A correspondent from the Chicago Inter Ocean, who often described life in Boston and Cambridge, seems to have attended at least one, and while her following paragraph from the Inter Ocean of April 4, 1896, betrays a confusion regarding Swamiji's teachings, it is of value for its information, some of which is not found elsewhere:

VIVEKANANDA_x000d_ _x000d_ It is under the auspices of (the Procopeia Club] that the Swami Vivekananda has just been giving a course of lectures, which attracted such throngs of people that the Allen gymnasium, just across the street, had to be engaged as a lecture room. The hour was 8 o'clock, but by 7:15 o'clock every seat would be filled, and even the aisles crowded to suffocation with people, who stood for three quarters of an hour before the lecture began in order to hear it. The Swami lectured on Karma Yogi as an ideal of universal religion, and devoted his last evening to readings from the Sanskrit, with interpretations that were extremely interesting. Anything more musical than his reading from the Sanskrit could not be imagined. One listened as if to unknown magic.

We have just seen reports from Chicago and Detroit papers which give a lecture by Dr. Barrows, & contributions from our old friends the Revs. Mr. Thoburn & Mr. Clark. In these it is stated that Swamiji has lost no opportunity since he returned to India of abusing & belittling American women. Now, we do not wish to reply to these papers, but you have so many opportunities of meeting representative American women that I can do no harm in acquainting you with the absolute facts, and leaving them in your hands. I have been present at every single lecture given by Swamiji in India & Ceylon. I have also been present at every single interview granted to a newspaper man. Further I have not missed one single report of any utterance of his in any paper. With this opportunity of knowing the actual facts I can assure you that any statement of a single word from Swamiji derogatory to American women is a malicious Fabrication. On the contrary I am becoming almost weary, if that be possible, of hearing him speak in the most glowing terms of the American women, and only a week or two ago he said "If I have to come back again as woman I must & will come as an American woman.

But let us return to Boston. During Swamiji's visit there, the Evening Transcript published four articles or reports on his lectures, the first of which has been reproduced above.

The second, a brief report of his public lecture "The Ideal of a Universal Religion," appeared on March 27:_x000d_ Said a Universal Religion is Impossible._x000d_ Swami Vivekananda told the large audience that crowded the Allen Gymnasium to hear him speak on the "Ideal of a Universal Religion," last night, that the recent Parliament of Religions at Chicago proved, to that date, that universal religion was impossible. "Nature," he said, "is wiser than we have thought her to be. It is competition of ideas, the clash of thought, that keeps thought alive. Sects have always been antithetical, and always will be splitting into little varieties of themselves. And the way to get out of this fight of religions is to let the sects go on subdividing._x000d_ "There is no unity in the three elements of religion philosophy [theology?], mythology and ceremony. Each . Theologian wants unity, but his idea of unity is the adjustment of all other creeds to his own. I agree with the old prophets as long as they agree with me. But there is an element of religion that towers above all; that is, philosophy. The philosopher seeks truth, which is one and the same always. And it is acceptable to the four sides of every religious nature-the emotional, mystical, active and philosophical. And he who dares to seek the truth for truth's sake is greatest among men."

The third Evening Transcript article about Swamiji appeared on March 28 and was even briefer than the above, being no more than a mention of his lecture "Realization, or the Ultimate of Religion." For the sake of completeness, it is given below:_x000d_ _x000d_ VIVEKANANDA ON THE `FUTURE OF RELIGION'_x000d_ _x000d_ In the Allen Gymnasium, last evening, about four hundred people heard the Swami Vivekananda speak under the auspices of the Procopeia on "Realization, or the Ultimate of Religion." Tonight the last lecture of the course will be given, to be followed by a general philo¬sophic discussion. On Monday the Indian philosopher will return to Chicago. [As we know, Swamiji had come from Detroit, not Chicago.]

On Monday, March 30, the Evening Transcript printed its fourth and longest article about Swamiji, summarizing his work The city and at Harvard with understanding and appreciation. But before reproducing this article, let us look at another side of Swamiji's life in Boston. His stay there was not all work; ere was a holiday aspect to it, for several of his close friends ad tome from New York and were staying in Cambridge as guests of Mrs. Ole Bull.

Another out-of town friend of Swamiji's who had come to Boston in March was Miss Ellen Waldo, his New York disciple, secretary, housekeeper, and all-round worker for his cause. Miss Waldo did not stay with Mrs. Bull-the two were not altogether congenial-but with her (Miss Waldo's) cousin, a Dr. William H. Prescott, who lived in Boston at 285 Marlborough Street. "He has for years done a large amount of free medical work among the poor and he is interested in the higher teachings that the Procopeia is striving to popularize," Miss Waldo had written to Mrs. Bull from New York earlier in the month, accepting on her cousin's behalf tickets to the Procopeia Club meetings.

Where Swamiji (with Goodwin always nearby) made his headquarters during this Boston period is not known. One can, however, be fairly sure that while he gave his mailing address as the Procopeia, he often stayed overnight at Mrs. Bull's hospitable house in Cambridge where so many of his good friends had gathered. Mrs. Bull, one imagines, would not have had it otherwise, and Swamiji himself must have welcomed a relaxed evening, talking in the fire - and candlelight with congenial friends, for after nearly three years of continuous work his nerves, as he wrote to Alasinga on March 23, were "almost shattered. But another part of the time he may well have slept for the sake of convenience at the Procopeia Club in Boston, where he no doubt sometimes held morning and afternoon interviews with those who wished to talk with him, who wished to receive instruction, to have their problems solved, their way of life clarified, and their paths cleared of obstruction, who wished, in short, his blessing. Swamiji would have taken the time and care to give to ail who came.

And then he had many friends in Boston and Cambridge other than his fellow visitors. Of his pleasure in renewing these old friendships he wrote to both Christina Greenstidel and Mary Funke, whom he had parted from in Detroit a few days earlier. In his letter to Christina, whom he looked upon as a daughter and whose dependent family had less than enough money, he enclosed a check. (Christina excised from his letter the direct evidence of Swamiji s affectionate concern for her, but inferential evidence remains.)

Swamiji's Boston friends included the famous Julia Ward Howe, the equally famous Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Franklin Sanborn, and Professor William James. But his friend of longest standing was Professor John Henry Wright of Harvard's Greek Department, who in 1895 had been made dean of the University's Graduate School. Swamiji's friendship with professor Wright and his family dated back to the days before the Parliament of Religions when almost no one could correctly spell Vivekananda and very few had tried. It had been professor Wright who, like an instrument of providence, had quickly recognized Swamiji's genius, had urged him to appear as a delegate to the Parliament, and had made it possible for him do so, writing the necessary letters of introduction to the authorities. Since those early days, Swamiji and the professor had met frequently and, from time to time, had corresponded.

The Wright family was one of which Swamiji was particularly fond, but unhappily for all concerned, Mrs. Wright and three Wright children-Elizabeth, or Bessie, who was sixteen, Austin, going on thirteen, and the four-year-old John ¬were not in Cambridge in March of 1896. Because of the delicate health of John, or Jackie, Mrs. Wright had taken the children to Marion, Alabama, for the winter, thus escaping the rigors of the New England climate. Professor Wright had perforce remained in Cambridge, a temporary bachelor, rooming at one of Harvard's dormitories. But while New England had its snow, sleet, and subzero temperatures, the southern part of the United States had perils of its own, and the Wright family was not to escape tragedy. In March the two boys, Austin (in whom Swamiji was especially interested) and John, contracted typhoid fever, in those days a prevalent and dread disease. The correspondence at this time of crisis between Professor Wright and his wife has been made available to us by Mr. John K. Wright (the Jackie of 1896), for it was during this trying period that the professor saw Swamiji and wrote of him at some length to Mrs. Wright.

By ten o'clock the professor was back in his dormitory room, writing to his wife and preparing to catch an eleven o'clock train for New Bedford, a Massachusetts city some fifty miles south of Boston.

Tonight [he wrote in this hurried letter] I went to Mrs. Ole Bull's to call on Swami. He is coming to lunch with me on Friday. He looks good, and happy and is making a great success at lecturing. A young stenographer [Mr. J. J• Goodwin] has fallen in love with his teachings, been converted from Materialism to Vedantism, and takes him down for love, following him from city to city. Many of his lectures are in print. At Mrs. Bull's I met Mr. Fenellosa, Miss Emma Thursby, Miss Seabury and Mrs. Vaughan (born Bull) [Olea Vaughan, Mrs. Bull's daughter], besides Mr. Leggett, a New York rich man (rather nice) who took Swami to Europe last summer, and greatly admires him.

Swamiji's experiences since he had last seen Professor Wright had been many and varied, and it is small wonder that there was so much to talk of. Telling his wife of that conversation of March 27, the professor wrote:

Swami came and lunched with me today. He came to the room at about twelve: we sat and talked till one, when we went over to the Club; then at two we came back and talked till half past three._x000d_ He is become so much gentler, and wiser, and sweeter. Indeed he is most charming. He says his stay in America has taught him a great deal. I wish I could give you an idea of his talk: He says he has worked on and out with a new view of life: that the practical living of America has brought his old problems before him in new lights._x000d_ Last summer he was in England and had a very successful time. He made a speech in Queen's [Prince's] Hall and the papers took him [up], writing editorials. The clergy of the Established church became interested in him, and came to his classes. Canon Wilberforce, now in charge of Westminster Abbey, took him into his house and gave him a dinner. Mr. Haweis had him lecture in his own parlours, and preached about him and his teachings in his church. "Wasn't it funny?" Swami said. "When I came into Mr. Haweis' crowded parlour he came up to me and in a loud voice said `Here comes the master!' "

The chief secretary for India, Sir F. Arbuthnot, Swami succeeded in winning, and they became fast friends.* Swami said that England is just like India with its Castes. "I had to have separate classes for the two castes. For the high Caste people-Lady This and Lady That, Honorable This and Honorable That-I had classes in the morning; for the Low Caste people, who came pell-mell, I had classes in the evening."_x000d_ * For “Sir F. Arbuthnot” see Burke, Swami Vivekananda in the West: New Discoveries, The World Teacher – Part One (hereafter called World Teacher – 1), chapter four, section one.

My account of what Swami said may sound as if he was boasting, but it was not so. He was never so modest. He has made a very fast friend in a Scotch gentleman, a Mr. Sturdy, who must be a character. He made a fortune of £10,000 a year in Australia and then came to England, and became a Theosophist. His Theosophy carried him to India where he soon became cured of it.** He then became a monk and fell in with some of' Swami's gurubhais (or `fellow pupils') and became much attached to them. Something then carried him back to England where he married, giving up the monk's life. But his love for his former brethren now finds its outlet in Swami. It was he who got up the various lectures and classes in London. Swami says that he intends to take to India .a score of young English Vedantists and have them go as missionaries to the Hindoos, of their own (the Hindoo) religion. The Hindoos, he says will listen to them as to no other people. "Why! if these people think there is so much in our religion, there must be something in it," Swami naively said they would say.

Canon Wilberforce told Swami that they were trying to teach in substance the Vedanta philosophy in the church at the present time, and that he (Swami) was really a missionary to the Church of England.

Mr. Leggett, Swami's New York friend is a very rich grocer. Swami becomes genuinely American in talking about him: "he is worth about $20,000,000." He took Swami to England last summer. In May Swami goes over again, and several other people are also going. It is a sort of nineteenth century Vedantade. Mrs. Ole Bull will probably be of the company.

In England Swami saw men chiefly, clergymen, members of the India civil service, not a few army officers. He says that about every one person in four was either born or has lived in India. And these people either hate it bitterly, or think there is no country like it. The latter class found in Swami something that reminded them of their beloved home, and came to him and helped him most enthusiastically.

Swami has evidently swept Professor James off his feet. Miss Sibbens told me this evening that he was going in to Boston to hear his talks at every opportunity. Dear old Swami! He said he used to believe in revivals, and used to take part in them . . . He used to harangue in the wildest manner, sing and dance, and have crowds following him in India but that is all wrong. Quietness and Knowledge is best. [It is more than probable that Professor Wright confused two stories here: one, a description, . perhaps, of the early days at the Baranagore Monastery when Swamiji and the other monks would at times lose themselves in a fervor of spiritual emotion, spending hours totally absorbed in singing devotional songs; and two, a description of Hindu kirtans, such as those inspired and led by Sri Chaitanya in the sixteenth century, when crowds dancing and singing in devotional ecstasy could be said to be mad with the love of God. Swamiji may well have joined in such public kirtans in India, but that he led them does not accord with what is known of his life there prior to his coming to America. Thus until some corroborative evidence is forthcoming it is safer to assume that Professor Wright, to whom this whole subject must have been new and strange, got it a little wrong.] He said some very beautiful things: he is going to send me his lectures, and I'll let you have them. He asked very affectionately about you and the children the very first thing he said to me.

I was deputed one spring Sunday morning (when I was about 13 years old) to call for [the Swami] at Mrs. Ole Bull's house on Brattle St and conduct him to lunch with my parents in Irving St. He of course was dressed in his turban and Hindoo robes and I remember feeling anxiety lest we should meet any of my schoolmates on our way across the Common. You can see that this fear of being conspicuous didn't make for conversation he being occupied with his high thoughts and I with my low ones. I remember that at lunch he and my father were much interested in each other and that he accepted, in his stride, our American fare-in regard to which he must have had some dispensation.

The conversation at that lunch, which took place on the last day but one of Swamiji's stay in Boston, could not have been anything but rich and brilliant, the two men delighting in one another's company, though not necessarily agreeing with one another's though, which was as it should have been in Cambridge, where no philosopher worthy of the name agreed with any other.

How many friends, all told, Swamiji had in and around Boston there is no telling. We can be sure, however, that they did not all belong to the circles of the famous or the near-famous, for Swamiji's friendships were never confined to any one group or class of people. Indeed the story of his visit to America would not be complete without taking into account a sentence imbedded in one of the news articles quoted earlier. Speaking of his American life in general, the Daily Globe observed: "The Swami has talked not only before intellectual audiences and in fashionable drawing rooms, but he has sought out and made friends with the workingmen with whom he is able to get on so well, because he believes that all great truths are expressed in simple forms." Swamiji's friendship with American workingmen constitutes a part of his life of which we know almost nothing, for no memoirs or letters concerning it have come down to us. Yet even as he had made friends with the rich and the poor alike during his wandering days in India, so in America he surely did the same, and to overlook this aspect of his visit to the West is to miss a large part of Swamiji himself, for his love and concern for the poor and the burdened was an intrinsic element of his nature. How often did he write: "Love the poor, the miserable, the downtrodden!" It is true that he had in mind, and at heart, primarily the poor of India, but not exclusively. "May I be born again and again," he wrote to Mary Hale in 1897, "and suffer thousands of miseries, a that I may worship the only God that exists, the only God I believe in, the sum total of all souls-and above all, my God the wicked, my God the miserable, my God the poor of all races, of all species, is the special object of my worship. It is said that even as a boy he used to visit the quarters of Calcutta where the untouchables lived in order to help them; and during his days of wandering alone through India he grieved, brokenhearted, over the misery he saw throughout his motherland. Feeling for the poor as he did, it is not likely that he would have ignored them in this country, particularly in the depression years of 1893 to 1897 when the suffering among the laboring classes was intense. One remembers the passage in Sister Christine's "Reminiscences" in which she recalls several instances of his keen feeling for the poverty stricken and the forlorn in America. "His compassion," she writes, "for the _x000d_ poor and downtrodden, the defeated, was a passion. One did not need to be told, but seeing him one knew that he would willingly have offered his flesh for food and his blood for drink to the hungry.

In the 1890s in America the distinction between the upper and lower classes was vast. While industry and business flourished, and immense fortunes were being raked up in piles by a few enterprising and often ruthless men, the workingman's average earnings remained low. He worked, if he were lucky enough to work at all, a minimum of sixty hours a week, and for those sixty hours he earned from five to nine dollars (barely enough to pay his rent and feed his family). He lived, under-nourished, in ramshackle, overcrowded, fetid, and rat-ridden tenements. In the best of times the specter of unemployment was never absent, and in those depression years, when hundreds of thousands were thrown out of work, it was a stark and fearful reality. Nor did he have at any time a means of redressing the many wrongs done him, nor any avenue of escape. He dived, his back against a cliff, on the edge of pauperism-an abyss into which illness or an accident or simply a lay-off could plunge him irrevocably.

It was such men and women whom Swamiji sought out and made friends with, talking with them, perhaps, on the docks of New York, at the People's Church, in the slums of Chicago, or in the swarming back streets of South End Boston, where the Italian and Greek venders plied their pushcarts and the Irish huckster with his horse and wagon gave full-throated advertisement to his wares. Perhaps he sometimes entered their dilapidated tenements and shared their meals. Nor did he find the conditions too terrible, for he had seen worse. (In Chicago in 1893 he had remarked that the slums there among the worst in the United States-were "comfortable and even pleasant" compared with those of India. Swamiji's eye, moreover, penetrated to an essential quality of the American workingman-his air, his inner conviction, of self-respect and dignity. The workingman, come recently perhaps from Europe, was now a citizen of a democracy, and he sensed, even if he did not actually experience, all that that implied. Writing in 1898, Robert A. Woods, one of the first authors to draw attention to the plight of the lower classes in urban America, remarked: "Even in the face of the most untoward circumstances and without making light of the crushing power of the circumstances that surround the life of poverty-one can often find here some touch of that dauntlessness which is typically American. Swamiji found it; he found that look in the face and carriage of the poorest of the poor which declared, "I am a man among men.

In volume five of the Complete Works it is mentioned that Swamiji gave two afternoon talks on March 22 and 24 of 1896 to a group of Harvard students. From two brief entries in Miss Emma Thursby's diary, we learn that these afternoon talks and the class lectures that he held at Mrs. Bull's house on Brattle Street in Cambridge (mentioned in the first paragraph of the above article) were one and the same. "Harvard students at Mrs. Bull's hear Swami," Miss Thursby noted on March 22; and on March 24 the variation, "Harvard students hear the Swami at Mrs. Bull's. Miss Thursby was not much of a diarist and commented no further on these events, but in the Complete Works we find Swamiji's answers to the questions asked at Mrs. Bull's by the Harvard students. The questions themselves were not taken down, but to judge from the answers, alone of which were quite long, these young men were serious, thoughtful, and eager. They wanted to know about Buddhism, the problem of free will, the Vedantic theory of evolution, the theory of Maya, and so on. Although Swamiji's class talks themselves are lost, it would appear from this subsequent discussion that he had spoken primarily of Advaita Vedanta. It would appear also that he had immensely enjoyed talking to these earnest young men whose minds were still flexible and vigorous. He had, indeed, looked forward to such an occasion. "I am very glad however," he had written to Mrs. Bull in February of his proposed Boston visit, "to get an opportunity to talk to the graduates of Harvard." (The "however:' in this sentence was in reference to the lack of enthusiasm he had felt in regard to the Procopeia Club. The Harvard students, in turn, found in Swamiji a teacher par excellence, one who could clarify and evaluate abstruse concepts and help a lost youth thread his way through Harvard's philosophical labyrinths. Once before, in December of 1894 Swamiji had spoken to Harvard students in Mrs. Bull's spacious teak-paneled music room and had unsnarled their philosophical tangles. "He has helped students who were bewildered by their course of Philosophy at Harvard, Mrs. Bull had written to Dr. Lewis G. Janes, and there can be little doubt that this was equally true of his classes in March of 1896. The story is told, no doubt 0riginally by Professor James, that as he (James) was walking behind two Harvard undergraduates who had just attended one of Swamiji's talks, he overheard the following conversation: First student: "I was really disappointed." Second student: "Why?" First student: "Well, we were told that this man was so great, that his ideas were so profound." Second student: "What makes you say his ideas aren't profound?" First student: "Because I understood every word he said!

Prior to this famous lecture at the Harvard University the Swami gave two afternoon talks to a group of Harvard students at Mrs. Bull's house in Cambridge on March 22 and 24.

Many Harvard students not only understood what Swamiji said, they never forgot it. In this connection one recalls the "Recollections of Swami Vivekananda" by the late Professor William Ernest Hocking, said to have been the last of the great American Idealists. After writing of the deep impression Swamiji had made on him at the Parliament of Religions, Professor Hocking went on:

For several years I lost sight of Vivekananda....I spent four years in Davenport [Iowa], earning money to come East and study with James. During those years, Vivekananda had begun his great work of founding centers for the Vedanta throughout America. In the course of this work he came to Cambridge. I heard him twice: once in a class in metaphysics, and once at the home of Mrs. Ole Bull on Brattle Street. It was in these informal gatherings that the quality of the man most directly spoke, and I was confirmed in my regard, and my purpose to rethink my philosophical foundations.

This Harvard engagement, spoken of by his biographers as "one of the most remarkable incidents of his whole American career, served the purpose, though without conscious intent, of an ideally ap-propriate farewell tribute. To be invited to speak before this society was to receive one of the highest honors intellectual America could pay, and while Swamiji himself does not seem to have been particularly impressed by the honorific significance of the invitation, it could not have been lost upon others. One can say without exaggeration that in the 1890s the Graduate Philosophical Club of Harvard represented the best of America's philosophical thought. It was not only one of the few graduate societies of any kind then existing in the country, but was, without question, the most intellectually rich and varied of them all. Its members included the graduate students of Harvard's Department of Philosophy and also, of course, Harvard's professors of philosophy and psychology (the latter being still officially regarded as a branch of the former). George H. Palmer, William James, Josiah Royce, Hugo Miinsterberg, and George Santayana-to name them in order of their seniority-were in 1896 its stars, and, with the exception of Santayana, who was as yet unknown to the world at large, were the stars also of American philosophy as a whole. Closely affiliated were Charles C. Everett in Harvard's Philosophy of Religion, Francis G. Peabody in Social Ethics, E. C. Moore in Christian Morals, and P. H. Hanus in Education, all well known in their respective fields.

Professor Palmer affectionately and accurately referred to the Department of Philosophy, of which he was head, as a "philosophical menagerie. One could not easily have found elsewhere so varied, so lively, and so noisy a group of thinkers. All its members were brilliant, none thought along the same lines as any of the others, and each delighted in prolonged argumentation. An open and joyful debate took place endlessly on the campus and in the professors’ cheerful and hospitable homes. Recalling this halcyon period of philosophical wrangling, George Foot Moore, who had been at the time a professor of Hebrew at the not-distant Andover Theological Seminary, wrote of it with nostalgia:

Palmer, . . . James, Royce, Munsterberg, and, a little later, Santayana, made such a constellation as no American University had seen or may perhaps see again in our time. They were men of widely diverse types; fundamentally different philosophies and opposite ways of approaching all philosophical problems were repre¬sented among them. It was no "Harvard School," having a system to inoculate the minds of docile pupils with, but so many vigorous and independent thinkers, fit to inspire students to thought by their very disagreements. For in fact they agreed on little else than freedom to disagree, and in their generous admiration and affection for one another. Uniformity of opinion on things human or divine they had no wish to see among themselves or in their pupils, knowing that it is purchasable only by renunciation of a man's right to think for himself, which is worth more to him than even the possession of the truth!

It is perhaps not too surprising under the circumstances that some of the students found themselves not so much inspired as "bewildered by their course of Philosophy at Harvard." But however that might have been, the professors were in transports. "If our students now could begin really to understand what Royce means with his voluntaristic-pluralistic monism, what Munsterberg means with his dualistic scientificism and platonism, what Santayana means by his pessimistic platonism, . . . What I mean by my crass pluralism, what you mean by your ethereal idealism, that these are so many religions, ways of fronting life, and worth fighting for," James wrote with exuberance to Professor Palmer, "we should have a genuine philosophic universe at Harvard.

This statement is somewhat misleading. In 1896 John Pierce Fox was a young man, footloose, without title or authority, and in no position to issue so important an invitation. He had graduated from Harvard in 1894, had studied for a part of the following year in Harvard's Divinity School, and in the first half of 1896, having not yet settled upon a career, was working in his brother's real estate office. One can only assume (though there are no available records to this effect) that during this last period he was also corresponding secretary for the Graduate Philosophical Club and, in this capacity, sent the invitation to Swamiji. In any event, Swamiji did indeed receive an invitation, of which he wrote to Mrs. Bull in the early part of January, 1896: *_x000d_ I have received your letter & also another from the Secretary of the Harvard Metaphysical (Philosophical?] club.**_x000d_ I will be only too glad to come to Boston for the Harvard lecture especially. _x000d_ * In the Complete Works (6:353) this letter is dated December 10, 1895, which is the date Swamiji himself gave to it. From the full text of the letter (Sen Col.), which differs somewhat from the published version, it is clear that it was written in early January, 1896. Moreover the postmark on its envelope contains the abbreviation “Jan.”_x000d_ _x000d_ **No record has been found of the existence of a Harvard Metaphysical Club in the 1890s. No doubt Swamiji meant to write “Philosophical” as given in the Complete Works version of this letter (6:353).

Whatever Mr. Fox's position may have been, Swamiji wrote to him, and on January 15 that young man, who was also in touch with Mrs. Bull, wrote the following letter to her:

I had a note from Vivekananda Monday [January 13], saying he expects to come to Boston in March or perhaps in February, and will be only too glad to speak to the students: It will be not before the Harvard Religious Union, but the Graduate Philosophical Club-the most philosophical organization at Harvard-so that the audience will be the best the University can afford.

Again, on February 23, John Fox wrote to Mrs. Bull from his home in Dorchester, Massachusetts:_x000d_ _x000d_ Your letter came Friday, and I at once went out to Cambridge to see Mr. Lough, the president of the Philosophical Club. He said the Club would like to have Swami speak on Wednesday evening, March 25.

Thus one gathers that while Mr. Fox clearly played a part in the arrangements for Swamiji's talk before the Harvard Philosophical Club, the invitation itself was issued by the president of that august body and was very likely sanctioned by its senior members, who, in the early months of 1896, would have been William James and Josiah Royce. (Professor George Palmer was taking a sabbatical leave and traveling in Europe with his wife. Hugo Miinsterberg, the brilliant young psychologist whom William James had brought from Germany in 1892 to take charge of Harvard's psychological laboratory, had returned for a time to his homeland. Although George Santayana, the youngest of the group just Swamiji's age-was teaching in Harvard in the spring of 1896, he was not yet a full professor with a decisive voice in the affairs of the Department. This left James and Royce, Harvard's brightest philosophical stars in any event, in full command.

As far as I know, there are no records to prove beyond all possibility of doubt that these two professors attended Swamiji's lecture before the Graduate Philosophical Club. One does know, however, that they intended to. A few days before the event, Mr. Fox wrote to Mrs. Bull, "Mr. Lough said that Vivekananda's addresses (his published pamphlets] interested not only the philosophical students, but also Prof. James and Prof. Royce, who hope to be at his Harvard talk." And to judge from Professor Wright's account of James's enthusiastic attendance at the Procopeia lectures and his remark that "a11 the big wigs in philosophy" were going to attend the Harvard talk, it is not likely that James was absent; nor would Royce have done Swamiji the discourtesy of remaining away. Other professors who we can be reasonably sure attended the lecture were Professor Charles Rockwell Lanman, chairman of the Sanskrit Department, who had helped to collect the thousand and more manuscripts of Harvard's Sanskrit library (and who was later made an honorary member of the New York Vedanta Society), and the Reverend Charles Carroll Everett, head of Harvard's Divinity School. How many others were present we can only guess, but professors and divines, instructors, such as George Santayana, and graduate students, such as John Fox, no doubt packed the hall.' It was, as the life remarks, a "great critical gathering."

There were many questions; some were philosophical, some were concerned with the relation of Vedanta to science, to ethics, to psychic phenomena (one of William James's interests), and inevitably to the Indian caste system-though this was an odd question to be raised at Harvard, where the Bostonian caste system was accepted as one of the irrefrangible laws of the universe. Unfortunately, the names of the questioners, many of which might today be of interest, have not come down to us, but one can assume that it was primarily the professors who asked, for such was, and is, the usual procedure at gatherings of this sort.

Swamiji's Harvard talk may have been longer than we know. A comparison between a report of his lecture in the Evening Transcript (see pp. 85-86) and the version that has been published in the Complete Works (as taken from a pamphlet printed in April or May of 1896) leads one to the unsettling suspicion that it has not come down to us in full. Who was to blame for whatever omissions may have been made there is today no way of knowing. Indeed, before going to England Swamiji himself did some editing. On April 14 Mr. Fox, by then becoming involved in Swamiji's work, wrote from New York to Mrs. Bull, who had charge of the publishing end of things:

Mr. Goodwin wrote you, I believe, that Swami has worked on the Harvard lecture, spending about three hours Sunday morning with me. On the Vedas, commentators, etc., he wrote three pages of notes, making everything clear on those matters I think. This afternoon, I am going to see him again about a thing or two more. . . .

In regard to the expense of printing the Harvard lecture, Mr. Leggett is ready to help, but did not say to what extent: that would depend on the cost, I suppose.

I expect now to return Thursday [April 16] and will come out to see you the first thing, that there may be no more delay about publication.

Within two weeks the publication of the pamphlet was well under way, and Mr. Leggett, a man of his word, not only helped, but bore the entire expense of publishing the first edition. On May 1 he wrote to Mrs. Bull:

I am in receipt of your letter and enclose check for $125 to cover expense of publishing the Swami Harvard talks. Of course a paper cover is far preferrable to pamphlet form for durability etc. I should not combine the Harvard series with the Raja production unless it is carefully revised and all repetition is eliminated._x000d_ Prof Royce's preface to the Harvard series I should think to be very desirable and gives Swami's thought the stamp of approval and thereby helps the ordinary reader.

Whether Professor Royce's preface to Swamiji's lecture was actually written or only proposed and what, in any event, became of it, we do not know. Duly published, the booklet contained an Introduction by the Reverend Charles Carroll Everett and a Note written by John P. Fox, but there was no preface by Royce or anyone else. Mr. Fox's Note, which gives information regarding the lecture's editing, read:

This lecture and the discussion which followed were stenographically reported. They could receive from the Swami only a cursory revision, owing to his departure for England, but it is hoped no errors have crept in. Professor LANMAN and Professor WRIGHT of Harvard [the latter despite the grief that then was his] have kindly assisted in the final revision. In the reporting of the discussion, some of the questions were unavoidably lost. The first four notes were added by the Swami. In the original lecture, the quotations from Hindu writings were first given in the Sanskrit, and then translated; these offhand translations stand as given.

Following the lecture and discussion, are the answers of the Swami to questions at two afternoon talks with some Harvard students, on March 22 and 24. These answers were stenographically reported, but the questions were not. There have also been added a few selections from unpublished lectures. Some of the answers and selections cover the same general ground, but they have all been retained on account of the variety in treatment.

While no adequate exposition of the Vedanta philosophy can be given in a single address, it is hoped that this, with the accompanying answers and selections, will be of value to those interested in the thought and life of the East.

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 in fact a missionary from India to America. Every where 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 this lesson so effectively.

In the introduction to the pamphlet entitled "Vedanta Philosophy", which embodied the Swami's address, together with a record of his answers to questions during the discussion that followed, the Reverend C. C. Everett, D.D., LL.D., 1)Dean of the Harvard Divinity School, writes: _x000d_ _x000d_ … 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 Fast may well teach us; and we owe a debt of gratitude to Vivekananda that he has taught this lesson so effectively.

I forgot to ask you about the receipts from the Sale of the Harvard lectures, and so shall send word to Mr. Goodyear to write to you about the matter. You will want the money sent to you, I suppose. The Old Corner Bookstore will forward their receipts to Mr. Goodyear along with the receipts from the other pamphlets, unless you want to write to them: I had Mr. Wilson (the printer) send them fifty Harvard lectures. If the distribution does not go smoothly, I will straighten things out in the fall._x000d_ In the hurry at Mr. Wilson's, I forgot to have copies sent to Dr. Everett, Prof. Wright, and Prof. Lanman. Prof. Wright was away in the evening so I do not know just how many copies he would like. I left one copy for Dr. Everett when calling with Dr. Jaynes (Janes?). I will ask Mr. Lough to see that he has more. As to Prof. Wright and Prof. Lanman,-could you not have ten Copies sent to each? Or perhaps Miss Hamlin could take them._x000d_ I have done a little Vedanta missionary work on the steamer, correcting false ideas of Mohini (Chatterji) and Vivekananda held by three Boston ladies.

The Harvard professors had been so deeply impressed with Swamiji's lecture and with his incisive and sometimes heated replies to their questions during the discussion that he was offered the chair of Eastern Philosophy. Invitations such as this were not given lightly at Harvard. The offer had about it something of the solemnity of a marriage proposal; for President Eliot, not without good reason, expected his professors to wed themselves heart and soul and for life to the University. Writing in the spring of 1897 to Hugo Munsterberg, who was having difficulty trying to decide whether to live in Germany or in Cambridge, Eliot made himself clear. "I ought also to say to you frankly," he wrote, "that the University will not be content to have you return hither without `burning your ships'; the University will desire that you return with the intention to remain in its service, just as any American accepts a professorship here with the definite intention of spending his life in all probability at Harvard. . . . In accepting a professorship which is not limited to a term of years the incumbent is expected to have the present intention to remain.

This stipulation would have applied as well to the offer made to Swamiji. The professorship of Eastern Philosophy was, like any other Harvard professorship, a lifetime post, and since the vows on both sides were inviolable, it is clear that the Harvard professors were not only much impressed by Swamiji's scholarship and mastery of his subject, but that many of them, including President Eliot, knew him more than casually and were impressed with him as a man. "[He] is an honor to humanity, William James would later on write to Mrs. Bull. Harvard, in short, had decided that it wanted Swamiji for its own-forever. A higher honor than this could not have been paid by the academic world of America. But Swamiji was a sannyasin; he could not bind himself to a secular institution, and he had, moreover, work to do and a message to give in the open world. Thus he refused.*_x000d_ _x000d_ * It is said the Life (first edition, vol. 2, page 444; 1981 edition, vol.2, page 91) that in 1894 or 1896 (the year is not clearly stated) “the Columbian University offered [Swamiji] the Chair of Sanskrit, which honor he had to decline because he was a Sannyasin.” In an attempt to verify and perhaps flesh out this skeletal bit of information, one comes up against the following cul-de-sac contained in a letter written in the 1960s from the Law Library of Columbia University, New York:_x000d_ “The professorship of Sanscrit was established July 1, 1891, with Edward Delevan Perry as incumbent. He held this professorship until July 1, 1895, when it was abolished. There is no record either in the Trustees’ Minutes or the University Archives that it was offered to Swami Vivekananda, or that he lectured at Columbia.

APPENDIX B_x000d_ _x000d_ Some Thoughts on_x000d_ Swamiji and the Harvard Professors_x000d_ _x000d_ Inasmuch as Swamiji was closely listened to and sincerely admired by the professors of Harvard's illustrious Philosophy Department (see chapter nine of this book), one can but ask what effect he had upon the thought of the two most influential metaphysicians of that Department's golden era-William James, the Pluralist and Pragmatist, and Josiah Royce, the Idealist.

In 1896 both James and Royce were already well known. Although Professor James was not to publish his The Varieties of Religious Experience for another six years, nor his more influential philosophical work, Pragmatism, for another eleven, he was famous for his massive and important work, The Principles of Psychology ( 1890), known to students as the "James," and for its abridged version, Textbook of Psychology, or Psychology, Briefer Coarse (1892), known, needless to say, as the "Jimmy." Professor Royce was perhaps even more renowned in the 1890s than was James. A prolific writer, he was looked upon as America's foremost Idealist. He was a Hegelian, a monist and an admirer of those immense dialectical systems of thought that characterized much of the philosophy of the nine-teenth century. William James, on the other hand, had an intense dislike for Hegelianism, an impatience with systems, with rationalism, and, above all, with monism of any sort materialistic, Hegelian, Roycean, or, as it turned out, Vedantic. Although thirteen years older than Josiah Royce, James represented, and may be said to have originated, the reaction against the misty and windy type of Idealism that the younger philosopher so eloquently expounded. First and last, James was a pragmatist; Royce, on the other hand, was one of those "absolutistic philosophers" whom James described as dwelling "on so high a level of abstraction that they never even try to come down." Their debates were, of course, interminable and a delight to everyone, including themselves. "I lead a parasitic life upon you," James once wrote to Royce, "for my highest flight of ambitious ideality is to become your conqueror, and go down into history as such, you and I rolled in one another's arms and silent (or rather loquacious still) in one last death grapple of an embrace.

"These differences of opinion in our staff," Professor George Patmer wrote in his autobiography, "were always openly acknowledged. In our lectures we were accustomed to attack each other by name, James forever exposing the follies of the idealists, particularly of Royce and me, Royce in turn showing how baseless all empiricism is, lacking a metaphysical ground. . . . Our students were not misled by these our attacks on each other. They knew that we were all warm friends, few Departments more so. . . . And what happiness to work under conditions of entire freedom, where suspicions were unknown, and friendships were profound!

Unlike as they were in their philosophical approach, both Professor James and Professor Royce belonged to the age in which they lived. Both were deeply concerned over the problems peculiar to that age, particularly those which followed on the heels of the recent crash of Christianity's theological foundations. Both had accepted the main ideas of the theory of Evolution (as had almost all literate men and women of the nineties), but they had not become thereby, as had many others, atheists or agnostics. On the contrary, both philosophers felt duty bound to construct a new foundation on the ruins of the old, to devise a philosophy strong and broad enough to support both religious faith and scientific facts. In those days the Big Questions-questions involving the destiny of man and his conduct while en route to that destiny were still considered appropriate and meaningful matters for philosophical inquiry. Both James and Royce inquired into such questions without embarrassment, and both gave their considered answers. In doing so, Royce manfully tried to come down a little from the metaphysical heights wherein he dwelt; while, from the ground, Jamea reached upward toward what he called "something more," and somewhere in midair they clasped hands.

There is at present no known record of Swamiji's persona! relationship with Professor Royce. We know, however, that he looked upon William James as "a very nice man, a very nice man! And that James, when writing to him, addressed him as "Master. Professor James was indeed a thoroughly nice man, as lacking in pettiness and dogmatism as he was rich in the ability to acknowledge and delight in the greatness of others when he saw it. But while James's use of the term "Master" in connection with Swamiji implied deep respect, it did not indicate that he had become Swamiji's disciple or that he had any intention of doing so. There is a passage in James's essay "The Energies of Men" (1907) in which, to quote from the Life, "he speaks of a University professor who underwent the Raja-Yoga practices as a cure for nervous disorders, and who received thereby not only physical benefit but intellectual and spiritual illumination as well. It has been thought by some that James may have been referring here to himself. Actually, however, the unnamed "yogi" referred to in this essay was Wincenty Lutoslawski, a Polish writer and philosopher, with whom James was well acquainted. (It is interesting to note that while Mr. Lutoslawski undertook hatha yoga [not raja yoga] more or less on his own, he was not uninfluenced by Swamiji. In describing his practices to William James, Lutoslawski wrote, "Thus I decided to follow Vivekananda's advice: `Practice hard: whether you live or die by it doesn't matter.' ") On first receiving Mr. Lutoslawski's report on his yoga practices, which he later quoted in part in "Energies," James wrote to him a congratulatory letter, remarking in its course, "You are mistaken about my having tried Yoga discipline-I never meant to suggest that. I have read several books . . . And in the slightest possible way tried breathing exercises. These go terribly against the grain with me, are extremely disagreeable, and even when tried this winter (the winter of 1905-6) (somewhat perseveringly), to put myself asleep, after lying awake at night, failed to have any soporific effect.

But although Professor James evidently did not practice raja yoga under Swamiji's instruction-or that of anyone else, there is little doubt that he was deeply impressed with Swamiji himself as a man, a thinker, and what he would have called "a religious genius." James was, in fact, as Professor Wright noted, "swept off his feet," and missed no opportunity of hearing Swamiji lecture in Boston and, presumably, in Cambridge.

As for Josiah Royce, as was said above, we unfortunately do not know at present what he and Swamiji thought of one another. We do know, however, that Royce had long been au admirer of Indian thought, a knowledge of which he had derived first from a study of Schopenhauer and later from European Orientalists, such as Max Muller, Paul Deussen, and Richard Garbe. Royce felt attracted particularly toward the Upanishads and tended to insert Sanskrit phrases here and there throughout his writings. Josiah Royce must have been exceedingly interested in Swamiji's lectures and undoubtedly admired him as a man and as a thinker.

But much as James and Royce admired and respected Swamiji, much as they wanted him to accept the Chair of Eastern Philosophy at Harvard and thus become their permanent colleague and debating companion, much as they must have enjoyed his company, they could not accept, without each doing violence to his own long-held view, the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta. They were disturbed by it, and it is through the evidences of this disturbance that Swamiji's effect on the professors can best be seen.

Nothing gave William James more pleasure than a philosophical debate with a worthy opponent. But it was not until 1898, when Swamiji's brother disciple, Swami Abhedananda, lectured in Cambridge, that James again had a chance to tackle Vedantic monism head on. He lost no time at all in taking advantage of this opportunity. The story of the meeting between Professor James and Swami Abhedananda is told in the latter's biography by Swami Shankarananda and clearly shows how exercised William James was over Swamiji's "doctrine of the One," as he called it .

Swami Abhedananda arrived in Cambridge in May and a day or two before delivering his own lecture, audited a class of Professor James's. James evidently knew who the Swami was and seeing him, with some surprise no doubt, among his students, suddenly launched into an attack against monism, bringing forth all the arguments at his command. As has been seen, open attacks such as this were not uncommon, nor unfriendly, at Harvard. Nor did Swami Abhedananda take this one amiss. Rather, he quietly "jotted down in his note-book the essential points." After the class, Professor James expressed the wish, as was only fair, that the Swami discuss "Oneness" at his coming lecture, which he promised to attend. To this proposal, Swami Abhedananda readily agreed.

"In Mrs. Bull's house on the 29th of May," the Swami wrote in his diary, "I gave a lecture on `One in Many' at the Cambridge Conferences. Dr. [Lewis G.] James presided over the meeting. During the lecture I raised Professor James's objections to Monism and showed by logical reasoning how irrational and false those arguments were. . . . Professor James had come with some of his students. [After the lecture] he began to prompt his students to ask questions. . . . [When asked by Dr. James to put questions himself] Professor James said `Not here.' I felt that Professor James evaded asking questions, being afraid of being defeated in the presence of his students. * _x000d_ _x000d_ *In fairness to Professor James, it should be noted that at such gathering, at which students questioned a guest speaker, it was, and still is, customary for the Professors to hold their peace._x000d_  _x000d_ At the end of the meeting, Professor James shook Hands with me and praised highly my rational and simple explanation of Monism and invited me to dinner in his house the next evening."

The following evening was a momentous one. Describing it in his diary, Swami Abhedananda wrote: "I went to Professor James's house with Dr. James. There were along with us at the same table Professor Seller, Professor Royce and Professor Lanman. After the dinner was over, Professor James started arguing against Monism....I myself began to refute his arguments by giving further reasoning. This discussion went on for nearly four hours. . . . Professor Royce, Professor Seller and Professor Lanman and Dr. James took my side. Afterwards, Professor James was compelled to say that my arguments in favor of the Oneness of the cosmic reality were indeed irrefutable:

Clearly, Swami Abhedananda carried the evening. But this was only round one of the professors' battle against Monism. Although Josiah Royce had sided with Swami Abhedananda during that four-hour discussion, one is inclined to think that he had done so more in disagreement with his colleague James than in agreement with the Swami. In any case, a year later, when Royce gave his Gifford Lectures at the University of Aberdeen, he quoted long passages from the Brihadaranyaka and Chhandogya Upanishads (translations of which had been provided him by Professor Lanman) and, in defense of his own type of idealism, went to some length to show that the philosophical basis of mysticism (by which he meant monism) as set forth in the Hindu scriptures was unsatisfactory. Here one detects a change in Royce's views. In earlier years he had floated in the waters of Indian philosophy; he now, it seems, felt inclined to swim for shore. We need not enter here into his objections to and arguments against "Hindu Mysticism"; suffice it to say that he arrived at the conclusion that the Absolute of Advaita Vedanta spelled Nothing. Absolutely Nothing.

I don't think William James ever went this far; yet he seems to have been unsuited temperamentally, perhaps intellectually, to a monistic philosophy. On August 2 of 1900, while recuperating in Germany from a badly overstrained heart, he wrote to Mrs. Bull: "I have just been reading some of Vivekananda's Addresses in England, which I had not seen. That man is simply a wonder for oratorical power. As for the doctrine of the One, I began to have some talk with that most interesting Miss, Noble [Sister Nivedita] about it, but it was cut short, and I confess that my difficulties have never yet been cleared up. But the Swami is an honour to humanity in any case.

It had been Miss Josephine MacLeod who had lent some of Swamiji's London lectures to Professor James. On August 8, 1900, he wrote to her, "I am sending back to you his addresses, all but 4 [actually 3] ; the real & the apparent Man; Maya & Freedom; Practical Vedanta, part IV. These I keep a while longer, and wish I might get hold of the first 3 parts of Practical Vedanta. Has the Swami my books? It has made me feel badly that I didn't give him my Psychology when he was in America; and if he would like aught of mine, I will now have it sent to him, if you can provide me with an address which will `keep' a while. I am perhaps unduly shy about obtruding my writings on people.

Whether or not Swamiji and William James met in Europe in the fall of 1900 is not certain. A letter written by Swamiji from Paris on September 3, 1900, to Mrs. Francis Leggett, mentions in its printed form that a "Dr. James" had been a guest at a party that Swamiji had attended. It has been thought by some that Swamiji was referring here to Professor James. Yet the text of the letter itself gives several indications that Dr. Lewis G. Janes, not Professor William James, was the man in question. For one thing, Swamiji speaks a little teasingly of the doctor's "great blaster, Herbert Spencer." It was Dr. Lewis Janes who was, as everyone then knew, a dedicated follower of Herbert Spencer. Professor James, on the other hand, found much in Spencer's philosophy to take issue with, deploring, among other things, "the vagueness of all his fundamental ideas, his whole system wooden, as if knocked together out of cracked hemlock boards.

But whether or not William James had a further chance to talk with Swamiji, he did once again meet Sister Nivedita. Their first meeting, mentioned above, most probably took place in England in 1899. The second occurred in the spring of 1901, when, recovering from his illness and en route from London to Edinburgh with his wife to deliver his Gifford Lectures, he chanced to meet Mrs. Bull and Nivedita on the train (very likely the famous "Flying Scotsman," then the fastest train in the world, that sped between London and Edinburgh at an average speed of fifty-five miles per hour). "We had a splendid journey yesterday," James wrote to a friend on May I5, 1901, "in an American (almost!) train, first-class, and had the pleasure of some talk with our Cam-bridge neighbor, Mrs. Ole Bull, on her way to Norway to the unveiling of a monument to her husband. She was accompanied by an extraordinarily fine character and mind-odd way of expressing myself-a young Englishwoman named Noble, who has Hinduized herself (converted by Vivekananda to his philosophy) and lives now for the Hindu people. These free individuals who live their own life, no matter what domestic prejudices have to be snapped, are on the whole a refreshing sight to me, who can do nothing of the kind myself. And Miss Noble is a most deliberate and balanced person ¬no frothy enthusiast in point of character, though I believe her philosophy to be more or less false. Perhaps no more so than anyone else's!

When James's Gifford Lectures were about to be published as The Varieties of Religious Experience, he wrote from Edinburgh to Mrs. Bull in a letter dated June 5, 1902, "Will you kindly send me Vivekananda's address so that I may order a copy of my lectures sent to him. They will seem half hearted stuff, I know, to him. They've appointed a `safe' man, some DD, to be the next lecturer here. I think I wrote you that I nominated V[ivekananda] who is a man of genius, even though his Absolute be not the truth.

In The Varieties of Religious Experience (which could not have reached Swamiji in time for him to read it) James quoted at some length from Raja Yoga and also from two of Swamiji's lectures that Miss MacLeod had lent him-"Practical Vedanta, Part IV" and "The Real and the Apparent Man. Although these quotations were not given by way of either commending or criticizing Vedanta, but simply as illustrative of the monistic interpretation of religious experience, James made it clear enough in Varieties that he did not lean toward monism. In his Pragmatism, published in 1907, however, he took definite issue with Swamiji. Characteristically, he did not do so without paying tribute to him, writing of the Vedanta philosophy as "the paragon of all monistic systems" and of Swamiji as "the paragon of Vedantic missionaries. But the quotations he now gave from Swamiji's lectures ("God in Everything" and "The Atman") were chosen specifically to illustrate the extreme monistic view to whose "dogmatic rigoristic temper" he was taking objection. In this same work James conceded that monism as a belief had pragmatic value, imparting, as he said, "a perfect sumptuosity of security, and "in so far forth was true. But here James seems to have forgotten Swamiji altogether (and, for that matter, Swami Abhedananda and that "extraordinarily fine character and mind," Sister Nivedita). If monism was pragmatically true, he contended, it was true for the "tender-minded" only. Much as though he had never known "the paragon of Vedantic missionaries" or read his lectures, James wrote: "What do believers in the Absolute mean by saying that their belief affords them comfort? They mean that since, in the Absolute finite evil is `overruled' already . . . we have a right ever and anon to take a moral holiday, to let the world wag in its own way, feeling that its issues are in better hands than ours and are none of our business. And again, "The peace and rest, the security desiderated at such moments [when life breaks down] is security against the bewildering accidents of so much finite experience. Nirvana means safety from this everlasting round of adventure of which the world of sense consists. The hindoo and the buddhist, for this is essentially their attitude, are simply afraid, afraid of more experience, afraid of life.

This attack, betraying as it did an ignorance of India's culture and thought together with a boundless faith in the infinite perfectability of the finite, was typical of the times. Josiah Royce had resorted to somewhat the same argument against Hindoo philosophers. In an essay published in 1898 he wrote, "The Hindoo, as a philosopher, has always been a keen critic of human illusions, but since it chanced, by some accident of race-development, that the Hindoo, from an early period of his evolution, did not love life, Hindoo philosophy, extensive as are its literary monuments, is in its essential doctrine always very brief and unfruitful. Life For the Hindoo is an ill; one philosophizes to seek salvation. And salvation lies in some sort of absolute contemplative abstraction from life an abstraction which you can define in many ways; but the goal is always the same-a peace that passeth understanding, and that flees from facts to the Absolute beyond life's illusions.

Having dispensed with the majestic and thunderous philosophy of Advaita Vedanta as being a weakness of the Hindu psyche, William James and Josiah Royce continued, each in his own way, as popular spokesmen of their age.

According to a report appearing in the Brahmavadin, April 25, 1896, this engagement, together with other lectures and classes in Boston, were "arranged by one of his followers, a noble lady and an enthusiastic adherent of the Vedanta philosophy." The reference is, of course, to Mrs. Bull. Early in the year the arrangements had already been under way. "I have received your letter," the Swami had written to Mrs. Bull in the first part of January, "and also another from the Secretary of the Harvard Metaphysical Club." These letters no doubt requested him to speak at Harvard; for on January 15 we find a Mr, John P. Fox writing to Mrs. Bull: "I had a note from Vivekananda Monday [January 13], saying he expects to come to Boston in March or perhaps in February and will he only too glad to speak to the students. It will be not before the Harvard Religious Union, but the Graduate Philosophical Club — the most philosophical organization at Harvard — so that the audience will be the best the University can afford." The audience was, indeed, the best, intellectually speaking, that America could afford, for the Harvard Graduate Philosophical Club was then one of the foremost intellectual bodies in the world, numbering among its members such distinguished thinkers as George H. Palmer, William James, Josiah Royce, Hugo Munsterberg, and the then young George Santayana. The Swami had accepted the invitation, and on March 25 he spoke before the Club on "The Vedanta Philosophy". It was a trying experience for him to speak before this great critical gathering, but he was at his best, and his interpretation of his philosophy created an indelible impression on the minds of the professors and excited the most hearty commendation. Indeed, they offered him the chair of Eastern Philosophy in the University. But he could not accept this as he was a sannyasi.

True, it included logic and philosophical form, but in its essential nature it was religion, holding up realization and spiritual freedom as its aim. His Harvard experience was only one of many hundreds; wherever he went, whenever he taught, he was always confronted with a host of questions, and his answers, being always extempore, kept him constantly on the intellectual qui vive. Whatever the question asked, his answer invariably related it to his own actual realization. In all his teaching in America and, for that matter, in England, the Swami's main theme is found to be that of the Advaita Vedanta, the philosophy of Infinite Oneness. In the Advaita, he taught, there is no dependence, all manifoldness is lost, and all fear is blotted out, and only light shines forth-the Light of the self-manifesting Soul. Human personality is transfigured in the revelation of Pure Divinity.

Traveling straight from Detroit to Boston, a railway journey of some seven hundred and fifty miles, Swamiji and Mr. Goodwin arrived at their destination on the afternoon of March 18, 1896. The following evening, the third Thursday in the month, a rainy day with a temperature only a little above freezing, the Procopeia (Progress) Club held its monthly reception, at which Swamiji and his friends Mrs. Ole Bull, Miss Emma Thursby, and Mrs. Antoinette Sterling were among the honored guests.

Our next glimpse of the Swami reveals him in Boston, where he worked for nearly two weeks in the second half of March 1896.

DISTINGUISHED GUESTS AT THE PROCOPEIA_x000d_ _x000d_ Swami Vivekananda, Mrs. Ole Bull, Miss Emma Thursby, Emil Paur, Wulf Fries, Miss Harriet Shaw, John Orth and Mrs. Antoinette Sterling were the special guests of the Procopeia Club at its rooms on St. Botolph street, last evening. The reception committee included: Mrs. George Seabury, Mrs. Winifred Barber, Mrs. F. R. Fibbetts and Mrs. W. H. Stearns.

The Procopeia Club's monthly receptions "are always thoroughly informal and homelike, but very largely attended," the young Ralph Waldo Trine, a member (perhaps an officer) of the Club who was later to become a well-known writer on metaphysics, had written to Miss Thursby a month earlier, inviting her on behalf of the reception committee not only to attend the March gathering but to sing at it. This was, he explained, to be a "musicians' evening," at which each musician was to "contribute his or her little share in a selection or two." As an incentive, Mr. Trine informed Miss Thursby that the Club was "planning to have Swami Vivekananda as the class teacher . . . About that time. Ralph Waldo Trine, who had been at Greenacre in the summer of 1894 as special correspondent for the Boston Evening Transcript, well knew that Swamiji would draw not only Miss Thursby to the Procopeia Club but many another seeker of truth. He had sued for Swami well in advance.

Even that first evening the club rooms were no doubt crowded with people who had come to see the famous Hindu as well as to hear the music, all of which would have been excellent. As vocalists, Emma Thursby and Antoinette Sterling, both of whom were world famous, were unsurpassed, and none but a first-rate musician (such as Mrs. Bull) would, one trusts, have presumed to perform on the same program with either of them. But "of course," as the Boston Daily Globe of March 20 commented in an article describing this Procopeia Club reception, "the chief interest of the evening centered in the Swami Vivekananda, whose oriental countenance and dress of rich dark red made him a conspicuous figure." And of course Swamiji was one of the guests of honor, being scheduled as the club's "class teacher" for the remainder of the month. Although on the following day (March 20) Swamiji went to Medford, a small town just north of Boston, to fill a lecture engagement there,'* the Procopeia's musical reception marked the beginning of an eleven-day period in Boston and Cambridge that was to form a climactic finale to his five seasons of public lecturing in America.** _x000d_ _x000d_ * To date, no records have been found of Swamiji’s lecture in Medford, Massachusetts, on March 20, 1896. The Medford newspapers for that year are no longer on file in either Medford or Boston._x000d_ _x000d_ ** Accodrding to one way of reckoning, Swamiji’s five seasons of work in America were roughly as follows: (1) August through December, 1893; (2) January through August, 1894; (3) September through December, 1894; (4) January 28 through August 6, 1895; (5) Decmber 9, 1895, to April 13, 1896.

Boston was by no means an unfamiliar city to Swamiji. It was there in August of 1893 that he had delivered his first lecture in the West, a semipublic lecture before a faintly hostile Ramabai Circle. It was in Boston also that during this same early period he had been chased by a crowd of men and boys, enraged by the sight of an orange robe to the point of throwing stones. And it was in Boston, shortly after this incident that, at the advice of his friends, he had bought his first somber Western attire-a black Prince Albert frock coat. During his second visit to Boston in May of 1894 he had lectured there, and in September of the same year he had spent almost four weeks in the city, lecturing, as he wrote, "in several places," and subsequently had spent ten days or so as a guest of Mrs. Bull in nearby Cambridge. He was in Cambridge also in December of 1894, holding a series of classes at Mrs. Bull's during almost the whole of that month.3 Thus by 1896 Boston and Swamiji knew each other well, and as the Daily Globe commented in an article that will be reproduced in full later on, "society, fashionable, intellectual and faddist, went wild over him."

In the 1890s Boston was the hub not only of the universe but of those three categories of American society, not least of all the faddist. Despite, or perhaps because of, the city's deep¬-rooted, ironclad traditions, there proliferated dozens of un¬orthodox sects, as of which were known in Boston as fads and which ranged from straggly groups surrounding spiritualists and astrologers, who held séances or cast horoscopes in early decorated back parlors, to well-organized churches of New Thought persuasion. In an article describing these Bostonian heterodoxies, a correspondent from the Chicago Inter Ocean wrote in part:_x000d_ _x000d_ There is a region of Boston not unlike the Latin quarter of Paris, in that it is a region that is very much alive and that in it everything happens. In the best sense, it is semi¬Bohemian-an artistic Bohemia, with an even stronger element of the occult trend of thought and speculation. . , . No mere resume of these various activities can give any adequate idea of the force and variety they lend to life. There are the three prominent centers of the "spiritual temple"-the Theosophical Society, which has its rooms of Mount Veraon street, and the "First Church of Christ, Scientist;" of which Rev. Mary Baker Eddy is the idolized pastor. There are many and various teachers of "mental _x000d_ healing" of all shades of belief, no two of which coincide. There is the Procopeia, which stands for a great deal and is a most interesting center.

The Procopeia Club, which has left behind no records of its activities or statements of its purposes, does not appear to have represented any one particular belief but seems, rather, to have been a meeting place for Boston's upper-notch religious "faddists" of all varieties. The membership was no doubt com-posed in part of gentle and serious seekers of truth, such as Mrs. Ole Bull, in part of earnest religious teachers and healers, and in part of men and women in various states of high-minded confusion. Socially and economically it was not an exclusive club. It took as its motto: "To be spiritually minded is life and peace," and asked only that its members agree with this dictum and that they pay five dollars a year in dues (equivalent to at least fifty dollars today 1982). Yet knowing that Mrs. Bull was connected with the Club, one can be sure that it had its intellectual aspects as well as its noble ideals and that it was eminently respectable. (Although Sara Bull, having originally come from what Bostonians would have looked upon as backwoods, was not a Proper Bostonian and although, as it was whispered in Cambridge, she burned incense in her private heathen shrine and although her house turned its back upon Brattle Street in a most peculiar manner, she was by no means Bohemian, or even semi-Bohemian, in her outlook or manner.)

The Procopeia Club had its headquarters on St. Botolph Street in two adjoining houses that had been thrown into one, "the parlors on one side forming a pleasant lecture-room, seated with camp chairs, and those on the other side used as a reception-room and library." During the season extending from November to May, the doors were open every day for social meetings, and the monthly program consisted of a public lecture every Thursday evening (with the exception of the third Thursday in each month) and of two series of class talks intended for members only.

Swamiji evidently had a knowledge of the Procopeia Club prior to 1896 and was not altogether pleased with what he knew. Because of its more or less indiscriminate embrace of Boston's various metaphysical cults and ventures, he felt a reluctance to lecture under its auspices. On January 3, 1896, be had written to Mrs. Bull from New York, "I have had a letter from Mr. [Ralph Waldo] Trine asking me to have some classes at the Procopeia in February. I do not see my way to go to Boston in Feb. however I may like it. But even when a visit to Boston became possible, Swamiji did not see himself holding classes at the Procopeia. It was Mrs. Bull who would persuade him, not Mr. Trine. On February 6 he wrote to her, "I have not much faith in working such things as the Procopeia &c-because these mixed up conglomerations of all isms & ities mostly fads-disturb the steadiness of the mind and life becomes a mass of frivolities. . . . This does not mean I am not coming to Procopeia I will come but it will be only for your sake.

Swamiji spoke five times before the Procopeia Club. Four of these lectures had been intended (as in Detroit) to constitute a series of private class talks, while the fifth, to be delivered on Thursday evening, March 26, was to be open to the public. As it turned out, however, all five lectures were public. Although there had been no newspaper hullabaloo and only one inconspicuous announcement, word had spread through Boston that Swami Vivekananda was to speak. It had shortly become apparent that the Procopeia Club's parlor and its complement of camp chairs would be stormed. Any idea the members may have had of keeping Swamiji's classes to themselves was abandoned, and the arena of the Allen Gymnasium, a building situated directly across St. Botolph Street, was rented to ac¬commodate the expected crowd. Even this proved too small, and, as on almost all the occasions in 1896 when Swamiji had lectured publicly, scores of disappointed people were turned away. Thus all chance of intimacy was lost, but at the same time the Procopeia's aura of occultism that Swamiji disliked was dissipated in the crowd.

In Boston, the Swami was one of the distinguished guests of the Procopeia Club, a metaphysical society of high standing. He delivered five public lectures at this Club before large audiences, on the evenings of March 21, 23, 26, 27, and 28. His subjects were respectively: "The Science of Work", "Devotion", "The Ideal of a Universal Religion", "Realization or the Ultimate of Religion", and "The Upanishads". "The Ideal of a Universal Religion" was one of his most favourite subjects on which he spoke almost in every city and town he visited. It was a title that encompassed one of his basic teachings-the fundamental unity of all religions and the necessity for variety in religious expression and practice. He pointed out that if a universal religion could ever exist, it must be a religion of principles whose background should be Advaita and which should vary according to the individual temperaments of nations and personalities.

The commodious house on Brittle Street was even more full of people than usual. In addition to the relatives, friends, housekeepers, secretaries, and proteges, who in greater or lesser number seemed always to be a part of Mrs. Bull's household, there were Miss Thursby and Mrs. Sterling, Mr. and Mrs. Francis Leggett, and, later in the month, Miss Sarah Farmer. Miss Farmer, the gentle founder of the Greenacre Conferences, who dressed habitually in grey and wore a flowing headdress resembling that Of an Anglican deaconess, was a close friend of Mrs. Bull's and her guest for at least a part of Swamiji's Boston visit. Not being in the city to greet him when he arrived, she wrote to him from New York on stationery embossed with the Greenacre seal (a twig-bearing dove flying over the word PEACE) to express her regret. Her letter was dated March 20 and read:

My dear Brother¬_x000d_ It seems a strange providence that I should be here in New York and not in Boston to welcome you and do something to help make pleasant your stay, but I trust I may be able to return before you leave & that I may have the privilege of seeing you for a short time at least before you return._x000d_ I have thought of you a great many times and have given thanks to God for making you a blessing to so many souls. There were many inquiries about you at Greenacre last year and many wishes expressed that you might be there, but I think all your friends rejoiced that you had the privilege of carrying your message to England, but we hoped that this summer Greenacre might claim you. Is it not so to be? The report comes to me that you are to go abroad again this summer, is it true? God bless you wherever you may go and strengthen you for your work!_x000d_ If you are not too busy while you are in Boston, will you kindly note down for me the particulars of the Parliament of Religion held in your country so many hundreds of years ago, telling me who originated it and what was the end sought. Please send it to 26 Holyoke St. that I may find it on my return_x000d_ With every good wish for you, I remain_x000d_ Your sister, in the work

(Miss Farmer's reference to the Parliament of Religion held in India was no doubt to the conclave Akbar the Great convened at his Ibadat-khana, or House of Worship, in the latter half of the sixteenth century. This parliament, attended by Hindu philosophers, Jaina teachers, Parsi priests, and Christian missionaries-the learned imams of Islam had previously had their say-had been referred to by Swamiji as "only a parlour meeting" compared to the great Parliament of Religions held in Chicago, but it was a parlor meeting of which he was justly proud.)

On March 21 the Evening Transcript introduced Swamiji's current work in Boston with an excellent article, such as one would not find in cities further west, or, for that matter, further south. The Boston Evening Transcript was no ordinary newspaper. Founded in the 1830s it was the journal of First-Family Bostonians, ceremoniously delivered every day at teatime to their doorsteps and religiously read. It reflected their likes and dislikes, their approvals and .disapprovals, and also guided their intellectual and political thought. "In the wind of its editorial opinion [its readers] swayed, said T. S. Eliot, `like a field of ripe corn.' "' It was a bible of sorts and also what would today be called a status symbol. It was, as Lucius Beebe put it, "a qualitative hallmark as clearcut in its implications as a coat of armor or membership in the Somerset Club [one of Boston's sacrosanct clubs]."8 Even the employees of the Transcript, from copy boys to editors, were as dignified, as sedate, and often as well entrenched socially as were its readers. Nor was the esteem felt for the Transcript confined to Boston; the paper was known nationally as the best of thoughtful and sober journals, and it was also acclaimed abroad. When the Transcript devoted a long article to Swamiji in its stately pages, it was doing more than giving the news; it was announcing that the "Athens of America" had welcomed him without reservation. Even Emer¬son had not been accorded this honor. "Original thinkers," the Transcript had sternly written in connection with the latter, "are not always practical men, and they are sometimes led into insupportable theories.

In explanation of the term Sannyasin, the Swami in the course of one of his lectures in Boston said:_x000d_ When a man has fulfilled the duties and obligations of that stage of life in which he is born, and his aspirations lead him to seek a spiritual life and to abandon altogether the worldly pursuits of possession, fame, or power, when, by the growth of insight into the nature of the world, he sees its impermanence, its strife, its misery, and the paltry nature of its prizes, and turns away from all these--then he seeks the True, the Eternal Love, the Refuge. He makes complete renunciation (Sannyasa) of all worldly position, property, and name, and wanders forth into the world to live a life of self-sacrifice and to persistently seek spiritual knowledge, striving to excel in love and compassion and to acquire lasting insight. Gaining these pearls of wisdom by years of meditation, discipline, and inquiry, he in his turn becomes a teacher and hands on to disciples, lay or professed, who may seek them from him, all that he can of wisdom and beneficence._x000d_ A Sannyasin cannot belong to any religion, for his is a life of independent thought, which draws from all religions; his is a life of realisation, not merely of theory or belief, much less of dogma.

PHILOSOPHY OF FREEDOM_x000d_ _________x000d_ _x000d_ Swami Vivekananda Compares Teachings_x000d_ of Hindu Wisdom, and Western Religions. ._x000d_ _x000d_ The Swami Vivekananda, who will be remembered as the Hindu delegate to the World's Parliament of Religions, is in the city as the March class lecturer at the Procopeia, 45 St. Botolph street. The Swami has been doing some most valuable and successful work in systematic class lecturing in New York, with constantly increasing audi¬ences, during the past two winters, and comes to Boston at a most opportune time._x000d_ The Swami gives the following description of his work. In explanation of the term sannyasin, he said, When a man has fulfilled the duties and obligations of that stage of life in which he is born, and his aspirations lead him to seek a spiritual life, and to abandon altogether the worldly pursuits of possession, fame, or power; when, by the growth of insight into the nature of the world, he sees its impermanence, its strife, its misery, and the paltry nature of its prizes, and turns away from all these, then he seeks the true, the eternal love, the refuge. He makes complete renunciation. (sannyasin) of all worldly position, property and name, and wanders forth into the world to live a life of self sacrifice, and to persistently seek spiritual knowl¬edge, striving to excel in love and compassion, and to acquire lasting insight; gaining these pearls of wisdom by years of meditation, discipline and inquiry. He in his turn, becomes a teacher, and hands on to disciples, lay or professed, who may seek them from him, all that he can of wisdom and beneficence._x000d_ A sannyasin cannot belong to any religion, for his is a life of independent thought, which draws from all religions; his is a life of realization, not merely of theory or belief, much less of dogma.10_x000d_ In giving some idea of his work and its methods the Swami says he left the world because he had a deep . interest in religion and philosophy from his childhood, and Indian books teach renunciation as the highest ideal to which a man can aspire._x000d_ The Swami['s] teaching, as he expresses it, "is my own : interpretation of our ancient books in the light which my master (a celebrated Hindu sage) shed upon them. I claim no supernatural authority. Whatever in my teach¬ings may appeal to the highest intelligence and be accepted by thinking men, the adoption of that will be my reward. All religions have for their object the teaching of devotion, or knowledge, or activity, in a concrete form: Now, the philosophy of Vedanta is the abstract science . which embraces all these methods, and this is what I teach, leaving each one to apply it to his own concrete form. I refer each individual to his own experience, and where reference is made to books, the latter are procurable, and may be studied for each one by himself'." The Swami teaches no authority from hidden beings, through visible objects, any more than he claims learning from hidden books or MSS. He believes no good can come from secret societies. "Truth stands on its own authority, and truth can bear the light of day." He teaches only the Self, hidden in the heart of every individual, and common to all. A handful of strong men, knowing that Self, and living in its light, would revolutionize the world, even today, as has been the case of single strong men before, each in his day._x000d_ His attitude towards Western religions is briefly this. He propounds a philosophy which can serve as a basis to every possible religious system in the world, ' and his attitude towards all of them is one of extreme sympathy. His teaching is antagonistic to none. He directs his attention to the individual, to make him strong, to teach him that he himself is divine, and he calls upon men to make themselves conscious of divinity within. His hope is to imbue individuals with the teachings to which he has referred, and to encourage them to express these to others in their own way; let them modify them as they will; he does not teach them as dogmas; truth, at length, must inevitably prevail._x000d_ The Swami will give a series of four class-lectures on the Vedanta philosophy at the Procopeia on the evenings of Saturday, March 21, Monday, the 23rd, Friday, the 27th, Saturday, the 28th. He will also give the Thursday evening public lecture on the 26th, on "The Ideal of a Universal Religion." No charge will be made for the class-lectures to those who are not members of the club and who wish to attend them. He will also give two afternoon lectures at the home of Mrs. Ole Bull in Cambridge, and will lecture to the graduate students in the department of philosophy at Harvard University.

Swamiji's first three class-lectures were entitled "The Science of Work," "Devotion," and "Realization, or the Ultimate of Religion." As is apparent not only from their titles but from newspaper reports as well, these lectures were expositions of, respectively, karma yoga, bhakti yoga, and raja yoga. During his fourth "class" he read from the Upanishads, giving his commentary, which no doubt constituted a discourse on jnana yoga. In this series one finds, then, a sort of summing up of his winter's class work in New York, during the course of which, as we have seen in the previous volume, he had given talk after talk on these four yogas and had prepared for publication a book on each. (Jnana Yoga as we know it today differs from the book that was contemplated in 1896.)11 The subject of Swamiji's Officially public lecture at the Procopeia Club (March 26) was "The Ideal of a Universal Religion"-a subject on which he had lectured publicly in almost every town he had visited during this 1896 season and which, as said often before, con-stituted an intrinsic and vital part of his message to the West. Of equal importance would. be the subjects of his lectures at Harvard and the Twentieth Century Club, entitled respectively "Vedanta Philosophy" and "The Vedanta: Its Practical Bearings." Thus in the lectures that Swamiji would give in or near. Boston during these last days of March, 1896, one finds a resume of the most essential aspects of his Western message-a message that he had by now completely and concisely formulated and fully given.

As far as is known today, Mr. Goodwin did not take down or transcribe the Procopeia Club lectures; it is from the news papers alone that we learn a little about them.

In the matter of the projection of Akasha and Prana into manifested form and the return to fine state, there is a good deal of similarity between Indian thought and modern science. The moderns have their evolution, and so have the Yogis. But I think that the Yogis' explanation of evolution is the better one. "The change of one species into another is attained by the infilling of nature." The basic idea is that we are changing from one species to another, and that man is the highest species. Patanjali explains this "infilling of nature" by the simile of peasants irrigating fields. Our education and progression simply mean taking away the obstacles, and by its own nature the divinity will manifest itself. This does away with all the struggle for existence. The miserable experiences of life are simply in the way, and can be eliminated entirely. They are not necessary for evolution. Even if they did not exist, we should progress. It is in the very nature of things to manifest themselves. The momentum is not from outside, but comes from inside. Each soul is the sum total of the universal experiences already coiled up there; and of all these experiences, only those will come out which find suitable circumstances._x000d_ So the external things can only give us the environments. These competitions and struggles and evils that we see are not the effect of the involution or the cause, but they are in the way. If they did not exist, still man would go on and evolve as God, because it is the very nature of that God to come out and manifest Himself. To my mind this seems very hopeful, instead of that horrible idea of competition. The more I study history, the more I find that idea to be wrong. Some say that if man did not fight with man, he would not progress. I also used to think so; but I find now that every war has thrown back human progress by fifty years instead of hurrying it forwards. The day will come when men will study history from a different light and find that competition is neither the cause nor the effect, simply a thing on the way, not necessary to evolution at all._x000d_ The theory of Patanjali is the only theory I think a rational man can accept. How much evil the modern system causes! Every wicked man has a license to be wicked under it. I have seen in this country (America) physicists who say that all criminals ought to be exterminated and that that is the only way in which criminality can be eliminated from society. These environments can hinder, but they are not necessary to progress. The most horrible thing about competition is that one may conquer the environments, but that where one may conquer, thousands are crowded out. So it is evil at best. That cannot be good which helps only one and hinders the majority. Patanjali says that these struggles remain only through our ignorance, and are not necessary, and are not part of the evolution of man. It is just our impatience which creates them. We have not the patience to go and work our way out. For instance, there is a fire in a theatre, and only a few escape. The rest in trying to rush out crush one another down. That crush was not necessary for the salvation of the building nor of the two or three who escaped. If all had gone out slowly, not one would have been hurt. That is the case in life. The doors are open for us, and we can all get out without the competition and struggle; and yet we struggle. The struggle we create through our own ignorance, through impatience; we are in too great a hurry. The highest manifestation of strength is to keep ourselves calm and on our own feet.

To Mrs. Charles (Mary) Funke_x000d_ C/o the Procopeia_x000d_ 45 St., Botolph Street_x000d_ Boston, Mass._x000d_ 22nd March '96._x000d_ Dear Mrs. Funkey [Funke]___x000d_ I had no time to write a line even, I was so busy. I am enjoying Boston immensely, only hard work. The meeting with old friends is very pleasing, no doubt. The so called class swelled up to 500 people last night and, am afraid, will go on increasing. Everything going on splendidly. Mr. Goodwin as nice as ever. We are all friends here. I go next week to Chicago._x000d_ Hope everything is going on well with you there. Kindly give my love to Mrs. Phelps, Mr. Phelps and all the rest of my friends._x000d_ With all love and blessings,_x000d_ Yours,_x000d_ Vivekananda

To Sister Christine_x000d_ C/o the Procopeia_x000d_ 45 St., Botolph Street_x000d_ Boston, Mass._x000d_ 22nd March '96_x000d_ Dear Christina,_x000d_ Herewith [words excised] to countersign it and put it [words excised]. I am afraid I have made a mistake in writing Miss to your name. In that case you will have to sign also as Miss etc._x000d_ I am enjoying Boston very much, especially the old friends here._x000d_ They are all kind. Reply promptly. Write fully later on._x000d_ With everlasting love and blessings,_x000d_ Yours etc.,_x000d_ Vivekananda

The question--what is the cause of Maya (illusion)?--has been asked for the last three thousand years; and the only answer is: when the world is able to formulate a logical question, we shall answer it. The question is contradictory. Our position is that the Absolute has become this relative only apparently, that the Unconditioned has become the conditioned only in Maya. By the very admission of the Unconditioned, we admit that the Absolute cannot be acted upon by anything else. It is uncaused, which means that nothing outside Itself can act upon It. First of all, if It is unconditioned, It cannot have been acted upon by anything else. In the Unconditioned there cannot be time, space, or causation. That granted your question will be: "What caused that which cannot be caused by anything to be changed into this?" Your question is only possible in the conditioned. But you take it out of the conditioned, and want to ask it in the Unconditioned. Only when the Unconditioned becomes conditioned, and space, time, and causation come in, can the question be asked. We can only say ignorance makes the illusion. The question is impossible. Nothing can have worked on the Absolute. There was no cause. Not that we do not know, or that we are ignorant; but It is above knowledge, and cannot be brought down to the plane of knowledge. We can use the words, "I do not know" in two senses. In one way, they mean that we are lower than knowledge, and in the other way, that the thing is above knowledge. The X-rays have become known now. The very causes of these are disputed, but we are sure that we shall know them. Here we can say we do not know about the X-rays. But about the Absolute we cannot know. In the case of the X-rays we do not know, although they are within the range of knowledge; only we do not know them yet. But, in the other case, It is so much beyond knowledge that It ceases to be a matter of knowing. "By what means can the Knower be known?" You are always yourself and cannot objectify yourself. This was one of the arguments used by our philosophers to prove immortality. If I try to think I am lying dead, what have I to imagine? That I am standing and looking down at myself, at some dead body. So that I cannot objectify myself.

The struggle never had meaning for the man who is free. But for us it has a meaning, because it is name-and-form that creates the world._x000d_ We have a place for struggle in the Vedanta, but not for fear. All fears will vanish when you begin to assert your own nature. If you think that you are bound, bound you will remain. If you think you are free, free you will be._x000d_ That sort of freedom which we can feel when we are yet in the phenomenal is a glimpse of the real but not yet the real._x000d_ I disagree with the idea that freedom is obedience to the laws of nature. I do not understand what it means. According to the history of human progress, it is disobedience to nature that has constituted that progress. It may be said that the conquest of lower laws was through the higher. But even there, the conquering mind was only trying to be free; and as soon as it found that the struggle was also through law, it wanted to conquer that also. So the ideal was freedom in every case. The trees never disobey law. I never saw a cow steal. An oyster never told a lie. Yet they are not greater than man. This life is a tremendous assertion of freedom; and this obedience to law, carried far enough, would make us simply matter--either in society, or in politics, or in religion. Too many laws are a sure sign of death. Wherever in any society there are too many laws, it is a sure sign that that society will soon die. If you study the characteristics of India, you will find that no nation possesses so many laws as the Hindus, and national death is the result. But the Hindus had one peculiar idea--they never made any doctrines or dogmas in religion; and the latter has had the greatest growth. Eternal law cannot be freedom, because to say that the eternal is inside law is to limit it._x000d_ There is no purpose in view with God, because if there were some purpose, He would be nothing better than a man. Why should He need any purpose? If He had any, He would be bound by it. There would be something besides Him which was greater. For instance, the carpet-weaver makes a piece of carpet. The idea was outside of him, something greater. Now where is the idea to which God would adjust Himself? Just as the greatest emperors sometimes play with dolls, so He is playing with this nature; and what we call law is this. We call it law, because we can see only little bits which run smoothly. All our ideas of law are within the little bit. It is nonsense to say that law is infinite, that throughout all time stones will fall. If all reason be based upon experience, who was there to see if stones fell five millions of years ago? So law is not constitutional in man. It is a scientific assertion as to man that where we begin, there we end. As a matter of fact, we get gradually outside of law, until we get out altogether, but with the added experience of a whole life. In God and freedom we began, and freedom and God will be the end. These laws are in the middle state through which we have to pass. Our Vedanta is the assertion of freedom always. The very idea of law will frighten the Vedantist; and eternal law is a very dreadful thing for him, because there would be no escape. If there is to be an eternal law binding him all the time, where is the difference between him and a blade of grass? We do not believe in that abstract idea of law._x000d_ We say that it is freedom that we are to seek, and that that freedom is God. It is the same happiness as in everything else; but when man seeks it in something which is finite, he gets only a spark of it. The thief when he steals gets the same happiness as the man who finds it in God; but the thief gets only a little spark with a mass of misery. The real happiness is God. Love is God, freedom is God; and everything that is bondage is not God._x000d_ Man has freedom already, but he will have to discover it. He has it, but every moment forgets it. That discovering, consciously or unconsciously, is the whole life of every one. But the difference between the sage and the ignorant man is that one does it consciously and the other unconsciously. Every one is struggling for freedom--from the atom to the star. The ignorant man is satisfied if he can get freedom within a certain limit--if he can get rid of the bondage of hunger or of being thirsty. But that sage feels that there is a stronger bondage which has to be thrown off. He would not consider the freedom of the Red Indian as freedom at all._x000d_ According to our philosophers, freedom is the goal. Knowledge cannot be the goal, because knowledge is a compound. It is a compound of power and freedom, and it is freedom alone that is desirable. That is what men struggle after. Simply the possession of power would not be knowledge. For instance, a scientist can send an electric shock to a distance of some miles; but nature can send it to an unlimited distance. Why do we not build statues to nature then? It is not law that we want but ability to break law. We want to be outlaws. If you are bound by laws, you will be a lump of clay. Whether you are beyond law or not is not the question; but the thought that we are beyond law--upon that is based the whole history of humanity. For instance, a man lives in a forest, and never has had any education or knowledge. He sees a stone falling down--a natural phenomenon happening--and he thinks it is freedom. He thinks it has a soul, and the central idea in that is freedom. But as soon as he knows that it must fall, he calls it nature--dead, mechanical action. I may or may not go into the street. In that is my glory as a man. If I am sure that I must go there, I give myself up and become a machine. Nature with its infinite power is only a machine; freedom alone constitutes sentient life._x000d_ The Vedanta says that the idea of the man in the forest is the right one; his glimpse is right, but the explanation is wrong. He holds to this nature as freedom and not as governed by law. Only after all this human experience we will come back to think the same, but in a more philosophical sense. For instance, I want to go out into the street. I get the impulse of my will, and then I stop; and in the time that intervenes between the will and going into the street, I am working uniformly. Uniformity of action is what we call law. This uniformity of my actions, I find, is broken into very short periods, and so I do not call my actions under law. I work through freedom. I walk for five minutes; but before those five minutes of walking, which are uniform, there was the action of the will, which gave the impulse to walk. Therefore man says he is free, because all his actions can be cut up into small periods; and although there is sameness in the small periods, beyond the period there is not the same sameness. In this perception of non-uniformity is the idea of freedom. In nature we see only very large periods of uniformity; but the beginning and end must be free impulses. The impulse of freedom was given just at the beginning, and that has rolled on; but this, compared with our periods, is much longer. We find by analysis on philosophic grounds that we are not free. But there will remain this factor, this consciousness that I am free. What we have to explain is, how that comes. We will find that we have these two impulses in us. Our reason tells us that all our actions are caused, and at the same time, with every impulse we are asserting our freedom. The solution of the Vedanta is that there is freedom inside--that the soul is really free--but that that soul's actions are percolating through body and mind, which are not free._x000d_ As soon as we react, we become slaves. A man blames me, and I immediately react in the form of anger. A little vibration which he created made me a slave. So we have to demonstrate our freedom. They alone are the sages who see in the highest, most learned man, or the lowest animal, or the worst and most wicked of mankind, neither a man nor a sage nor an animal, but the same God in all of them. Even in this life they have conquered relativity, and have taken a firm stand upon this equality. God is pure, the same to all. Therefore such a sage would be a living God. This is the goal towards which we are going; and every form of worship, every action of mankind, is a method of attaining to it. The man who wants money is striving for freedom--to get rid of the bondage of poverty. Every action of man is worship, because the idea is to attain to freedom, and all action, directly or indirectly, tends to that. Only, those actions that deter are to be avoided. The whole universe is worshipping, consciously or unconsciously; only it does not know that even while it is cursing, it is in another form worshipping the same God it is cursing, because those who are cursing are also struggling for freedom. They never think that in reacting from a thing they are making themselves slaves to it. It is hard to kick against the pricks._x000d_ If we could get rid of the belief in our limitations, it would be possible for us to do everything just now. It is only a question of time. If that is so, add power, and so diminish time. Remember the case of the professor who learnt the secret of the development of marble and who made marble in twelve years, while it took nature centuries.

Boston_x000d_ 23rd March, 1896_x000d_ Dear Alasinga,_x000d_ . . . One of my new Sannyasins is indeed a woman. . . . The others are men. I am going to make some more in England and take them over to India with me. These "white" faces will have more influence in India than the Hindus; moreover, they are vigorous, the Hindus are dead. The only hope of India is from the masses. The upper classes are physically and morally dead. . . ._x000d_ My success is due to my popular style--the greatness of a teacher consists in the simplicity of his language._x000d_ . . . I am going to England next month. I am afraid I have worked too much; my nerves are almost shattered by this long-continued work. I don't want you to sympathise, but only I write this so that you may not expect much from me now. Work on, the best way you can. I have very little hope of being able to do great things now. I am glad, however, that a good deal of literature has been created by taking down stenographic notes of my lectures. Four books are ready. . . . Well, I am satisfied that I have tried my best to do good, and shall have a clear conscience when I retire from work and sit down in a cave._x000d_ With love and blessings to all,_x000d_ Vivekananda

OUT OF THE EAST._x000d_ _________x000d_ _x000d_ Message Brought by the Swami Vivekananda_x000d_ -in His Country the Gods Are_x000d_ "Bright Ones" That Help.'_x000d_ _x000d_ The Swami Vivekananda is enjoying as great a degree of popularity on his present visit to Boston as he did when society, fashionable, intellectual and faddist, went wild over him on his former visit._x000d_ This monk has come from the mountains of India, where he wandered in solitude, occupied with spiritual meditations. He comes weighted with the maxims and principles of an ancient religion. He comes to tell the people of this western continent, struggling with scores of varying creeds, the simple, unified thought of the Hindu teachings. He is not here to proselyte or to found a new religion, but simply to make men conscious of the divinity within them._x000d_ The Swami has talked not only before intellectual audiences and in fashionable drawing rooms, but he has sought out and made friends with the workingmen with whom he is able to get on so well, because he believes that all great truths are expressed in simple forms.

But Swami Vivekananda says that this is an exaggerated and distorted presentation of a criticism which he made upon all American women, that they were too superficial and too prone to follow the sensational and to change from one thing to another. This he says his observation has forced upon him. The American women are intellectual, but they are not steady, serious and sincere.

The first of the Swami's lectures was delivered before an audience of 400 people in the Allen gymnasium, Saturday evening on "The Science of Work," and the second one of the course on "Devotion" was given in the same place, the hall being filled and a number turned away unable to gain admittance.

The lecture was exceedingly interesting and the speaker's manner was very magnetic. In his country, said the Swami, the gods were the "bright ones" who gave help to men and received help from them. The gods are Only human beings who are somewhat elevated after death, but God, the highest, is never prayed to or asked for help. He is given only love and worship without anything being asked in return. There are two phases of this God, the one, the abstract God behind the substance of the universe, and the other the personal God who is seen through human intellect and given attributes by it.

The love which is given to God never takes, but always gives, and it does not depend on anything. The worshiper does not pray for health, money or any other thing, but is content with the lot apportioned to him.

People who ask about religion from mere motives of curiosity become faddists, they are always looking for something new and their brains degenerate until they become old rags. It is a religious dissipation with them.

It is not the place that makes heaven or hell, but the mind. Love knows no fear, there can be no love where it is. In love of any sort external objects are only suggested by something within-it is one's own ideal projected, and God is the highest ideal that can be conceived of.

Hatred of the world does not drive good men from it, but the world slips away from the great and saintly. The world, the family and social life, are all training grounds, that is all.

When one realizes that God, is love, it does not matter what his other attributes are, that is the only essential. The more a man throws himself away, the more God comes in, hence self abnegation, which is the secret of all religion and morality.

Too many people bring down their ideals. They want a comfortable religion, but there is none such. It is all self surrender and upward striving.

The above article contains a paragraph that requires a digression, for Swamiji's statement that American women were too superficial was pounced upon by his enemies and worried out of all recognizable shape. It would be somehow attributed to his India lectures of the following year, then thrown back, much altered, to America, where it would be fielded by the old adversaries. According to the original New York .. Interview (from an unidentified newspaper), Swamiji's words (most of which he may well have said) were, to be sure, scolding and admonitory.l2 But, as is well known, his regard for the women of America was always wholehearted. "I am really struck with wonder to see the women here," he had written in 1894."How gracious the Divine Mother is on them! Most wonderful women, these!"13 And as he said more than once, he looked to the American women for the salvation of the country.14 He scolded men and women alike only to make sure that women's potential greatness would be realized. "When I look about me and see what you call gallantry," he was quoted as having said in the New York interview, "my soul is filled with disgust. Not until you learn to ignore the question of sex and to meet on a ground of common humanity will your women really develop. Until then they are playthings, nothing more. . . . We should not think that we are men and women, but only that we are human beings, born to cherish and to help one another.

I_x000d_ A DISCUSSION _x000d_ _x000d_ Q.--I should like to know something about the present activity of philosophic thought in India. To what extent are these questions discussed?_x000d_ A.--As I have said, the majority of the Indian people are practically dualists, and the minority are monists. The main subject of discussion is Maya and Jiva. When I came to this country, I found that the labourers were informed of the present condition of politics; but when I asked them, "What is religion, and what are the doctrines of this and that particular sect?" they said, "We do not know; we go to church." In India if I go to a peasant and ask him, "Who governs you?" he says, "I do not know; I pay my taxes." But if I ask him what is his religion, he says, "I am a dualist", and is ready to give you the details about Maya and Jiva. He cannot read or write, but he has learned all this from the monks and is very fond of discussing it. After the day's work, the peasants sit under a tree and discuss these questions._x000d_ Q.--What does orthodoxy mean with the Hindus?_x000d_ A.--In modern times it simply means obeying certain caste laws as to eating, drinking, and marriage. After that the Hindu can believe in any system he likes. There was never an organised church in India; so there was never a body of men to formulate doctrines of orthodoxy. In a general way, we say that those who believe in the Vedas are orthodox; but in reality we find that many of the dualistic sects believe more in the Puranas than in the Vedas alone._x000d_ Q.--What influence had your Hindu philosophy on the Stoic philosophy of the Greeks?_x000d_ A.--It is very probable that it had some influence on it through the Alexandrians. There is some suspicion of Pythagoras' being influenced by the Sankhya thought. Anyway, we think the Sankhya philosophy is the first attempt to harmonise the philosophy of the Vedas through reason. We find Kapila mentioned even in the Vedas: "{Sanskrit}--He who (supports through knowledge) the first-born sage Kapila."_x000d_ Q.--What is the antagonism of this thought with Western science?_x000d_ A.--No antagonism at all. We are in harmony with it. Our theory of evolution and of Akasha and Prana is exactly what your modern philosophies have. Your belief in evolution is among our Yogis and in the Sankhya philosophy. For instance, Patanjali speaks of one species being changed into another by the infilling of nature--"{Sanskrit}"; only he differs from you in the explanation. His explanation of this evolution is spiritual. He says that just as when a farmer wants to water his field from the canals that pass near, he has only to lift up his gate--"{Sanskrit}"--so each man is the Infinite already, only these bars and bolts and different circumstances shut him in; but as soon as they are removed, he rushes out and expresses himself. In the animal, the man was held in abeyance; but as soon as good circumstances came, he was manifested as man. And again, as soon as fitting circumstances came, the God in man manifested itself. So we have very little to quarrel with in the new theories. For instance, the theory of the Sankhya as to perception is very little different from modern physiology._x000d_ Q.--But your method is different?_x000d_ A.--Yes. We claim that concentrating the powers of the mind is the only way to knowledge. In external science, concentration of mind is--putting it on something external; and in internal science, it is--drawing towards one's Self. We call this concentration of mind Yoga._x000d_ Q.--In the state of concentration does the truth of these principles become evident?_x000d_ A.--The Yogis claim a good deal. They claim that by concentration of the mind every truth in the universe becomes evident to the mind, both external and internal truth._x000d_ Q.--What does the Advaitist think of cosmology?_x000d_ A.--The Advaitist would say that all this cosmology and everything else are only in Maya, in the phenomenal world. In truth they do not exist. But as long as we are bound, we have to see these visions. Within these visions things come in a certain regular order. Beyond them there is no law and order, but freedom._x000d_ Q.--Is the Advaita antagonistic to dualism?_x000d_ A.--The Upanishads not being in a systematised form, it was easy for philosophers to take up texts when they liked to form a system. The Upanishads had always to be taken, else there would be no basis. Yet we find all the different schools of thought in the Upanishads. Our solution is that the Advaita is not antagonistic to the Dvaita (dualism). We say the latter is only one of three steps. Religion always takes three steps. The first is dualism. Then man gets to a higher state, partial non-dualism. And at last he finds he is one with the universe. Therefore the three do not contradict but fulfil._x000d_ Q.--Why does Maya or ignorance exist?_x000d_ A.--"Why" cannot be asked beyond the limit of causation. It can only be asked within Maya. We say we will answer the question when it is logically formulated. Before that we have no right to answer. _x000d_ Q.--Does the Personal God belong to Maya?_x000d_ A.--Yes; but the Personal God is the same Absolute seen through Maya. That Absolute under the control of nature is what is called the human soul; and that which is controlling nature is Ishvara, or the Personal God. If a man starts from here to see the sun, he will see at first a little sun; but as he proceeds he will see it bigger and bigger, until he reaches the real one. At each stage of his progress he was seeing apparently a different sun; yet we are sure it was the same sun he was seeing. So all these things are but visions of the Absolute, and as such they are true. Not one is a false vision, but we can only say they were lower stages._x000d_ Q.--What is the special process by which one will come to know the Absolute?_x000d_ A.--We say there are two processes. One is the positive, and the other, the negative. The positive is that through which the whole universe is going--that of love. If this circle of love is increased indefinitely, we reach the one universal love. The other is the "Neti", "Neti"--"not this", "not this"--stopping every wave in the mind which tries to draw it out; and at last the mind dies, as it were, and the Real discloses Itself. We call that Samadhi, or superconsciousness._x000d_ Q.--That would be, then, merging the subject in the object!_x000d_ A.--Merging the object in the subject, not merging the subject in the object. Really this world dies, and I remain. I am the only one that remains._x000d_ Q.--Some of our philosophers in Germany have thought that the whole doctrine of Bhakti (Love for the Divine) in India was very likely the result of occidental influence._x000d_ A.--I do not take any stock in that--the assumption was ephemeral. The Bhakti of India is not like the Western Bhakti. The central idea of ours is that there is no thought of fear. It is always, love God. There is no worship through fear, but always through love, from beginning to end. In the second place, the assumption is quite unnecessary. Bhakti is spoken of in the oldest of the Upanishads, which is much older than the Christian Bible. The germs of Bhakti are even in the Samhita (the Vedic hymns). The word Bhakti is not a Western word. It was suggested by the word Shraddha._x000d_ Q.--What is the Indian idea of the Christian faith?_x000d_ A.--That is very good. The Vedanta will take in every one. We have a peculiar idea in India. Suppose I had a child. I should not teach him any religion; I should teach him breathings--the practice of concentrating the mind, and just one line of prayer--not prayer in your sense, but simply something like this, "I meditate on Him who is the Creator of this universe: may He enlighten my mind!" That way he would be educated, and then go about hearing different philosophers and teachers. He would select one who, he thought, would suit him best; and this man would become his Guru or teacher, and he would become a Shishya or disciple. He would say to that man, "This form of philosophy which you preach is the best; so teach me." Our fundamental idea is that your doctrine cannot be mine, or mine yours. Each one must have his own way. My daughter may have one method, and my son another, and I again another. So each one has an Ishta or chosen way, and we keep it to ourselves. It is between me and my teacher, because we do not want to create a fight. It will not help any one to tell it to others, because each one will have to find his own way. So only general philosophy and general methods can be taught universally. For instance, giving a ludicrous example, it may help me to stand on one leg. It would be ludicrous to you if I said every one must do that, but it may suit me. It is quite possible for me to be a dualist and for my wife to be a monist, and so on. One of my sons may worship Christ or Buddha or Mohammed, so long as he obeys the caste laws. That is his own Ishta._x000d_ Q.--Do all Hindus believe in caste?_x000d_ A.--They are forced to. They may not believe, but they have to obey._x000d_ Q.--Are these exercises in breathing and concentration universally practised?_x000d_ A.--Yes; only some practise only a little, just to satisfy the requirements of their religion. The temples in India are not like the churches here. They may all vanish tomorrow, and will not be missed. A temple is built by a man who wants to go to heaven, or to get a son, or something of that sort. So he builds a large temple and employs a few priests to hold services there. I need not go there at all, because all my worship is in the home. In every house is a special room set apart, which is called the chapel. The first duty of the child, after his initiation, is to take a bath, and then to worship; and his worship consists of this breathing and meditating and repeating of a certain name. And another thing is to hold the body straight. We believe that the mind has every power over the body to keep it healthy. After one has done this, then another comes and takes his seat, and each one does it in silence. Sometimes there are three or four in the same room, but each one may have a different method. This worship is repeated at least twice a day._x000d_ Q.--This state of oneness that you speak of, is it an ideal or something actually attained?_x000d_ A.--We say it is within actuality; we say we realise that state. If it were only in talk, it would be nothing. The Vedas teach three things: this Self is first to be heard, then to be reasoned, and then to be meditated upon. When a man first hears it, he must reason on it, so that he does not believe it ignorantly, but knowingly; and after reasoning what it is, he must meditate upon it, and then realise it. And that is religion. Belief is no part of religion. We say religion is a superconscious state._x000d_ Q.--If you ever reach that state of superconsciousness, can you ever tell about it?_x000d_ A.--No; but we know it by its fruits. An idiot, when he goes to sleep, comes out of sleep an idiot or even worse. But another man goes into the state of meditation, and when he comes out he is a philosopher, a sage, a great man. That shows the difference between these two states._x000d_ Q.--I should like to ask, in continuation of Professor __'s question, whether you know of any people who have made any study of the principles of self-hypnotism, which they undoubtedly practised to a great extent in ancient India, and what has been recently stated and practised in that thing. Of course you do not have it so much in modern India._x000d_ A.--What you call hypnotism in the West is only a part of the real thing. The Hindus call it self-hypnotisation. They say you are hypnotised already, and that you should get out of it and de-hypnotise yourself. "There the sun cannot illume, nor the moon, nor the stars; the flash of lightning cannot illume that; what to speak of this mortal fire! That shining, everything else shines" (Katha Upanishad, II.ii.15). That is not hypnotisation, but de-hypnotisation. We say that every other religion that preaches these things as real is practising a form of hypnotism. It is the Advaitist alone that does not care to be hypnotised. His is the only system that more or less understands that hypnotism comes with every form of dualism. But the Advaitist says, throw away even the Vedas, throw away even the Personal God, throw away even the universe, throw away even your own body and mind, and let nothing remain, in order to get rid of hypnotism perfectly. "From where the mind comes back with speech, being unable to reach, knowing the Bliss of Brahman, no more is fear." That is de-hypnotisation. "I have neither vice nor virtue, nor misery nor happiness; I care neither for the Vedas nor sacrifices nor ceremonies; I am neither food nor eating nor eater, for I am Existence Absolute, Knowledge Absolute, Bliss Absolute; I am He, I am He." We know all about hypnotism. We have a psychology which the West is just beginning to know, but not yet adequately, I am sorry to say._x000d_ Q.--What do you call the astral body?_x000d_ A.--The astral body is what we call the Linga Sharira. When this body dies, how can it come to take another body? Force cannot remain without matter. So a little part of the fine matter remains, through which the internal organs make another body--for each one is making his own body; it is the mind that makes the body. If I become a sage, my brain gets changed into a sage's brain; and the Yogis say that even in this life a Yogi can change his body into a god-body._x000d_ The Yogis show many wonderful things. One ounce of practice is worth a thousand pounds of theory. So I have no right to say that because I have not seen this or that thing done, it is false. Their books say that with practice you can get all sorts of results that are most wonderful. Small results can be obtained in a short time by regular practice, so that one may know that there is no humbug about it, no charlatanism. And these Yogis explain the very wonderful things mentioned in all scriptures in a scientific way. The question is, how these records of miracles entered into every nation. The man, who says that they are all false and need no explanation, is not rational. You have no right to deny them until you can prove them false. You must prove that they are without any foundation, and only then have you the right to stand up and deny them. But you have not done that. On the other hand, the Yogis say they are not miracles, and they claim that they can do them even today. Many wonderful things are done in India today. But none of them are done by miracles. There are many books on the subject. Again, if nothing else has been done in that line except a scientific approach towards psychology, that credit must be given to the Yogis._x000d_ Q.--Can you say in the concrete what the manifestations are which the Yogi can show?_x000d_ A.--The Yogi wants no faith or belief in his science but that which is given to any other science, just enough gentlemanly faith to come and make the experiment. The ideal of the Yogi is tremendous. I have seen the lower things that can be done by the power of the mind, and therefore, I have no right to disbelieve that the highest things can be done. The ideal of the Yogi is eternal peace and love through omniscience and omnipotence. I know a Yogi who was bitten by a cobra, and who fell down on the ground. In the evening he revived again, and when asked what happened, he said: "A messenger came from my Beloved." All hatred and anger and jealousy have been burnt out of this man. Nothing can make him react; he is infinite love all the time, and he is omnipotent in his power of love. That is the real Yogi. And this manifesting different things is accidental on the way. That is not what he wants to attain. The Yogi says, every man is a slave except the Yogi. He is a slave of food, to air, to his wife, to his children, to a dollar, slave to a nation, slave to name and fame, and to a thousand things in this world. The man who is not controlled by any one of these bondages is alone a real man, a real Yogi. "They have conquered relative existence in this life who are firm-fixed in sameness. God is pure and the same to all. Therefore such are said to be living in God" (Gita, V.19)._x000d_ Q.--Do the Yogis attach any importance to caste?_x000d_ A.--No; caste is only the training school for undeveloped minds._x000d_ Q.--Is there no connection between this idea of superconsciousness and the heat of India?_x000d_ A.--I do not think so; because all this philosophy was thought out fifteen thousand feet above the level of the sea, among the Himalayas, in an almost Arctic temperature._x000d_ Q.--Is it practicable to attain success in a cold climate?_x000d_ A.--It is practicable, and the only thing that is practicable in this world. We say you are a born Vedantist, each one of you. You are declaring your oneness with everything each moment you live. Every time that your heart goes out towards the world, you are a true Vedantist, only you do not know it. You are moral without knowing why; and the Vedanta is the philosophy which analysed and taught man to be moral consciously. It is the essence of all religions._x000d_ Q.--Should you say that there is an unsocial principle in our Western people, which makes us so pluralistic, and that Eastern people are more sympathetic than we are?_x000d_ A.--I think the Western people are more cruel, and the Eastern people have more mercy towards all beings. But that is simply because your civilisation is very much more recent. It takes time to make a thing come under the influence of mercy. You have a great deal of power, and the power of control of the mind has especially been very little practised. It will take time to make you gentle and good. This feeling tingles in every drop of blood in India. If I go to the villages to teach the people politics, they will not understand; but if I go to teach them Vedanta, they will say, "Now, Swami, you are all right". That Vairagya, non-attachment, is everywhere in India, even today. We are very much degenerated now; but kings will give up their thrones and go about the country without anything._x000d_ In some places the common village-girl with her spinning-wheel says, "Do not talk to me of dualism; my spinning-wheel says 'Soham, Soham'--'I am He, I am He.'" Go and talk to these people, and ask them why it is that they speak so and yet kneel before that stone. They will say that with you religion means dogma, but with them realisation. "I will be a Vedantist", one of them will say, "only when all this has vanished, and I have seen the reality. Until then there is no difference between me and the ignorant. So I am using these stones and am going to temples, and so on, to come to realisation. I have heard, but I want to see and realise." "Different methods of speech, different manners of explaining the meaning of the scriptures--these are only for the enjoyment of the learned, not for freedom" (Shankara). It is realisation which leads us to that freedom._x000d_ Q.--Is this spiritual freedom among the people consistent with attention to caste?_x000d_ A.--Certainly not. They say there should be no caste. Even those who are in caste say it is not a very perfect institution. But they say, when you find us another and a better one, we will give it up. They say, what will you give us instead? Where is there no caste? In your nation you are struggling all the time to make a caste. As soon as a man gets a bag of dollars, he says, "I am one of the Four Hundred." We alone have succeeded in making a permanent caste. Other nations are struggling and do not succeed. We have superstitions and evils enough. Would taking the superstitions and evils from your country mend matters? It is owing to caste that three hundred millions of people can find a piece of bread to eat yet. It is an imperfect institution, no doubt. But if it had not been for caste, you would have had no Sanskrit books to study. This caste made walls, around which all sorts of invasions rolled and surged, but found it impossible to break through. That necessity has not gone yet; so caste remains. The caste we have now is not that of seven hundred years ago. Every blow has riveted it. Do you realise that India is the only country that never went outside of itself to conquer? The great emperor Asoka insisted that none of his descendants should go to conquer. If people want to send us teachers, let them help, but not injure. Why should all these people come to conquer the Hindus? Did they do any injury to any nation? What little good they could do, they did for the world. They taught it science, philosophy, religion, and civilised the savage hordes of the earth. And this is the return--only murder and tyranny, and calling them heathen rascals. Look at the books written on India by Western people and at the stories of many travellers who go there; in retaliation for what injuries are these hurled at them?_x000d_ Q.--What is the Vedantic idea of civilisation?_x000d_ A.--You are philosophers, and you do not think that a bag of gold makes the difference between man and man. What is the value of all these machines and sciences? They have only one result: they spread knowledge. You have not solved the problem of want, but only made it keener. Machines do not solve the poverty question; they simply make men struggle the more. Competition gets keener. What value has nature in itself? Why do you go and build a monument to a man who sends electricity through a wire? Does not nature do that millions of times over? Is not everything already existing in nature? What is the value of your getting it? It is already there. The only value is that it makes this development. This universe is simply a gymnasium in which the soul is taking exercise; and after these exercises we become gods. So the value of everything is to be decided by how far it is a manifestation of God. Civilisation is the manifestation of that divinity in man._x000d_ Q.--Have the Buddhists any caste laws?_x000d_ A.--The Buddhists never had much caste, and there are very few Buddhists in India. Buddha was a social reformer. Yet in Buddhistic countries I find that there have been strong attempts to manufacture caste, only they have failed. The Buddhists' caste is practically nothing, but they take pride in it in their own minds._x000d_ Buddha was one of the Sannyasins of the Vedanta. He started a new sect, just as others are started even today. The ideas which now are called Buddhism were not his. They were much more ancient. He was a great man who gave the ideas power. The unique element in Buddhism was its social element. Brahmins and Kshatriyas have always been our teachers, and most of the Upanishads were written by Kshatriyas, while the ritualistic portions of the Vedas came from the Brahmins. Most of our great teachers throughout India have been Kshatriyas, and were always universal in their teachings; whilst the Brahmana prophets with two exceptions were very exclusive. Rama, Krishna, and Buddha--worshipped as Incarnations of God--were Kshatriyas._x000d_ Q.--Are sects, ceremonies, and scriptures helps to realisation?_x000d_ A.--When a man realises, he gives up everything. The various sects and ceremonies and books, so far as they are the means of arriving at that point, are all right. But when they fail in that, we must change them. "The knowing one must not despise the condition of those who are ignorant, nor should the knowing one destroy the faith of the ignorant in their own particular method, but by proper action lead them and show them the path to come to where he stands" (Gita, III.26)._x000d_ Q.--How does the Vedanta explain individuality and ethics?_x000d_ A.--The real individual is the Absolute; this personalisation is through Maya. It is only apparent; in reality it is always the Absolute. In reality there is one, but in Maya it is appearing as many. In Maya there is this variation. Yet even in this Maya there is always the tendency to get back to the One, as expressed in all ethics and all morality of every nation, because it is the constitutional necessity of the soul. It is finding its oneness; and this struggle to find this oneness is what we call ethics and morality. Therefore we must always practise them._x000d_ Q.--Is not the greater part of ethics taken up with the relation between individuals?_x000d_ A.--That is all it is. The Absolute does not come within Maya._x000d_ Q.--You say the individual is the Absolute, and I was going to ask you whether the individual has knowledge._x000d_ A.--The state of manifestation is individuality, and the light in that state is what we call knowledge. To use, therefore, this term knowledge for the light of the Absolute is not precise, as the absolute state transcends relative knowledge._x000d_ Q.--Does it include it?_x000d_ A.--Yes, in this sense. Just as a piece of gold can be changed into all sorts of coins, so with this. The state can be broken up into all sorts of knowledge. It is the state of superconsciousness, and includes both consciousness and unconsciousness. The man who attains that state has all that we call knowledge. When he wants to realise that consciousness of knowledge, he has to go a step lower. Knowledge is a lower state; it is only in Maya that we can have knowledge.

The Vedanta philosophy, as it is generally called at the present day, really comprises all the various sects that now exist in India. Thus there have been various interpretations, and to my mind they have been progressive, beginning with the dualistic or Dvaita and ending with the non-dualistic or Advaita. The word Vedanta literally means the end of the Vedas--the Vedas being the scriptures of the Hindus. Sometimes in the West by the Vedas are meant only the hymns and rituals of the Vedas. But at the present time these parts have almost gone out of use, and usually by the word Vedas in India, the Vedanta is meant. All our commentators, when they want to quote a passage from the scriptures, as a rule, quote from the Vedanta, which has another technical name with the commentators--the Shrutis. Now, all the books known by the name of the Vedanta were not entirely written after the ritualistic portions of the Vedas. For instance, one of them--the Isha Upanishad--forms the fortieth chapter of the Yajur-veda, that being one of the oldest parts of the Vedas. There are other Upanishads which form portionsb of the Brahmanas or ritualistic writings; and the rest of the Upanishads are independent, not comprised in any of the Brahmanas or other parts of the Vedas; but there is no reason to suppose that they were entirely independent of other parts, for, as we well know, many of these have been lost entirely and many of the Brahmanas have become extinct. So it is quite possible that the independent Upanishads belonged to some Brahmanas, which in course of time fell into disuse, while the Upanishads remained. These Upanishads are also called Forest Books or Aranyakas._x000d_ The Vedanta, then, practically forms the scriptures of the Hindus, and all systems of philosophy that are orthodox have to take it as their foundation. Even the Buddhists and Jains, when it suits their purpose, will quote a passage from the Vedanta as authority. All schools of philosophy in India, although they claim to have been based upon the Vedas, took different names for their systems. The last one, the system of Vyasa, took its stand upon the doctrines of the Vedas more than the previous systems did, and made an attempt to harmonise the preceding philosophies, such as the Sankhya and the Nyaya, with the doctrines of the Vedanta. So it is especially called the Vedanta philosophy; and the Sutras or aphorisms of Vyasa are, in modern India, the basis of the Vedanta philosophy. Again, these Sutras of Vyasa have been variously explained by different commentators. In general there are three sorts of commentators in India now; from their interpretations have arisen three systems of philosophy and sects. One is dualistic, or Dvaita; a second is the qualified non-dualistic, or Vishishtadvaita; and a third is the non-dualistic, or Advaita. Of these the dualistic and the qualified non-dualistic include the largest number of the Indian people. The non-dualists are comparatively few in number. Now I will try to lay before you the ideas that are contained in all these three sects; but before going on, I will make one remark--that these different Vedanta systems have one common psychology, and that is, the psychology of the Sankhya system. The Sankhya psychology is very much like the psychologies of the Nyaya and Vaisheshika systems, differing only in minor particulars._x000d_ All the Vedantists agree on three points. They believe in God, in the Vedas as revealed, and in cycles. We have already considered the Vedas. The belief about cycles is as follows: All matter throughout the universe is the outcome of one primal matter called Akasha; and all force, whether gravitation, attraction or repulsion, or life, is the outcome of one primal force called Prana. Prana acting on Akasha is creating or projecting the universe. At the beginning of a cycle, Akasha is motionless, unmanifested. Then Prana begins to act, more and more, creating grosser and grosser forms out of Akasha--plants, animals, men, stars, and so on. After an incalculable time this evolution ceases and involution begins, everything being resolved back through finer and finer forms into the original Akasha and Prana, when a new cycle follows. Now there is something beyond Akasha and Prana. Both can be resolved into a third thing called Mahat--the Cosmic Mind. This Cosmic Mind does not create Akasha and Prana, but changes itself into them._x000d_ We will now take up the beliefs about mind, soul, and God. According to the universally accepted Sankhya psychology, in perception--in the case of vision, for instance--there are, first of all, the instruments of vision, the eyes. Behind the instruments--the eyes--is the organ of vision or Indriya--the optic nerve and its centres--which is not the external instrument, but without which the eyes will not see. More still is needed for perception. The mind or Manas must come and attach itself to the organ. And besides this, the sensation must be carried to the intellect or Buddhi--the determinative, reactive state of the mind. When the reaction comes from Buddhi, along with it flashes the external world and egoism. Here then is the will; but everything is not complete. Just as every picture, being composed of successive impulses of light, must be united on something stationary to form a whole, so all the ideas in the mind must be gathered and projected on something that is stationary--relatively to the body and mind--that is, on what is called the Soul or Purusha or Atman._x000d_ According to the Sankhya philosophy, the reactive state of the mind called Buddhi or intellect is the outcome, the change, or a certain manifestation of the Mahat or Cosmic Mind. The Mahat becomes changed into vibrating thought; and that becomes in one part changed into the organs, and in the other part into the fine particles of matter. Out of the combination of all these, the whole of this universe is produced. Behind even Mahat, the Sankhya conceives of a certain state which is called Avyakta or unmanifested, where even the manifestation of mind is not present, but only the causes exists. It is also called Prakriti. Beyond this Prakriti, and eternally separate from it, is the Purusha, the soul of the Sankhya which is without attributes and omnipresent. The Purusha is not the doer but the witness. The illustration of the crystal is used to explain the Purusha. The latter is said to be like a crystal without any colour, before which different colours are placed, and then it seems to be coloured by the colours before it, but in reality it is not. The Vedantists reject the Sankhya ideas of the soul and nature. They claim that between them there is a huge gulf to be bridged over. On the one hand the Sankhya system comes to nature, and then at once it has to jump over to the other side and come to the soul, which is entirely separate from nature. How can these different colours, as Sankhya called them, be able to act on that soul which by its nature is colourless? So the Vedantists, from the very first, affirm that this soul and this nature are one. Even the dualistic Vedantists admit that the Atman or God is not only the efficient cause of this universe, but also the material cause. But they only say so in so many words. They do not really mean it, for they try to escape from their conclusions, in this way: They say there are three existences in this universe--God, soul, and nature. Nature and soul are, as it were, the body of God, and in this sense it may be said that God and the whole universe are one. But this nature and all these various souls remain different from each other through all eternity. Only at the beginning of a cycle do they become manifest; and when the cycle ends, they become fine, and remain in a fine state. The Advaita Vedantists--the non-dualists--reject this theory of the soul, and, having nearly the whole range of the Upanishads in their favour, build their philosophy entirely upon them. All the books contained in the Upanishads have one subject, one task before them--to prove the following theme: "Just as by the knowledge of one lump of clay we have the knowledge of all the clay in the universe, so what is that, knowing which we know everything in the universe?" The idea of the Advaitists is to generalise the whole universe into one--that something which is really the whole of this universe. And they claim that this whole universe is one, that it is one Being manifesting itself in all these various forms. They admit that what the Sankhya calls nature exists, but say that nature is God. It is this Being, the Sat, which has become converted into all this--the universe, man, soul, and everything that exists. Mind and Mahat are but the manifestations of that one Sat. But then the difficulty arises that this would be pantheism. How came that Sat which is unchangeable, as they admit (for that which is absolute is unchangeable), to be changed into that which is changeable, and perishable? The Advaitists here have a theory which they call Vivarta Vada or apparent manifestation. According to the dualists and the Sankyas, the whole of this universe is the evolution of primal nature. According to some of the Advaitists and some of the dualists, the whole of this universe is evolved from God. And according to the Advaitists proper, the followers of Shankaracharya, the whole universe is the apparent evolution of God. God is the material cause of this universe, but not really, only apparently. The celebrated illustration used is that of the rope and the snake, where the rope appeared to be the snake, but was not really so. The rope did not really change into the snake. Even so this whole universe as it exists is that Being. It is unchanged, and all the changes we see in it are only apparent. These changes are caused by Desha, Kala, and Nimitta (space, time, and causation), or, according to a higher psychological generalisation, by Nama and Rupa (name and form). It is by name and form that one thing is differentiated from another. The name and form alone cause the difference. In reality they are one and the same. Again, it is not, the Vedantists say, that there is something as phenomenon and something as noumenon. The rope is changed into the snake apparently only; and when the delusion ceases, the snake vanishes. When one is in ignorance, he sees the phenomenon and does not see God. When he sees God, this universe vanishes entirely for him. Ignorance or Maya, as it is called, is the cause of all this phenomenon--the Absolute, the Unchangeable, being taken as this manifested universe. This Maya is not absolute zero, nor non-existence. It is defined as neither existence nor non-existence. It is not existence, because that can be said only of the Absolute, the Unchangeable, and in this sense, Maya is non-existence. Again, it cannot be said it is non-existence; for if it were, it could never produce the phenomenon. So it is something which is neither; and in the Vedanta philosophy it is called Anirvachaniya or inexpressible. Maya, then, is the real cause of this universe. Maya gives the name and form to what Brahman or God gives the material; and the latter seems to have been transformed into all this. The Advaitists, then have no place for the individual soul. They say individual souls are created by Maya. In reality they cannot exist. If there were only one existence throughout, how could it be that I am one, and you are one, and so forth? We are all one, and the cause of evil is the perception of duality. As soon as I begin to feel that I am separate from this universe, then first comes fear, and then comes misery. "Where one hears another, one sees another, that is small. Where one does not see another, where one does not hear another, that is the greatest, that is God. In that greatest is perfect happiness. In small things there is no happiness."_x000d_ According to the Advaita philosophy, then, this differentiation of matter, these phenomena, are, as it were, for a time, hiding the real nature of man; but the latter really has not been changed at all. In the lowest worm, as well as in the highest human being, the same divine nature is present. The worm form is the lower form in which the divinity has been more overshadowed by Maya; that is the highest form in which it has been least overshadowed. Behind everything the same divinity is existing, and out of this comes the basis of morality. Do not injure another. Love everyone as your own self, because the whole universe is one. In injuring another, I am injuring myself; in loving another, I am loving myself. From this also springs that principle of Advaita morality which has been summed up in one word--self-abnegation. The Advaitist says, this little personalised self is the cause of all my misery. This individualised self, which makes me different from all other beings brings hatred and jealousy and misery, struggle and all other evils. And when this idea has been got rid of, all struggle will cease, all misery vanish. So this is to be given up. We must always hold ourselves ready, even to give up our lives for the lowest beings. When a man has become ready even to give up his life for a little insect, he has reached the perfection which the Advaitist wants to attain; and at that moment when he has become thus ready, the veil of ignorance falls away from him, and he will feel his own nature. Even in this life, he will feel that he is one with the universe. For a time, as it were, the whole of this phenomenal world will disappear for him, and he will realise what he is. But so long as the Karma of this body remains, he will have to live. This state, when the veil has vanished and yet the body remains for some time, is what the Vedantists call the Jivanmukti, the living freedom. If a man is deluded by a mirage for some time, and one day the mirage disappears--if it comes back again the next day, or at some future time, he will not be deluded. Before the mirage first broke, the man could not distinguish between the reality and the deception. But when it has once broken, as long as he has organs and eyes to work with, he will see the image, but will no more be deluded. That fine distinction between the actual world and the mirage he has caught, and the latter cannot delude him any more. So when the Vedantist has realised his own nature, the whole world has vanished for him. It will come back again, but no more the same world of misery. The prison of misery has become changed into Sat, Chit, Ananda--Existence Absolute, Knowledge Absolute, Bliss Absolute--and the attainment of this is the goal of the Advaita Philosophy.

Professor Wright's next letter to his wife was written on the following day from New Bedford, where, it appears, he had gone to make a study of educational methods. By chance, this New Bedford field trip fell on the day of Swamiji's Harvard lecture, and thus we have no firsthand account from Professor Wright of that occasion. In New Bedford, however, he thought of his now famous friend and, with a touch of paternal pride, to which he was well entitled, wrote to his wife of the heights Swamiji had attained in the world and of his recent successes in Boston:

Swami gives a lecture tonight in Cambridge, before the Philosophical Club: all the big wigs in philosophy are going to see him._x000d_ He is giving talks in Boston before the Procopeia society: they supposed about 150 people might come, but they have had to take a larger hall, 450 people crowding in. And there has been absolutely no advertising.

Swamiji's talk, "The Vedanta Philosophy," which one can find in volume one of the Complete Works, was a short, brilliantly concise exposition of the origin, development, and meaning of _x000d_ Vedanta in its three phases. It was a talk intended for philosophers and students of philosophy, whose interest in the subject could be presumed to be primarily intellectual. And yet, toward the end, when speaking of Advaita Vedanta, Swamiji seems to have become electrified; the brilliant scholar became the incandescent prophet, pouring out his message, as was usually his way, directly to the hearts, as well as to the minds, of his listeners.

"My success," Swamiji had written two days earlier to his Madras disciple Alasinga, "is due to my popular style-the greatness of a teacher consists in the simplicity of his language. Beyond question it was true that Swamiji made his lectures as simple as possible, his purpose being always to help spiritually, never to confuse intellectually; but simplicity of language was not the whole of the secret. "That man," William James was later to exclaim, "is simply a wonder for oratorical power.

In his address he had given a remarkably clear exposition of the cosmology and general principles of the Vedanta, showing the points of reconciliation between the theories of science and those of the Vedanta concerning matter and force. He then answered questions asked in a critical spirit pertaining to the influence of Hindu philosophy on the Stoic philosophy of the Greeks, to caste, to the relation between Advaita and Dvaita, to the theory of the Absolute, and to the contrast between self-hypnotism and Raja-Yoga. Speaking of the last, the Swami remarked that Oriental psychology was infinitely more thorough than Occidental; it asserts that man is already hypnotized and that yoga is an effort at de-hypnotization of self He said: "It is the Advaitist alone that does not care to be hypnotized. His is the only system that more or less understands that hypnotism comes with every form of dualism. But the Advaitist says, throw away even the universe, throw away even your own body and mind and let nothing remain, in order to get rid of hypnotism perfectly. . . ." Asked about the yoga powers, the Swami replied that the highest form of yoga power manifested itself in a Vedanta character and in the continuous perception of divinity, as exemplified in the instance of the yogi Pavhari Baba. "He was bitten by a cobra," the Swami related, "and … fell down on the ground. In the evening he revived, and when asked what had happened he said, 'A messenger came from my Beloved.' All hatred and anger and jealousy had been burned out of this man. Nothing could make him react; he was infinite love. That is the real yogi." He added that the highest spiritual power embodied itself in a demonstration of spiritual freedom and in a constant accession of spiritual vision and insight, Nirvikalpa Samadhi being the climax thereof. When asked by the professors, "What is the Vedantic idea of civilization?" the Swami answered that true civilization was the manifestation of the divinity within man, and that that land was the most civilized wherein the highest ideals were made practical.

On March 26, the day following the Harvard talk, Miss Thursby noted in her diary: "Mrs. Bull gives reception for Sterling, Leggetts and self. Swami's lecture at Procopia. This reception was no doubt a late afternoon tea, and, although the diary does not mention it; Swamiji was certainly present, three of the guests of honor being his close friends and the fourth, Mrs. Antoinette Sterling, well known to him. And that evening, which in this cold and snowy month was remarkably spring like in its warmth, his hostess, himself, the guests of honor, and very likely other guests, such as Miss Farmer, who had by now come from New York, crossed over the Charles River to Boston, where he was to deliver "The Ideal of a Universal Religion" at the Procopeia Club.

The Twentieth Century Club had the Swami as their guest on Saturday [March 281, and heard an address from him on the "Practical Side of the Vedanta Philosophy". During his stay in Boston the Swami of course saw many of his old friends, among them 'Professor John Henry Wright, with whom he had a long talk on the afternoon of March 27. The Swami recounted his many experiences since last meeting the Professor, speaking as a son to a proud father; for, as the Swami had once written, he heed been the first man to stand as his friend in America. The Professor was delighted to see the Swami again. To his wife he wrote: "He [the Swami] is become so much gentler, and wiser, and sweeter. Indeed, he is most charming…. [He] has evidently swept Professor James off his feet. Miss Sibbens told me this evening that he [Professor William James] was going in to Boston to hear his talk at every opportunity."

The following day Professor Wright returned to Cambridge, and on Friday, March 27, Swamiji had lunch with him, going first to his room in Harvard's Holworthy Dormitory for an hour long talk and, after lunch at "the Club," returning to the room where for another hour and a half the conversation continued. Swamiji told of his life for the past year or so-of his visit to England, of the people he had met and the reception he had been accorded, of his triumphs and his adventures. This recounting he owed the professor, who, as he had once written to Alasinga, had been "the first man [in America] who stood as my friend.

Professor Wright found Swamiji changed. The last time he and Mrs. Wright had together seen him had been in May of 1894; since then he had formulated his message in detail, had become certain of the nature of his mission in the West, and had settled down to teach. The fiery warrior who in one city after another had forthrightly given the lie to missionary prop¬aganda against his motherland, who had defied all opposition, who had indeed stridden onward as though opposition, virulent as it was, did not exist, who manifested power above all else, this "cyclonic Hindu" had become the imperturbable teacher, more absorbed now in delivering his message than in pulling the fangs of bigotry, from which he had by now milked most of the venom. As a consequence, he appeared more gentle. Others had commented upon this change in his manner, which seems to have become noticeable around the beginning of 1895, or at the start of his teaching work in New York. The reader may remember, for instance, that Miss Thursby, in writing to Mrs. Bull, had remarked: "Last night's lecture in Brooklyn was a splendid one. He seems to have come to the realization that he must work in the spirit of his Master. I wrote him . . . How much my friends had enjoyed his talk [at a private class] and how we all felt the uplift when he spoke to us only in the spirit of his Master. Landsberg said last night that he [Swamiji] would never talk again in the old antagonistic spirit. But "the old antagonistic spirit" had been essential to the work Swamiji had had to do during most of 1894. His days of battle were over only because the battle had been won.

Before going into the subject of this afternoon, will you allow me to say a few words of thanks, now that I have the opportunity? I have lived three years amongst you. I have travelled over nearly the whole of America, and as I am going back from here to my own country, it is meet that I should take this opportunity of expressing my gratitude in this Athens of America. When I first came to this country, after a few days I thought I would be able to write a book on the nation. But after three years' stay here, I find I am not able to write even a page. On the other hand, I find in travelling in various countries that beneath the surface differences that we find in dress and food and little details of manners, man is man all the world over; the same wonderful human nature is everywhere represented. Yet there are certain characteristics, and in a few words I would like to sum up all my experiences here. In this land of America, no question is asked about a man's peculiarities. If a man is a man, that is enough, and they take him into their hearts, and that is one thing I have never seen in any other country in the world._x000d_ I came here to represent a philosophy in India, which is called the Vedanta philosophy. This philosophy is very, very ancient; it is the outcome of that mass of ancient Aryan literature known by the name of the Vedas. It is, as it were, the very flower of all the speculations and experiences and analyses, embodied in that mass of literature--collected and culled through centuries. This Vedanta philosophy has certain peculiarities. In the first place, it is perfectly impersonal; it does not owe its origin to any person or prophet: it does not build itself around one man as a centre. Yet it has nothing to say against philosophies which do build themselves around certain persons. In later days in India, other philosophies and systems arose, built around certain persons--such as Buddhism, or many of our present sects. They each have a certain leader to whom they owe allegiance, just as the Christians and Mohammedans have. But the Vedanta philosophy stands at the background of all these various sects, and there is no fight and no antagonism between the Vedanta and any other system in the world._x000d_ One principle it lays down--and that, the Vedanta claims, is to be found in every religion in the world--that man is divine, that all this which we see around us is the outcome of that consciousness of the divine. Everything that is strong, and good, and powerful in human nature is the outcome of that divinity, and though potential in many, there is no difference between man and man essentially, all being alike divine. There is, as it were, an infinite ocean behind, and you and I are so many waves, coming out of that infinite ocean; and each one of us is trying his best to manifest that infinite outside. So, potentially, each one of us has that infinite ocean of Existence, Knowledge, and Bliss as our birthright, our real nature; and the difference between us is caused by the greater or lesser power to manifest that divine. Therefore the Vedanta lays down that each man should be treated not as what he manifests, but as what he stands for. Each human being stands for the divine, and, therefore, every teacher should be helpful, not by condemning man, but by helping him to call forth the divinity that is within him._x000d_ It also teaches that all the vast mass of energy that we see displayed in society and in every plane of action is really from inside out; and, therefore, what is called inspiration by other sects, the Vedantist begs the liberty to call the expiration of man. At the same time it does not quarrel with other sects; the Vedanta has no quarrel with those who do not understand this divinity of man. Consciously or unconsciously, every man is trying to unfold that divinity._x000d_ Man is like an infinite spring, coiled up in a small box, and that spring is trying to unfold itself; and all the social phenomena that we see are the result of this trying to unfold. All the competitions and struggles and evils that we see around us are neither the causes of these unfoldments, nor the effects. As one of our great philosophers says--in the case of the irrigation of a field, the tank is somewhere upon a higher level, and the water is trying to rush into the field, and is barred by a gate. But as soon as the gate is opened, the water rushes in by its own nature; and if there is dust and dirt in the way, the water rolls over them. But dust and dirt are neither the result nor the cause of this unfolding of the divine nature of man. They are co-existent circumstances, and, therefore, can be remedied._x000d_ Now, this idea, claims the Vedanta, is to be found in all religions, whether in India or outside of it; only, in some of them, the idea is expressed through mythology, and in others, through symbology. The Vedanta claims that there has not been one religious inspiration, one manifestation of the divine man, however great, but it has been the expression of that infinite oneness in human nature; and all that we call ethics and morality and doing good to others is also but the manifestation of this oneness. There are moments when every man feels that he is one with the universe, and he rushes forth to express it, whether he knows it or not. This expression of oneness is what we call love and sympathy, and it is the basis of all our ethics and morality. This is summed up in the Vedanta philosophy by the celebrated aphorism, Tat Tvam Asi, "Thou art That"._x000d_ To every man, this is taught: Thou art one with this Universal Being, and, as such, every soul that exists is your soul; and every body that exists is your body; and in hurting anyone, you hurt yourself, in loving anyone, you love yourself. As soon as a current of hatred is thrown outside, whomsoever else it hurts, it also hurts yourself; and if love comes out from you, it is bound to come back to you. For I am the universe; this universe is my body. I am the Infinite, only I am not conscious of it now; but I am struggling to get this consciousness of the Infinite, and perfection will be reached when full consciousness of this Infinite comes._x000d_ Another peculiar idea of the Vedanta is that we must allow this infinite variation in religious thought, and not try to bring everybody to the same opinion, because the goal is the same. As the Vedantist says in his poetical language, "As so many rivers, having their source in different mountains, roll down, crooked or straight, and at last come into the ocean--so, all these various creeds and religions, taking their start from different standpoints and running through crooked or straight courses, at last come unto THEE."_x000d_ As a manifestation of that, we find that this most ancient philosophy has, through its influence, directly inspired Buddhism, the first missionary religion of the world, and indirectly, it has also influenced Christianity, through the Alexandrians, the Gnostics, and the European philosophers of the middle ages. And later, influencing German thought, it has produced almost a revolution in the regions of philosophy and psychology. Yet all this mass of influence has been given to the world almost unperceived. As the gentle falling of the dew at night brings support to all vegetable life, so, slowly and imperceptibly, this divine philosophy has been spread through the world for the good of mankind. No march of armies has been used to preach this religion. In Buddhism, one of the most missionary religions of the world, we find inscriptions remaining of the great Emperor Asoka--recording how missionaries were sent to Alexandria, to Antioch, to Persia, to China, and to various other countries of the then civilised world. Three hundred years before Christ, instructions were given them not to revile other religions: "The basis of all religions is the same, wherever they are; try to help them all you can, teach them all you can, but do not try to injure them."_x000d_ Thus in India there never was any religious persecution by the Hindus, but only that wonderful reverence, which they have for all the religions of the world. They sheltered a portion of the Hebrews, when they were driven out of their own country; and the Malabar Jews remain as a result. They received at another time the remnant of the Persians, when they were almost annihilated; and they remain to this day, as a part of us and loved by us, as the modern Parsees of Bombay. There were Christians who claimed to have come with St. Thomas, the disciple of Jesus Christ; and they were allowed to settle in India and hold their own opinions; and a colony of them is even now in existence in India. And this spirit of toleration has not died out. It will not and cannot die there._x000d_ This is one of the great lessons that the Vedanta has to teach. Knowing that, consciously or unconsciously, we are struggling to reach the same goal, why should we be impatient? If one man is slower than another, we need not be impatient, we need not curse him, or revile him. When our eyes are opened and the heart is purified, the work of the same divine influence, the unfolding of the same divinity in every human heart, will become manifest; and then alone we shall be in a position to claim the brotherhood of man._x000d_ When a man has reached the highest, when he sees neither man nor woman, neither sect nor creed, nor colour, nor birth, nor any of these differentiations, but goes beyond and finds that divinity which is the real man behind every human being--then alone he has reached the universal brotherhood, and that man alone is a Vedantist._x000d_ Such are some of the practical historical results of the Vedanta.

Q.--Did Vedanta exert any influence over Mohammedanism?_x000d_ A.--This Vedantic spirit of religious liberality has very much affected Mohammedanism. Mohammedanism in India is quite a different thing from that in any other country. It is only when Mohammedans come from other countries and preach to their co-religionists in India about living with men who are not of their faith that a Mohammedan mob is aroused and fights._x000d_ Q.--Does Vedanta recognise caste?_x000d_ A.--The caste system is opposed to the religion of the Vedanta. Caste is a social custom, and all our great preachers have tried to break it down. From Buddhism downwards, every sect has preached against caste, and every time it has only riveted the chains. Caste is simply the outgrowth of the political institutions of India; it is a hereditary trade guild. Trade competition with Europe has broken caste more than any teaching._x000d_ Q.--What is the peculiarity of the Vedas?_x000d_ A.--One peculiarity of the Vedas is that they are the only scriptures that again and again declare that you must go beyond them. The Vedas say that they were written just for the child mind; and when you have grown, you must go beyond them._x000d_ Q.--Do you hold the individual soul to be eternally real?_x000d_ A.--The individual soul consists of a man's thoughts, and they are changing every moment. Therefore, it cannot be eternally real. It is real only in the phenomenal. The individual soul consists of memory and thought; how can that be real?_x000d_ Q.--Why did Buddhism as a religion decline in India?_x000d_ A.--Buddhism did not really decline in India; it was only a gigantic social movement. Before Buddha great numbers of animals were killed for sacrifice and other reasons, and people drank wine and ate meat in large quantities. Since Buddha's teaching drunkenness has almost disappeared, and the killing of animals has almost gone.

During his stay in Boston and Cambridge, Swamiji also renewed his friendship with Professor James, sweeping him, as Professor Wright told his wife, "off his feet " Swamiji had probably first met James in October of 1894 when he had stayed at Mrs. Bull's for ten days or so, and almost certainly he had met him in December of that year when he had held classes in Cambridge under Mrs. Bull's auspices. An account of what must have been the first of these 1894. meetings is given in the Life:

It was at this time [the time is not made clear] that the Swami met the distinguished Professor William James of Harvard at dinner at the residence of Mrs. Ole Bull. After dinner the Swami and the Professor drew together in earnest and subdued conversation. It was midnight when they rose from their long discourse. Eager to know the result of the meeting Of these two great minds, Mrs. Bull asked, "Well, Swami, how did you like Professor James?" He replied in a sort of abstracted way, "A very nice man, a very nice man!" laying emphasis on the word nice. The next day the Swami handed a letter to Mrs. Bull with the casual remark, "You may be interested in this." Mrs. Bull read and to her amazement saw that Professor James, in inviting the Swami to meet him at his own residence for dinner a few days later, had addressed him as "Master.

Swamiji had evidently not been able to accept that invitation, for now in 1896 Professor James, still addressing him as "Master," again asked to see him "for once" under his own roof. His letter, delivered to Mrs. Bull's house by his young son, read in full :

95 Irving St._x000d_ Cambridge March 28 [1896] _x000d_ _x000d_ Dear Master, _x000d_ I hate not to have any talk with you before you go away. I am willing to give up two engagements I have this afternoon for the sake of meeting you, if you yourself should be free between 4 and 6:30 o'clock. Or if it suits you better can you lunch with me tomorrow at one? Or can you dine with me at 6:00 this evening and still be in time for your lecture at 8?_x000d_ Pray choose one of these alternatives and let the mes¬senger, my son, know which. A verbal message will suffice. In case you choose this afternoon at 4, pray say whether you prefer to come to my house or to have me call at Mrs. Bull's? I can do either, but naturally I should like to see you for once under my own roof. If I go to Mrs. Bull's I may not be there before half past four. If you stay to dinner tonight, pray come as early in the afternoon as you can._x000d_ Sincerely yours_x000d_ Wm. James

Of these various alternatives, Swamiji, who would have to deliver two lectures that Saturday, March 28-one at the Twentieth Century Club and one at the Procopeia Club chose to lunch with Professor James the following day at one o'clock. Accordingly, James's young son William dutifully came once again to Mrs. Bull's to escort his father's improbable guest across the Cambridge Common to the house on Irving Street.

During the next two days, in which the weather returned to a more seemly, March-like cold, Swamiji delivered his last three talks in Boston, holding in the evenings his third and fourth classes ("Realization, or the Ultimate of Religion" and the Upanishad class) at the Procopeia's rented arena, and on the afternoon of March 28 giving a talk at the Twentieth Century Club. Of this last, no announcements or reports can be found in the Boston papers, which leads one to think that the occasion must have been a private one. The loss, however, is minimal, for the lecture ("The Vedanta: Its :Practical Bearings; How It Differs from Other Philosophies") and the discussion that followed were printed in pamphlet form by the Twentieth Century Club and later published in volumes one and five, respectively, of the Complete Works. (The lecture as published in volume one of the Complete Works has been given the title "The Spirit and Influence of Vedanta.")

As its name would indicate, the Twentieth Century Club was riding on the crest of the times into the future. It was a dub devoted primarily to social reform, and its standards of membership were high. As described by a contemporary magazine, "It called at once for progressive men, in sympathy with the advancing spirit of brotherhood in the world." It wanted "men to a degree dissatisfied with the existing social and industrial order; men reaching out for light and leadership, humble enough to confess their perplexity in the face of grave problems and teachable enough to receive instruction from any source. This was a big order, and, as might be expected, the membership included men whose biographical sketches can be found in Who Was Who, as well as in various encyclopedias. To name a few: Edward Everett Hale (whom Swamiji had met at Greenacre), John Fiske, Davis R. Dewey, Robert A. Woods, and the club's president, Edwin D. Mead.

To have been invited to speak before Boston's Twentieth Century Club was, in a sense, as great an honor as to have been invited to speak before Harvard's Graduate Philosophical Club. Its membership was as elect and its guest speakers as carefully chosen. "The Twentieth Century Club," a contemporary newspaper noted, "is the modern representative of the old and famous Radical Club of Boston. Like that, it has the most distinguished men of the day as its speakers and guests. The Radical Club itself was not unknown to Swamiji. Among his friends were men and women who had been closely connected with it during its years of glory: notably, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Franklin B. Sanborn, who, like Professor Wright, had recognized Swamiji's genius even before the days of the Parliament of Religions, Julia Ward Howe, Charles Carroll Everett, Lewis G. Janes. In fact, the Radical Club, which had been formed in 1869 when to be "radical" meant to be more liberal than, and in open rebellion against, the main body of the Unitarian Church, was associated both in spirit and in membership with the Free Religious Association, before which Swamiji had spoken in 1894. To speak before the one was, in effect, to speak before the other. It was, however, the Twentieth Century Club that more truly represented the intellectual world of 1896, its interests lying more in the findings and promises of science and in social and economic reforms than in the speculative idealism of theology.

As far as we know, Swamiji's talk before this group was relatively short, but in it he presented compactly and powerfully the essential teachings of Vedanta insofar as they are of relevance to, and importance for, the Western world. He spoke of the broad impersonality of Vedanta, which stands as a background to all sects, which is antagonistic to none, and which, in fact, supports rather than nullifies variety in religious belief: He spoke of the Vedantic teaching of the divinity of man, of the infinite oneness of human life, which is the basis and sanction of all morality and ethics, and in the unfoldment and realization of which alone lies universal brotherhood. Significantly, and perhaps deliberately, Swamiji gave in this last public lecture in America (during his first visit to the West) a proud and eloquent recital of his country's immemorial and consistent history of tolerance which was almost identical with that in his first address at the Parliament of Religions. Also, as in that first talk, he gave in this, his last, a free translation of the Sanskrit verse which stands as the rationale of religious harmony: "As so many rivers, having their source in different mountains, roll down, crooked or straight, and at last come into the ocean-so all these various creeds and religions, taking their start from different standpoints and running through crooked or straight courses, at last come unto Thee. As though taking a long backward look over his work in the West, he seemed to find that the message he had started with the message of universal toleration and sympathy, based on the essential divinity of all men and the identity of their goal was the message he should end with, for this was a basic teaching of bit great Master and one of which the West was in desperate need. To these idealistic men of the Twentieth Century Club, who wanted to advance the "spirit of brotherhood in the , world," he gave the secret in a word: "The Vedanta lays down that each man should be treated not as what he manifests, but as what he stands for. Each human being stands for the divine, and, therefore, every teacher should be helpful, not by condemning man, but by helping him to call forth the divinity that is within him.

It was before these men who sought to mold the coming age that Swamiji bade farewell to the country in which he had spent the better part of three years. According to the pamphlet in which his talk was printed, he said: "I have lived three years amongst you. I have travelled over nearly the whole of this country, and as I am going back from here to my own country, it is meet that I should take this opportunity of expressing my gratitude in this Athens of America.. .. In a few words I would like to sum up all my experiences here. Here alone, in this climate, in this land of America, no question is asked about a man's peculiarities. If a man is a man, that is all, and they take him into their hearts, and that is one thing I have never seen in any other country in the world.

He also spoke at the prestigious and social-reform-conscious Twentieth Century Club in the afternoon of March 28, on "The Vedanta: Its Practical Bearing; How It Differs from Other Philosophies".

Just before lunching with Swamiji, Professor Wright had received news that his two sons were very much better but that bessie had entered upon the uncertain course of the disease. It was a time of extreme anxiety for him. "The tension is not easy to bear," he wrote to his wife; yet (or perhaps therefore) he would devote pages in this same letter to telling her about Swamiji, knowing she would be interested, and she, in turn, could remember him and write of him with affection. "Your letter came about Swami," she wrote on the night of March 30. " . . Dear old Swami! I do love him.

It was not until a day or two after Swamiji had left Boston that Professor Wright received word from Marion, Alabama, of his daughter's death, and not until some six weeks later that this tragic news reached Swamiji in England. Swamiji's letter of condolence, which has also been made available to us by Mr. John K. Wright, is the last he is known to have written to his friend:

16th May 1896_x000d_ 63 St George's Road_x000d_ London. S.W_x000d_ _x000d_ Dear Adhyapakji [Honorable Professor] Last mail brought the very very sad news of the blow that has fallen on you.This is the world my brother-this illusion of Maya-the Lord alone is true. The forms are evanescent but the spirit being in the Lord and of the Lord is immortal and omnipresent All that we ever had are round us this minute for the spirit can neither come nor go only changes its plane of manifestation._x000d_ You are strong and pure and so is Mrs. Wright and I am sure that the Divine in you has arisen and thrown away the lie and delusion that there can be death for anyone. "He who sees in this world of manifoldness that one support of everything, in the midst of a world of unconsciousness that one eternal consciousness, in this evanescent world that one eternal and unchangeable, unto him belongs eternal peace"_x000d_ May the peace of the Lord descend upon you and yours in abundance is the prayer._x000d_ Of your ever loving friend_x000d_ Vivekananda

Swamiji lectured seven times during his stay in Boston, and on Monday, March 30, the day he left the city, the Evening Transcript devoted a long article to his work.Although portions of this article have been quoted in the first and the latest (1981) editions of the Life, it is given here in full. Despite a bit of confusion in connection with the Harvard talk, it conveys, I believe, not only an idea of Swamiji's lectures of this period, but also an idea of Boston's reception of them as reflected in its best of newspapers:

FOR UNIVERSAL RELIGION_x000d_ _x000d_ The Hindu Swami Lectures Before Several Societies._x000d_ _x000d_ The Swami Vivekananda has, during the past few days, conducted a most successful work in connection with the Procopeia. During this time he has given four class lectures for the club itself, with constant audiences of between four and five hundred people, at the Allen Gymnasium, 44 St. Botolph street, two at the house of Mrs. Ole Bull in Cambridge, and one before the professors and graduate students of the philosophical department of Harvard University.

The idea which brought the Swami to America three years ago as Hindu delegate to the Parliament of Religions, and has been the guiding motive of all his subsequent work, both in America and England, is one which appeals strongly to the people whose creation the parliament was, but the methods which he proposes are peculiarly his own. One of his lectures during the week has been "The Ideal of a Universal Religion," but a "harmonious religion" would, perhaps, equally meet the case, if, indeed, it would not more adequately express that for which he is striving. The Swami is not a preacher of theory. If there is any one feature of the Vedanta philosophy, which he propounds, which appears especially refreshing, it is its intense capability of practical demonstration. We have become almost wedded to the idea that religion is a sublime theory which can be brought into practice and made tangible for us only in another life, but the Swami shows us the folly of this. In preaching the Divinity of Man he inculcates a spirit of strength into us which will have none of those barriers between this life and actual realization of the sublime that, to the ordinary man, appear as insurmountable.

In discussing the general lines on which it appears to him universal religion can alone be established, he claims for his plan no super-authority. As he says: "I have also my little plan. I do not know whether it will work or not, and I want to present it to you for discussion. In the first place, I would ask mankind to recognize this maxim: `Do not destroy.' Iconoclastic reformers do no good to the world. Help, if you can; if you cannot, fold your hands, stand by, and see things go on. Therefore say not a word against any man's convictions, so far as they are sincere. Secondly, take man where he stands, and from thence give him a lift.

"Unity in variety is the plan of the universe. Just as we are all men, yet we are all separate. As humanity, I am one with you; as Mr. So-and-so, I am different from you. As a man you are separate from woman, but as human beings you are all one; as a living being you are one with animals and all that lives, but as man you are separate. That existence is God, the ultimate unity in this universe. In Him we are all one. We find, then, that if by the idea of a universal religion is meant that one set of doctrines should be believed by all mankind, it is impossible; it can never be, any more than all faces will be the same. Again, if we expect that there will be one universal mythology, that is also impossible, it cannot be. Neither can there be a universal ritual. When this time comes the world will be destroyed, because variety is the first principle of life. What makes us Formed beings? Differentiation. Perfect balance will be destruction.

"What then do I mean by the ideal of a universal religion? I do not mean a universal philosophy, or a universal mythology, or a universal ritual, but I mean that this world must go on, wheel within wheel. What can we do? We can make it run smoothly, we can lessen friction, we can grease the wheels, as it were. By what? By recognizing variation. Just as we have recognized unity, by our very nature, so we must also recognize variation. We must learn that truth may be expressed in a thousand ways, and each one yet be true. We must learn that the same thing can be viewed from a hundred different stand points, and yet be the same thing.

"In society we see so many various natures of mankind. A practical generalization will be impossible, but for my purpose I have simply characterized them into four. First, the active man; then the emotional man; then the mystical man, and lastly the philosopher.

"To be universal, religion must provide possibility of realizing truth through means suitable to any one of these minds, and a religion which says that through one alone all men must struggle, whether these minds are capable of the struggle or not, must end in agnosticism."

In his lecture on Karma Yoga, the Swami dealt with the science of work. The lecture for the most part analyzed the motives men have in work, and particularly the motive of heaven as a reward for good work on earth. This, said the Swami, is shopkeeping religion. Work alone reaches its highest when it is done absolutely without hope of reward, work for work's sake, and without regard to the consequences.

In discussing Bhakti Yoga, Devotion, the Swami explained the rationale of a Personal God. This idea of devotion and worship of some being who has to be loved, and who can reflect back the love to man, is universal. The lowest stage of the manifestation of this love and devotion is ritualism, when man wants things that are concrete, and abstract ideas are almost impossible. Throughout the history of the world we find man is trying to grasp the abstract through thought forms, or symbols, and the external manifestations of religion. Bells, music, rituals, books, images, come under that head. Man can only think with form and word. Immediately thought comes, form and name flash into the mind with them, so that when we think of God, whether as the Personal God with human shape, or as the Divine Principle, or in any other aspect, we are always thinking of our own highest ideal with some or other form, generally human, because the form of man is the highest of which man can conceive. But, while recognizing this as a necessity of human weakness, and while making proportionate use of rituals, symbols, books and churches, we must always remember that it is very good to be born in a church, but it is very bad to die in a church. If a man dies within the bounds of these forms, it shows that he has not grown, that there has been no uncovering of the real, the Divinity, within him.

True love can be regarded as a triangle. The first angle is, love knows no bargain. So when a man is praying to God, "give me this, and give me that," it is not love. How can it be? "I give you my little prayer, and you give me something in return;" that is mere shopkeeping. The second angle is, love knows no fear. So long as God is regarded as a rewarder or a punisher, there can be no love for him. The third angle, the apex, is, love is always the highest ideal. When we have reached the point where we can worship the ideal as the ideal, all arguments and doubts have vanished forever. The ideal can never escape, because it is part of our own nature.

In his lecture at Harvard University the Swami traced the history, so far as it is known, of the Vedanta philosophy, and showed to what extent the Vedas (the Hindu scriptures) are accepted as authoritative; merely as the foundation for the philosophy in so far as they appeal to the reason. He compared the three schools, the Dualists, who acknowledge a supreme being, and a lesser being manifesting in men, but eternally separate from men. Next he described the philosophy of the Qualified nondualists, whose particular idea is that there is a God and there is nature, but that the soul of nature [?] is simply the expansion, or the body of God, just as the body of man is to man's soul. They claim, in support of this theory, that the effect is never different from the cause, but that it is the cause reproduced in another form, and as God, therefore, is the cause of this universe, he is also the effect. The Monists . . . declare that if there is a God, that God must be both the material and the efficient cause of the universe. Not only is he the Creator; but he is also the created. He himself is this universe, apparently; but, in reality, this universe does not exist it is mere hypnotisation. Differentiation is in name and form only. There is but one soul in the universe, not two, because that which is immaterial cannot be bounded, must be infinite; and there cannot be two infinities, because one would limit the other. The soul is pure, and the appearance of evil is just as a piece of crystal, which is pure in itself, but appears to be variously colored when flowers are placed before it.

In discussing Raja Yoga ["Realization, or the Ultimate of Religion" at the Procopeia], the psychological way to union with God, the Swami expanded upon the power to which the mind can attain through concentration, both in reference to the physical and the spiritual world. It is the one method that we have in all knowledge. From the lowest to the highest, from the smallest worm to the highest sage, they have to use this one method. The astronomer uses it in order to discover the mysteries of the skies, the chemist in his laboratory, the professor in his chair. This is the one call, the one knock, which opens the gates of nature and lets out the floods of light. This is the one key, the only power-concentration. In the present state of our bodies we are so much distracted, the mind is frittering away its energies upon a hundred sorts of things. By scientific control of the forces which work the body this can be done, and its ultimate effect is realization. Religion cannot consist of talk. It only becomes religion when it becomes tangible, and until we strive to feel that of which we talk so much, we are no better than agnostics, for the latter are sincere and we are not.

The Twentieth Century Club had the Swami as their guest Saturday [March 28], and heard an address from him on the "Practical Side of the Vedanta Philosophy." He leaves Boston today, and will, within a few days, sail for England, en route for India.

Swamiji left Boston on Monday, March 30. Although, as we shall see in the following chapter, he did not leave America until a little over two weeks later, he had delivered in Boston the last of the public lectures he ,was to give during his first American visit and had made his official farewell.

From Boston the Swami travelled on March 30 to Chicago, the city of his first triumph in the Western world.

The Swami Vivekananda has, during the past few days, conducted a most successful work in connection with the Procopeia. During this time he has given four class lectures for the Club itself, with constant audiences of between four and five hundred people, at _x000d_ _x000d_ # _x000d_ the Allen Gymnasium, 44 St. Botolph Street; two at the house of Mrs. Ole Bull in Cambridge; and one before the professors and graduate students of the philosophical department of Harvard University. _x000d_ … One of his lectures during the week has been, "The Ideal of a Universal Religion". . . . The Swami is not a preacher of theory. If there is any one feature of the Vedanta philosophy, which he propounds, which appears especially refreshing, it is its intense capability of practical demonstration. We have become almost wedded to the idea that religion is a sublime theory which can [not ?] he brought into practice and made tangible for us only in another life, but the Swami shows us the folly of this. In preaching the Divinity of Man he inculcates a spirit of strength into us which will have none of those barriers between this life and actual realization of the sublime that, to the ordinary man, appear as insurmountable. _x000d_ Quoting the sum and substance of the Swami's lectures during the month of March on Karma-Yoga, Bhakti-Yoga, and the one on the Vedanta philosophy before Harvard University, the journal concludes with the following brief resume of his lecture on Raja-Yoga at Boston: _x000d_ In discussing Raja-Yoga, the psychological way to union with God, the Swami expanded upon the power to which the mind can attain through concentration, both in reference to the physical and the spiritual world. It is the one method that we have in all knowledge. From the lowest to the highest, from the smallest worm to the highest sage, they have to 'use this one method. The astronomer uses it in order to discover the mysteries of the skies, the chemist in his laboratory, the professor in his chair. This is the one call, the one knock, which opens the gates of nature and lets out the floods of light. This is the one key, the only power — concentration. In the present state of our bodies we are so much distracted, the mind is frittering away its energies upon a hundred sorts of things. By scientific control of the forces which work the body this can be done, and its ultimate effect is realization. Religion cannot consist of talk. It only becomes religion when it becomes tangible, and until we strive to feel that of which we talk so much, we are no better than agnostics, for the latter are sincere and we are not.

The Vedantist says that a man is neither born nor dies nor goes to heaven, and that reincarnation is really a myth with regard to the soul. The example is given of a book being turned over. It is the book that evolves, not the man. Every soul is omnipresent, so where can it come or go? These births and deaths are changes in nature which we are mistaking for changes in us._x000d_ Reincarnation is the evolution of nature and the manifestation of the God within._x000d_ The Vedanta says that each life is built upon the past, and that when we can look back over the whole past we are free. The desire to be free will take the form of a religious disposition from childhood. A few years will, as it were, make all truth clear to one. After leaving this life, and while waiting for the next, a man is still in the phenomenal._x000d_ We would describe the soul in these words: This soul the sword cannot cut, nor the spear pierce; the fire cannot burn nor water melt it; indestructible, omnipresent is this soul. Therefore weep not for it._x000d_ If it has been very bad, we believe that it will become good in the time to come. The fundamental principle is that there is eternal freedom for every one. Every one must come to it. We have to struggle, impelled by our desire to be free. Every other desire but that to be free is illusive. Every good action, the Vedantist says, is a manifestation of that freedom._x000d_ I do not believe that there will come a time when all the evil in the world will vanish. How could that be? This stream goes on. Masses of water go out at one end, but masses are coming in at the other end._x000d_ The Vedanta says that you are pure and perfect, and that there is a state beyond good and evil, and that is your own nature. It is higher even than good. Good is only a lesser differentiation than evil._x000d_ We have no theory of evil. We call it ignorance._x000d_ So far as it goes, all dealing with other people, all ethics, is in the phenomenal world. As a most complete statement of truth, we would not think of applying such things as ignorance to God. Of Him we say that He is Existence, Knowledge, and Bliss Absolute. Every effort of thought and speech will make the Absolute phenomenal and break Its character._x000d_ There is one thing to be remembered: that the assertion--I am God--cannot be made with regard to the sense-world. If you say in the sense-world that you are God, what is to prevent your doing wrong? So the affirmation of your divinity applies only to the noumenal. If I am God, I am beyond the tendencies of the senses and will not do evil. Morality of course is not the goal of man, but the means through which this freedom is attained. The Vedanta says that Yoga is one way that makes men realise this divinity. The Vedanta says this is done by the realisation of the freedom within and that everything will give way to that. Morality and ethics will all range themselves in their proper places._x000d_ All the criticism against the Advaita philosophy can be summed up in this, that it does not conduce to sense-enjoyment; and we are glad to admit that._x000d_ The Vedanta system begins with tremendous pessimism, and ends with real optimism. We deny the sense-optimism but assert the real optimism of the Supersensuous. That real happiness is not in the senses but above the senses; and it is in every man. The sort of optimism which we see in the world is what will lead to ruin through the senses._x000d_ Abnegation has the greatest importance in our philosophy. Negation implies affirmation of the Real Self. The Vedanta is pessimistic so far as it negatives the world of the senses, but it is optimistic in its assertion of the real world._x000d_ The Vedanta recognises the reasoning power of man a good deal, although it says there is something higher than intellect; but the road lies through intellect._x000d_ We need reason to drive out all the old superstitions; and what remains is Vedantism. There is a beautiful Sanskrit poem in which the sage says to himself: "Why weepest thou, my friend? There is no fear nor death for thee. Why weepest thou? There is no misery for thee, for thou art like the infinite blue sky, unchangeable in thy nature. Clouds of all colours come before it, play for a moment, and pass away; it is the same sky. Thou hast only to drive away the clouds."_x000d_ We have to open the gates and clear the way. The water will rush in and fill in by its own nature, because it is there already._x000d_ Man is a good deal conscious, partly unconscious, and there is a possibility of getting beyond consciousness. It is only when we become men that we can go beyond all reason. The words higher or lower can be used only in the phenomenal world. To say them of the noumenal world is simply contradictory, because there is no differentiation there. Man-manifestation is the highest in the phenomenal world. The Vedantist says he is higher than the Devas. The gods will all have to die and will become men again, and in the man-body alone they will become perfect._x000d_ It is true that we create a system, but we have to admit that it is not perfect, because the reality must be beyond all systems. We are ready to compare it with other systems and are ready to show that this is the only rational system that can be; but it is not perfect, because reason is not perfect. It is, however, the only possible rational system that the human mind can conceive._x000d_ It is true to a certain extent that a system must disseminate itself to be strong. No system has disseminated itself so much as the Vedanta. It is the personal contact that teaches even now. A mass of reading does not make men; those who were real men were made so by personal contact. It is true that there are very few of these real men, but they will increase. Yet you cannot believe that there will come a day when we shall all be philosophers. We do not believe that there will come a time when there will be all happiness and no unhappiness._x000d_ Now and then we know a moment of supreme bliss, when we ask nothing, give nothing, know nothing but bliss. Then it passes, and we again see the panorama of the universe moving before us; and we know that it is but a mosaic work set upon God, who is the background of all things._x000d_ The Vedanta teaches that Nirvana can be attained here and now, that we do not have to wait for death to reach it. Nirvana is the realisation of the Self; and after having once known that, if only for an instant, never again can one be deluded by the mirage of personality. Having eyes, we must see the apparent, but all the time we know what it is; we have found out its true nature. It is the screen that hides the Self, which is unchanging._x000d_ The screen opens, and we find the Self behind it. All change is in the screen. In the saint the screen is thin, and the reality can almost shine through. In the sinner the screen is thick, and we are liable to lose sight of the truth that the Atman is there, as well as behind the saint's screen. When the screen is wholly removed, we find it really never existed--that we were the Atman and nothing else, even the screen is forgotten._x000d_ The two phases of this distinction in life are--first, that the man who knows the real Self, will not be affected by anything; secondly, that that man alone can do good to the world. That man alone will have seen the real motive of doing good to others, because there is only one, it cannot be called egoistic, because that would be differentiation. It is the only selflessness. It is the perception of the universal, not of the individual. Every case of love and sympathy is an assertion of this universal. "Not I, but thou." Help another because you are in him and he is in you, is the philosophical way of putting it. The real Vedantist alone will give up his life for a fellow-man without any compunction, because he knows he will not die. As long as there is one insect left in the world, he is living; as long as one mouth eats, he eats. So he goes on doing good to others; and is never hindered by the modern ideas of caring for the body. When a man reaches this point of abnegation, he goes beyond the moral struggle, beyond everything. He sees in the most learned priest, in the cow, in the dog, in the most miserable places, neither the learned man, nor the cow, nor the dog, nor the miserable place, but the same divinity manifesting itself in them all. He alone is the happy man; and the man who has acquired that sameness has, even in this life, conquered all existence. God is pure; therefore such a man is said to be living in God. Jesus says, "Before Abraham was, I am." That means that Jesus and others like him are_x000d_ free spirits; and Jesus of Nazareth took human form, not by the compulsion of his past actions, but just to do good to mankind. It is not that when a man becomes free, he will stop and become a dead lump; but he will be more active than any other being, because every other being acts only under compulsion, he alone through freedom._x000d_ If we are inseparable from God, have we no individuality? Oh, yes: that is God. Our individuality is God. This is not the individuality you have now; you are coming towards that. Individuality means what cannot be divided. How can you call this individuality? One hour you are thinking one way, and the next hour another way, and two hours after, another way. Individuality is that which changes not--is beyond all things, changeless. It would be tremendously dangerous for this state to remain in eternity, because then the thief would always remain a thief and the blackguard a blackguard. If a baby died, he would have to remain a baby. The real individuality is that which never changes and will never change; and that is the God within us._x000d_ Vedantism is an expansive ocean on the surface of which a man-of-war could be near a catamaran. So in the Vedantic ocean a real Yogi can be by the side of an idolater or even an atheist. What is more, in the Vedantic ocean, the Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian, and Parsee are all one, all children of the Almighty God.