2 the Swami became the patriot and prophet in one!

And so his meditation confirmed him in his intention of going to the West. He would make that individualized and aggressively self conscious West bow down to the Oriental experience as embodied in India's message to the world. That on which the monks of India concentrate as the ideal of their race and as the consummation of their lives that in its entirety he would preach to the West. In the wake of that preaching, by him and by others to come, India would rises great light illuminating the whole world. He would renounce even the bliss of the Nirvikalpa Samadhi for the liberation of his fellow men in India and abroad! Thus was the spirit of Shri Ramakrishna revealed to him in one of the most profound experiences of his life. No wonder he later spoke of himself as "a condensed India".

It would seem that the Swami meditated on the rock at Kanyakumari for three days. This view is supported by the evidence of two eye-witnesses. One of these was Shri Ramasubba Iyer. In 1919, when Swami Virajananda, a disciple of the Swami and a monk who came to be widely known and respected, went on pilgrimage to Kanyakumari, Shri Iyer told him that he had himself seen the Swami meditating on the rock for hours together, for three days consecutively. This came as a surprise to Swami Virajananda. In 1914, when he published Volume II of the first edition (in four volumes) of the present Life of Swami Vivekananda, he had not known it; hence he had there been uriable to give definite information about the length of time the Swami was on the rock._x000d_ ' In September 1970, the Vivekananda Mandapam, built as a memorial on the rock on which the Swami meditated, was consecrated and opened. The work was put through by the Vivekananda Rock Memorial Committee, Madras.

Years later, another eye witness, Shri Sadashivam Pillai, told an admirer of Swami Vivekananda that the Swami had remained on the rock for three nights. The Swami had come to Kanyakumari on foot. Being impressed by the monk's personality, Shri Pillai had watched his movements. He had seen him swim over to the rock. When the Swami did not return in the evening, he became anxious. Next morning Shri Pillai went to the rock with food for the Swami. There he found him meditating; and when Shri Pillai asked him to return to the mainland, he refused. When he offered food to the Swami, the latter asked him not to disturb him. If Shri Pillai wished to give him some food, he could leave some fruit and milk in a hollow of the rock, so that he, the Swami, could take it at will. Shri Pillai was sure that the Swami spent three nights on the rock. Leaving Trivandrum on December 22, then, and in all probability going straight to Kanyakumari, the Swami was perhaps on the rock from December 24 to 26.

From Nagercoil Swamiji went to Kanyakumari on foot…. _x000d_ Kanyakumari is about twelve miles from Nagercoil. It is the southern extremity of India, the meeting-place of three seas, and a place of pilgrimage for Hindus. "Kanyakumari" means virgin girl. The famous temple there is dedicated to the Divine Mother manifest as a virgin girl. Eager as a child is to be back with its mother, so was the Swami to see the Mother in that seashore temple. Reaching the shrine he fell prostrate in ecstasy before Her image.

There, sitting on the last stone of India, he passed into a deep meditation on the present and future of his country. He sought for the root of her downfall. With the vision of a seer he understood why India had been thrown from the pinnacle of glory to the depths of degradation. Where only wind and surf were to be heard, he reflected on the purpose and achieve¬ment of the Indian world. He thought not of Bengal, or of Maharashtra, or of the Punjab, but of India and the life of India. The centuries were laid out before him. He perceived the realities and potentialities of Indian culture. He saw India organically and synthetically, as a master-builder might visualize in the concrete an architect's plans. He saw religion to be the life-blood of India's millions. "India", he realized in the silence of his heart, "shall rise only through a renewal and restoration of that highest spiritual consciousness that has made her, at all times, the cradle of the nations and cradle of the Faith." He saw her greatness: he saw her weaknesses as well-the central one of which was that the nation had lost its individuality. To his mind, the only hope lay in a restatement of the culture of the Rishis. Religion was not the cause of India's downfall; but the fact that true religion was nowhere followed: for religion, when lived, was the most potent of all forces.