At the close of his address, a white-haired and well known philosopher said to the Swami, "You have spoken splendidly, sir, and I thank you heartily, but you have told us nothing new." The lecturer's sonorous tones rang through the room in reply, "Sir, I have told you the Truth. That, the Truth, is as old as the immemorial hills, as old as humanity, as old as the Creation, as old as the Great God. If I have told it in such words as will make you think, make you live up to your thinking, do I not do well in telling it?" The murmur of "Hear!" "Hear!" and the louder clapping of hands showed how completely the Swami had carried his audience with him. . . ._x000d_
"I will tell you how I came to know the Truth," continued the Swami, and in the telling they learned something of the earth-life of Sri Ramakrishna; the sublime simplicity of his character; his indefatigable search for Truth in this religious phase and that; his discovery and his fine proclamation of it: "Where I am, there the Truth is!" . . ._x000d_
From first to last of this address he dwelt on the message of his Master, Sri Ramakrishna. He had, he said, not one little word of his own to utter, not one infinitesimal thought of his own to unfold. Everything, every single thing, all he was himself, all he could be to us, all he might be to the world, came from that single source; from the pure soul, from the illimitable inspiration who, seated "there in my beloved India, had solved the tremendous secret and bestowed the solution broadcast, ungrudgingly, with divine prodigality."_x000d_
In passages of exquisite eloquence he dilated upon Sri Ramakrishna. Self was utterly forgotten, altogether ignored. . . . "Sri Ramakrishna is the spring of this phase of the earth's religious life, of its impulses and its activities. If I can show the world one glimpse of my Master I shall not live in vain."
It was in addition to that spontaneous and moving tribute that Swamiji devoted an entire lecture or class to Sri Ramakrishna. This talk was later combined by an editor in New York (possibly Miss Waldo) with the lecture Swamiji had given at Madison Square Garden on February 23, 1896, and the composite was published under the title "My Master." As we have seen in Part One (chapter seven) of this book, the New York lecture has recently been released from that tangle through a process of scholarly extraction. As for the English lecture, entitled "Ramakrishna Paramahamsa," we need only turn (carefully) to the crumbling Brahmavadins of September 15 and October 1 of 1897 to find it as Goodwin took it down in England and saw it through the press in Madras. Swamiji here gave a brief sketch of Sri Ramakrishna, explaining along the way some ancient customs of India, against the background of which certain incidents in that extraordinary and unparalleled life could be understood by a Western audience. There were two themes in this lecture to which he gave special emphasis, and toward the end he summed them up:
Studying his life I learnt certain things. Of these things that I learnt, two ideas, I think, would be valuable for all humanity. The first [is] the idea of realisation-that religion does not consist in erecting temples, or building churches, that it is neither in books, nor words, nor in lectures, nor in societies, it is not in the power of organisation, but religion consists in realisation. As a fact we all know that nothing will satisfy us until we know the truth for ourselves. However we may argue; however much we may know, but one thing will satisfy us-our own realisation. And such an experience is possible for every one of us, if we only try. The first ideal of this attempt to realise religion is that of renunciation; we must give up. As far as we can, we must give up. Darkness and light, enjoyment of the world and enjoyment of God will never go together. Let people try it, if they will. I have seen millions in every country who have tried, but, after all, it comes to nothing. If one word remains true, it is the saying, give up everything for the sake of the Lord. This is a long task, but you can begin it here and now. Bit by bit we must go towards it.
The second ideal that I have learnt, and which is per¬haps the freshest or the newest, is the wonderful truth that the religions of the world are not contradictory nor antago¬nistic; they are various phases of the one eternal Religion. That Religion is applied to different planes of existence, is applied to the opinions of various minds and various races; there never was my religion or yours, my national religion or your national religion; there never existed many reli-gions; there is only one. The one infinite Religion existed through eternity and will ever exist, and this Religion is expressing itself in various countries in various ways. As such, we must respect them all, and we must try to take them all in as far as we can. Religions manifest themselves not only according to race and geographical position, but according to individual powers. In one it is manifesting itself as intense activity, as work. In another it is manifest¬ing itself as mysticism, in another it is manifesting itself in philosophy, and so forth. It is wrong when we say to others your methods are not right. . . . To learn this one central secret, that the Truth may be one and yet many at the same time, that we may have different visions of the same Truth from different standpoints, is exactly what has got to be. . . . And this idea, above all other ideas, I find to be the crying need of the day.
Swamiji concluded this lecture with the words:_x000d_
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In every sect-even among the Mohammedans, whom we always regard as the most exclusive, even among them -we find that wherever there was a man trying to realise religion, from his lips have come the fiery words: "Thou art the Lord of all, Thou art in the heart of all, Thou art the guide of all, Thou art the Teacher of all, and Thou carest infinitely more for the land of Thy children than we can ever do."