"My ideal indeed can be put into a few words and that is: to preach unto mankind their divinity and how to make it manifest in every movement of life." Thus Swamiji had written to Margaret Noble on June 7, 1896. "Let us call and call," he wrote in this same letter, "till the sleeping gods awake, till the God within answers the call. Now in the autumn of the year, the last season of his first visit to the West, he was calling with all the power of his great heart to those sleeping gods, and this through class-lectures in which his message to the people of the West reached its culmination-even as had the Upanishads- `with a grand flourish of Advaita ideas. At this point I should perhaps remind the reader that .in the spring at St. George's Road Swamiji had dwelt at Length (or so we are told) on bhakti and raja yoga, as well as on jnana. Most, if not all, of those who were now attending his fall classes were old timers; they had heard and, presumably, assimilated what had gone before and would hear nothing now to nullify or contradict it. In his own vast being, all paths were of a piece, and each would find its harmony with the others in the consciousness of those who listened to him. His emphasis, to be sure, was varied. Indeed Swamiji, who had transcended all types of mind and temperament, could pour his whole being into any mold: he could be now the total bhakta, now the total jnani, now the total yogi. He could make each path seem the best; but at the same time he unified them all. Philosophically, their differences found their harmony in the grand, all-embracing teaching of nondualism, to which he was now giving full attention. If he did not speak specifically of devotion to God, the need for spiritual love was implicit in his every word, and if he did not give instruction in meditation, the need to still and purify one's mind (if the truths he taught were to become realities in one's life) went without saying, he having said it before in the spring classes and, surely, in private interviews as well.

It would not be long before the outcome of the battle monotheistic religion was waging against science would be decisive. Indeed, to a large extent, science was already the victor at the close of the nineteenth century: the religion of a Creator and Ruler God could no longer be accepted by the educated, and the result was either what Swamiji called "a hideous mass of unbelief or, perhaps worse, a belief that amounted to "not-thinking carelessness. But as he had pointed out in earlier lectures, religion was a necessity of human life, not because of man's habitual need to rely on and pray to some superior being, but because Spirit was the very essence of life, and the need to manifest that essence was the driving power of civilization itself. "The fall [of a nation] begins when this pursuit after the Infinite . . . Has ceased," he had said earlier in the year. "That is to say, the mainspring of the strength of every race lies in its spirituality, and the death of that race begins the day that spirituality wanes and materialism gains ground. That day was undeniably coming in the West, and it was coming with a vengeance, for "the physical sciences are better equipped now than formerly and religions have become less and less [well] equipped. It was not the development of science and technology per se that was to blame.

The difference between God and the devil [he said in "Vedanta and Privilege"] is in nothing except in unselfishness and selfishness. The devil knows as much as God, is as powerful as God; only he has no holiness ¬that makes him a devil. Apply the same idea to the modern world; excess of knowledge and power, without holiness, makes human beings devils: Tremendous power is being acquired by the manufacture of machines and other appliances, and privilege is claimed today as it never has been claimed in the history of the world. That is why Vedanta wants to preach against it, to break down this tyrannising over the souls of men.

Keenly aware of the inadequacy of dualistic religion to stand in the face of science, Swamiji tried in many ways to show that on its deeper levels the religious way of looking at the universe was not "unscientific." In his raja yoga classes, for instance, he had pointed out that both religion and science sought "the One out of which the manifold is being manufactured; and that religion, like any science, had its own methods of procedure, its own premises, and its own conclusions based on reason and experience. In his New York advanced jnana yoga classes he had attempted to point out the correspondence between the evolutionary theories of Sankhya cosmology and the most recent theories and findings of science. As it happened, Swamiji was somewhat handicapped in this effort: while he may have anticipated-indeed, as pointed out before, he sometimes seems to have been convenient with -a good deal of present-day knowledge, his audiences, even the scientists and scholars among them, were still geared to Newtonian physics, which could not compare in subtlety and range with the physics of' today or, for that matter, with the knowledge possessed by the ancient rishis. Now, in the fall of 1896, he took another and, one thinks, more telling approach to the reconciliation of science and religion. In the third of his "Practical Vedanta" classes and, more Fully, in the Wednesday evening class that followed it, he showed that Advaita , satisfies, as dualistic religions cannot, two principles fundamental to all scientific inquiry.

This fight [between religious and secular knowledge] can¬not last much longer without breaking to pieces all the buildings of religion.

The question is: Is there a way out? . . . Is religion to justify itself by the discoveries of reason, through which every other science justifies itself? . . . In my opinion this must be so, and I am also of opinion that the sooner it is done the better. . .'. All that is dross will be taken off, no doubt, but the essential parts of religion will emerge triumphant out of this investigation. . . .

What do I mean by reason? I mean what every edu¬cated man or woman is wanting to do at the present time, to apply the discoveries of secular knowledge to religion. The first principle of reasoning is that the particular is explained by the general, the general by the more general, until we come to the universal. . . . The last concept that we have, the most universal, [is] that of existence. ... [This generalization or classification] is what is meant by knowledge. . . .

A second explanation [principle?] of knowledge is that the explanation of a thing must come from inside and not from outside. . . . This tendency you will find throughout modern thought; in one word, what is meant by science is that the explanations of things are in their own nature, and that no external beings or existences are require to explain what is going on in the universe. . .. And this is one of the features of science which I mean to apply to religion. . . . There is an ancient theory of a personal deity entirely separate from the universe, which has been held from the very earliest time. . . . What is the cause of the universe? Something outside of it, some being who is moving this universe! . . . And religions an falling to pieces, because they cannot give a better explanation than that.

Another idea connected with this, the manifestation of the same principle that the explanation of everything comes from inside it, is the modern law of evolution. The whole meaning of evolution is simply that the nature of a thing is reproduced, that the effect is nothing but the cause in another form. . . .

Can there be a religion satisfying these two principles? I think there can be. . . . We have to come to an ultimate generalisation which not only will be the most universal of all generalisations but out of which everything else must come. It will be of the same nature as the lowest effect; the cause, the highest, the ultimate, the primal cause must be the same as the lowest and most distant of its effects [in] a series of evolutions. The Brahman of the Vedanta fulfils that condition, because Brahman is the last generalisation to which we can come. It has no attributes but is Existence, Knowledge, and Bliss-Absolute. Existence, we have seen, is the very ultimate generalisation which the human mind can come to. . . .

Thus we see that the religion of the Vedanta can satisfy the demands of the scientific world by referring it to the highest generalisation and to the law of evolution. That the explanation of a thing comes from within itself is still more completely satisfied by Vedanta. The Brahman, the God of the Vedanta, has nothing outside of Himself; nothing at all. All thee indeed is He: He is in the universe: He is the universe Himself.

Swamiji went on to say that while the Impersonal God is a higher generalization than the Personal, the Impersonal does not thereby nullify the Personal but, rather, makes him, possible, for "without the Impersonal, the Personal cannot remain.

If you mean to say there is a being entirely separate from this universe, who has created this universe just by His will out of nothing, that cannot be proved. Such a state of things cannot be. But if we understand the idea of the Impersonal then the idea of the Personal can remain there also. This universe, in its various forms, is but the various readings of the same Impersonal . . . and the Personal God is the highest reading that can be attained to of that Impersonal by the human intellect. So that the Personal God is true as much as this chair is true, as much as this world is true, but no more. It is not absolute truth. . . . A Personal God is explicable as the highest manifestation of the Impersonal. You and I are very low manifestations, and the Personal God is the highest of which we can conceive. Nor can you or I become that Personal God. When the Vedanta says you and I are God, it does not mean the Personal God. . . . We and the Ruler of the Universe are one, but as manifested beings, men, we are His eternal slaves, His worshippers. Thus we see that the Personal God remains. Everything else in this relative world remains, and religion is made to stand on a better foundation. Therefore it is necessary that we first know the Impersonal in order to know the the Personal.

The Personal God, far from being dethroned, was supported; at the same time, thinking men and women¬ those who set the overall tone of world thought would be able to accept religion, to see it not as a set of soft-brained, soothing fantasies, but as an indispensable means to a true knowledge of Reality. "Advaita-the nonduality, the Oneness, the idea of the Impersonal God," he said, "is the only religion that can have any hold on any intellectual people.

Its appeal to reason was one of the great practicalities of Advaita Vedanta. But the two-part question-how does one practice Advaita in everyday life, and what does its practice accomplish in that life?-was not thereby answered. In his classes on "Pratical Vedanta". Swamiji would answer both part, but first he clarified an all-important point. Almost at the outset of the series he defined what he meant by practical:

[Ordinarily] we all use this word practical for things we like and can do. Therefore I will ask you to understand that Vedanta, though it is intensely practical, is always so in the sense of the ideal. . . .

. . . This we must always bear in mind, that in the Vedanta there is no attempt at reconciling the present life-the hypnotised life, this false life which we have assumed-with the ideal; but this false life must go, and the real life which is always existing must manifest itself, must shine out. No man becomes purer and purer, it is a matter of greater manifestation. The veil drops away, and the native purity of the soul begins to manifest itself. Everything is ours already-infinite purity, freedom, love, and power.

The Vedanta also says that not only can this be realised in the depths of forests or caves, but by men is all possible conditions of life. . . . But we must not degrade the ideal to the actual. : : . The present life should be made to coincide with life eternal.

In the beginning at least, there would be resistance and struggle, for the human mind has little inclination to budge from any given position. "To harmonise the ideal with the life," he said, ". . . Is the temptation of our lives. There is this strongly conservative tendency in human nature: we do not like to move one step forward. I think of mankind just as I read of persons who become frozen in snow; all such, they say, want to go to sleep. . . . That is what we are doing all our life, getting frozen from the feet upwards, and yet wanting to sleep. Therefore you must struggle towards the ideal. And, if that struggle was to be successful, the ideal must be understood.

He never disparaged the role of intellect in spiritual struggle. On the contrary, he urged those who wanted to make progress in spiritual life to have a sound intellectual grasp of what they were trying to do. Not that the intellect could provide spiritual knowledge or even a restless desire for it (no more than could a map impart the experience of travel or excite wanderlust), but it could save one from losing the way; it could prevent the mind from bogging down in superstition and Blind belief.

I will abide by any reason [Swamiji said in "Practical Vedanta-III"] because with all its weakness there is some chance of my getting at truth through it; while by the other means [reliance on authority] there is no such hope at all. . . . What we want is progress, development, realisation. No theories ever made men higher. No amount of books can help us to become purer. The only power is in realisation, and that lies in ourselves and coma from thinking. Let men think. A clod of earth never thinks; but it remains only a lump of earth. The glory of man is that he is a thinking being.

He provided many lines of reasoning by which the student could intellectually comprehend the truth of and necessity for Advaita Vedanta and thereby push forward to its realization without being hobbled by uncertainty and confusion. In his advanced jnana yoga class in New York, in which he had discussed Vedanta cosmology, he had, for instance, explained the Sankhya systems of ontology and psychology; in his raja yoga classes he had described the methods of practice based on this cosmological scheme. In London he had entered deeply into the theory of Maya, and now in his second London series he pointed out, as we have just seen, that Advaita Vedanta satisfies the basic principles of knowledge. In this series (no-tably in the third and fourth classes of `,`Practical Vedanta") he traced another, though related, line of thought, in which he showed that only the philosophy of monism can resolve the age-old battle between idealists and realists, noumenalists and phenomenalists, between those who state, not without good reason, that all that exist certainly all that we can ever know to exist-is a continually whirling kaleidoscope of phenomena and those who wish to believe, but cannot rationally prove, that behind phenomena there is an unchanging noumenon or substance, or, in religious terminology; God. The failure to reply in a scientific manner to empirical philosophies was one reason that dualistic religions, positing God and matter, substance and qualities, could not hold their own in modern times. "The only answer we get," Swamiji said in "Practical Vedanta-III," "is from the monistic theory of the Vedanta. It is true that only one exists, and that one is either phenomenon or noumenon."

It is not true [he went on] that there are two-something changing, and in and through that, something which does not change; but it is the one and the same thing which appears as changing, and which is in reality unchangeable. We have come to think of the body and mind and soul as many, but really there is only one; and that one is appearing in all these various forms.

This was, of course, another way of saying that monism arrives at the highest possible generalization-the Impersonal Brahman, which subsumes within Itself (or appears as) the Personal God, the souls, and the world. "There is but one life," Swamiji said in "Practical Vedanta-I," "one world, one existence. Everything is that One. And, as he had explained at length in his Maya classes, "That One is manifesting Himself as many, as matter, spirit, mind, thought, and everything else." And that One is the Self: "Thou art That." The Self, "the shining One," was to be realized and manifested in everyday life. The question was how.

In his yoga classes in New York (and no doubt in London as well) Swamiji had given varied answers to this question, advising a balanced mixture of all methods. Now in this series on practical Vedanta he did indeed combine them, for though these classes were concerned primarily with jnana yoga, it was a jnana yoga that incorporated into itself an Advaita-based karma yoga as well as a bhakti yoga that took for the object of devotion every manifestation of Brahman-most particularly that highest of all visible manifestations, one's fellow man. Here was a great synthesis of yogas, by means of which the Impersonal God is conceived as fully occupying every particle and every event of the relative world, as water fully occupies the wave. Here work and love are not shunned as relating to an ensnaring delusion, but are looked upon as direct paths to the center of things, for both are seen as the play, as it were, between the manifestations, or appearances, of One Being. At any point, at any time, one can penetrate to the Reality. "The theme of the Vedanta is to see the Lord in everything," Swamiji said in his second "Practical Vedanta" class, "to see things in their real nature, not as they appear to be. . . . This is the real, practical side of Vedanta. . . . It does not show that this world is vain and does not exist, but it says; `Understand what this world is, so that it may not hurt you.'

But while this understanding did not require one to flee from the world to a forest or cave, monastery or hermitage, it did require renunciation. "What philosophy insists on," Swamiji had said in his earlier lecture "Realisation," "is not to give up joys, but to know what joy really is. . . . But [and this was a very big but] to understand that, we have to go through the negation, and then the positive side will begin. We have to give up ignorance and all that is false, and then truth will begin to reveal itself to us. When we have grasped the truth, things which we gave up at first will take new shape and form, will appear to us in a new light and become deified. Thus Advaita Vedanta practiced in the world, or in everyday life, was not a matter of throwing a mantle of philosophical words over the manifold universe, it was a hard-fought matter of conquering sense desire, of attaining inner renunciation, of elevating life to the idea. "Until one has conquered the desires for enjoyment," Swamiji said, "the truth will not shine in him. But the conquest could certainly be made on the battlefield itself. It was a matter of seeing oneself and the world ac Brahman, or Spirit, and as nothing else. This was, of course, the very height of spiritual perception; it was the vision of one totally free of delusion; it was, indeed, the goal of spiritual practice. The practice itself, as Swamiji prescribed it again and again, was to struggle continuously to think, to feel, and to act under all circumstances in the way a knower of Brahman would spontaneously and naturally think, feel, and act. This effort to treat the world and to react to it realistically, in the Vedantic sense, would lead unfailingly to the Reality Itself; effort would gradually (or suddenly) become effortless perception; all ways of life, when understood as manifestations of Brahman, would become direct revelations of Him. Such practice was an affirmation (and a celebration) through service, love, and reason of the One Reality; it was an affirmation in which all modes of life were transformed into yogas leading to the realization of the Self.

Thus Swamiji, emphasizing the positive side of Advaita Vedanta, brought it to the marketplaces of the world. "We shall see," he said in his first "Practical Vedanta" class, "how this Vedanta can be carried into our everyday life, the city life, the country life, the national life, and the home life of every nation. For if a religion cannot help man wherever he may be, wherever he stands, it is not of much use; it will remain only a theory of the chosen few. . . . The principles of Vedanta, or the ideal of religion, or whatever you may call it, will be fulfilled by its capacity for performing this great function.

As Swamiji pointed out in "The Absolute and Manifestation," this was not the first time Advaita had been given to the people. It had come whenever materialism had prevailed. "At first," he said, "some monks got hold of [this Advaita] and took it to the forests, and so it came to be called the `Forest Philosophy'. By the mercy of the Lord, the Buddha came and preached it to the masses, and the whole nation became Buddhists. . . . Before the Buddha came, materialism had spread to a fearful extent, and it was of a most hideous kind. . . . A thousand years after his death a similar state of things again prevailed. . . .. Then Shankaracharya arose and once more revivified the Vedanta philosophy. He made it a rationalistic philosophy. "We want today," Swamiji said in this same lecture, "that bright sun of [Shankara's] intellectuality joined with the heart of Buddha, the wonderful infinite heart of love and mercy. This union will give us the highest philosophy. Science and religion will meet and shake hands. Poetry and philosophy will become friends. This will be the religion of the future, and if we can work it out, we may be sure that it will be for all times and peoples. And Swamiji, the third great giver of Advaita Vedanta to the people, had been working it out. During the whole of his Western mission, particularly throughout 1895 and 1896, he had been presenting this union of intellect and heart to the modern world, and in these last lectures of 1896, he brought it into sharp focus.

"My idea," he said, "is to show that the highest ideal of morality and unselfishness goes hand in hand with the highest metaphysical conception. . . . Human knowledge is not antagonistic to human well-being. On the contrary, it is knowledge alone that will save us in every department of life-in knowledge is worship. The more we know the better for us. But the highest knowledge did not lie in some vast and complex compendium; rather, it was contained in the simplest of truths, easily stated in both its metaphysical and its practical aspects. "[Truth] has to be made practical," he said at the very close of his "Practical Vedanta" classes, "to be made simple (for the highest truths are always simple), so that it may penetrate every pore of human society and become the property of the highest intellects and the commonest minds, of the man, woman, and child at the same time.

And indeed the simplicity of Swamiji's practical presentation of the most profound philosophy was one of his unique contributions to religious culture. For instance, his application of one of the great culminate mahavakyas of the Vedanta, "Thou art That," to any circumstance of life took the form of two commandments: Have faith in yourself, and recognize that the universe is one. "What is there to be taught more in religion than the oneness of the universe and faith in oneself? He asked in his first class in "Practical Vedanta," and with one burning sentence after another he extended these two dicta into everyday life, as though throwing lifelines out into the world.

The first, faith in one's self, worked on every level-physical, mental, spiritual. It worked for everyone everywhere, regardless of his condition or of the odds against him, for it was a matter simply of standing on the unshakable ground of one's real nature, the all-powerful Spirit. "Never say `No,' " Swamiji instructed; "never say `I cannot,' for you are infinite. Even time and space are as nothing compared with your nature. You can do anything and everything; you are almighty. It was an entirely practical ideal:

The ideal of faith in ourselves is of the greatest help to us. If faith in ourselves had been more extensively taught and practised, I am sure a very large portion of the evils and miseries that we have would have vanished. Throughout the history of mankind, if any motive power has been more potent than another in the lives of all great men and women, it is that of faith in themselves. Born with the consciousness that they were to be greet, they became great. Let a man go down as low as possible; then must come a time when out of sheer desperation he will take an upward curve and will learn to have faith in himself But it is better for us that we should know it from the very first. Why should we have all these bitter experiences in order to gain faith in ourselves? We can see that all the difference between man and man is owing to the existence or nonexistence of faith in himself. Faith in ourselves will do everything. . . . Do you know how much energy, how many powers, how many forces are still lurking behind that frame of yours? What scientist has known all that is in man? Millions of years have passed since man first came here, and yet but one infinitesimal part of his powers has been manifested. Therefore, you must not say that you are weak. How do you know what possibilities lie behind that degradation on the surface? You know but little of that which is within you. For behind you is the ocean of infinite power and blessednes.

How to tap that ocean of infinite power and blessedness and channel it into every field and corner of human life? The way, he said, was by saturating one's consciousness with an awareness of that latent power. "Hear day and night that you are the Soul."

Repeat it to yourselves day and night till it enters into your very veins, till it tingles in every drop of blood, till it is in your flesh and bone. Let the whole body be full of that one ideal. . . . Meditate upon it, and out of that will come work. . . . Action will come. Fill yourselves with the ideal; whatever you do, think well on it. All your actions will. Be magnified, transformed, deified by the very power of the thought.

Out of that thought will come tremendous strength of character, fearlessness in the face of death, discrimination between right and wrong, unwavering moral courage, and a selfishness that scorns all thought of gain. What to fear, what to lose, what to gain if one's being is centered in the Self? Swamiji's classes resounded with this call to "the sleeping gods"-a call that lay at the very heart of all practical religion; for unless those gods awoke, nothing in heaven or on earth could make man's lot on earth a happier one; for nothing else could release him from the grip of fear. With the strength of the Self, on the other hand, anything and everything could be accomplished.

Strength, therefore, is the one thing needful [Swamiji declared in "The Freedom of the Soul"]. Strength is the medicine for the world's disease. Strength is the medicine which the poor must have when tyrannised over by the rich. Strength is the medicine that the ignorant must have when oppressed by the learned; and it is the medicine that sinners must have when tryannised over by other sinners; and nothing gives such strength as this idea of monism. Nothing makes us so moral as this idea of monism. Nothing makes us work so well at our best and highest as when all the responsibility is thrown upon ourselves. [And in the last of his classes on "Practical Vedanta":] Build up your character, and manifest your real nature, the Effulgent, the Resplendent, the Ever Pure, and call It up in everyone that you see. . . . This is the highest prayer that the Advaita teaches. This is the one prayer, to remember our true nature, the God who is always within us, thinking of it always as infinite, almighty, ever-good, ever-beneficent, selfless, bereft of all limitations. And because that nature is selfless, it is strong and fearless; for only to selfishness comes fear. He who has nothing to desire for himself, whom does he fear, and what can frighten him? What fear has death for him? What fear has evil for him?

In America such powerful exhortations had raised a hue and cry among Christian ministers; even in England the idea of man's almightiness may have seemed to militate against the Christian teaching of humility before God. The Vedantic teaching was, actua(ly, the same call to perfection, but in another mode. "The one takes the positive side," Swamiji said, "and the other the negative side. One shows to man his strength and the other his weakness."

There may be weakness, says the Vedanta, but . . . being reminded of weakness does not help much; give strength, and strength does not come by thinking of weakness all the time. The remedy for weakness is not brooding over weakness, but thinking of strength. Teach men of the strength that is already within them. Instead of telling them they are sinners, the Vedanta takes the opposite position, and says, "You are pure and perfect, and what you call sin does not belong to you." Sins are very low degrees of Self manifestation; manifest your Self in a high degree. That is the one thing to remember; all of us can do that.

In "The Freedom of the Soul" he had pointed out that while dualistic religions preach man's fall from perfection by one misfortune or another, each giving its own instruction about how to regain that lost paradise, monism denies the fall altogether.

The last and greatest counsel is that you need not weep at all. You need not go through all these ceremonies and need not take any notice of how to regain your empire, because you never lost it. Why should you go to seek for what you never lost? You are pure already, you are free already. If you think you are free, free you are this moment, and if you think, you are bound, bound you will be. This is a very bold statement.

Bold it was. At a time when the doctrines of original sin and redemption through Christ alone had been drilled into the minds of Swamiji's listeners from their Sunday-school days forward, the idea that man was not, in fact, a sinner in need of salvation had the ring of blasphemy. Swamiji was well aware that he was not only assaulting the more rigid doctrines of Christianity but attacking the most formidable and impenetra¬ble fortification in the world-the conditioned human brain; he knew there would be alarm and resistance, but he went ahead, for he also knew that his listeners had come to him out of a desire for truth and that sooner or later they would make it their own. He could not, in any case, give less than the highest, for anything less would no longer do. To think in new religious terms may have been an agonizing, soul-search¬ing struggle for some of those who came to his classes, yet it was the sort of struggle that attends the birth of a new age and awakens human greatness. "I shall have to speak to you very boldly," Swamiji told his listener. "It may frighten you now, but when you think over it, and realise it in your own life, then you will come to know that what I say is true. And they listened as he spelled out the simple and challenging tnonistic truth of the soul's eternal freedom and purity.

His second commandment-a deep sense of the oneness of all life-was, of course, a corollary of the first, faith in one's self, for both arose from, or were manifestations of, the under¬lying spiritual reality of all being. "[Faith in one's self] means faith in all," he said, "because you are all. Love for yourselves means love for all, love for animals, love for everything, for you are all one. It is the great faith which will make the world better. I am sure of that. Immense, selfless feeling for other, a largesse generated by a sense of oneness was not, he insisted, unique with Buddhas and Christs, but was innate in every man, woman, and child everywhere and at all times. He urged his listeners to practice it in their lives. "The watchword of all well-being, of all moral good is not `I' but `thou,' " he said in ' an impassioned plea and continued:

Who cares whether there is a heaven or a hell, who cares if there is a soul or not, who cares if there is an unchange-able or not.? Here is the world, and it is full of misery. Go out into it as Buddha did, and struggle to lessen it or die in the attempt. Forget yourselves; this is the first lesson to be learnt, whether you are a theist or an atheist, whether you are an agnostic or a Vedantist, a Christian or a Mohammedan. The one lesson obvious to all is the destruction of the little self and the building up of the Real Self.

Again and again throughout his classes on practical Vedanta Swamiji .urged the service of one's fellowman. Any work, whatever its field might be-art, science, education, law, commerce, anything-could be transformed into service and laid at man's feet, as at the feet of God. Such action in its most perfect, most spontaneous form was, of course, an expression of the highest love, which love was itself a pure and immediate manifestation of Oneness, a force that could be called Para Shakti, the Force of all forces. "The motive power of the whole universe, in whatever way it manifests itself, is that one wonderful thing, unselfishness, renunciation, love, the real, the only living force in existence. To become, as it were, an open, unobstructed channel of that force, through which it could flow in its most pure and undistorted form, manifesting itself as "unselfishness, renunciation, and love," was to become ethical in the highest degree. A sense of oneness with all life was, indeed, the very heart of morality. "As manifested beings we appear to be separate, but our reality is one, and the less we think of ourselves as separate from that One, the better for us. The more we think of ourselves as separate from the Whole, the more miserable we become. From this monistic principle we get at the basis of ethics, and I venture to say that we cannot get any ethics from anywhere else.

While the principles of Advaita Vedanta were the foundation of ethics and thus the key to social well-being, their practice constituted also a direct path to spiritual liberation. In "Practical Vedanta-II" he put it unequivocally. (This was a class of which Goodwin wrote, "he gave himself free play and gave a pure Advaita lecture-what he calls undiluted roaring Vedanta.")

What is more practical [he said] than worshipping here, worshipping you? I see you, feel you, and I know you are God. The Mohammedan says, there is no God but Allah. The Vedanta says, there is nothing that is not God. It may frighten many of you, but you will understand it by degrees. The living God is within you, and yet you are building churches and temples and believing all sorts of imaginary nonsense. The only God to worship is the human soul in the human body. Of course all animals are temples too, but man is the highest, the Taj Mahal of temples. If I cannot worship in that, no other temple will be of any advantage. The moment I have realised God sitting in the temple of every human body, the moment I stand in reverence before every human being and see God in him -that moment I am free from bondage, everything that binds vanishes, and I am free. This is the most practical of all worship.

But what was the difference in effect, as far as ethics was concerned, between the service of man based on the monistic ideal and that based on brotherly love as taught by theistic religions? No difference, providing that brotherly love extended without the slightest distinction to all mankind. It was true that those who followed the religion of Christ in its purity -and in its purity it was not unlike Vedanta-were them¬selves Christ like in universal compassion. But popular dualistic teachings, by whatever name, were another matter. Swamiji pointed out not only the philosophical limitations of most dualistic ideals, but their psychological limitations as well. For one thing, man's soul, according to dualism, retains its individuality through all eternity, and in most theistic religions this concept is degraded into that of an afterlife of perpetual sense pleasure. "Clinging onto little enjoyments, and to desire the continuation and repetition of this state of things is utter selfishness," Swamiji thundered. ". . . Talk of morality and doing good to others! Silly talk of the present time! . . . The more selfish a man, the more immoral he is. And so also with the race. .. . It [is] crudeness indeed-this fight for the little self, this clinging on to the `I', not only in this life, but also in the desire for its continuance even after death. This they declare to be unselfishness; this the foundation of morality!

Then there was the dualist's constitutional exclusiveness. "The Advaitist knows that whatever may be [the dualist's] theories, he is going to the same goal as he himself. There he differs entirely from the dualist, who is forced by his point of view to believe that all differing views are wrong. The dualists all the world over naturally believe in a Personal God who is purely anthropomorphic, who like a great potentate in this world is pleased with some and displeased with others. . . . You will find that in almost every religion is the idea, `We are the favorites of our God, and only by believing as we, do, can you be taken into favour with Him.' . . . I challenge you to show me one dualistic religion which has not more or less of this exclusiveness. And, therefore, in the nature of things, dualistic religions are bound to fight and quarrel with each other, and this they have ever been doing.”

The other side of exclusiveness was fear. If God has favorites, saving some and not others, then it well behooves His devotees to stay in good favor. [Dualists] have been worshipping a God in heaven separate from them, and of whom they are much afraid. They have been born shaking with fear, and all their life they will go on shaking. Has the world been made much better by this? . . . How can you expect morality to be developed through fear? It can never be. "Where one sees another, where one hears another, that is Maya. When one does not see another, when one does not hear another, when everything has become the Atman, who sees whom, who perceives whom?" It is all He, and all I, at the same time. The soul has become pure. Then, and then alone we understand what love is. Love cannot come through fear, its basis is freedom. In freedom we really begin to love the world, and then we understand what is meant by brotherhood and mankind, and not before.

Swamiji's analysis of the failings of dualism was a prod, as it were, to his listeners; he urged them to break through all confining beliefs. "Come out into the broad open light of day," he cried; "come out from the little narrow paths, for how can the infinite soul rest content to live and die in small ruts? Come out into the universe of Light. Everything in the universe is yours, stretch out your arms and embrace it with love. If you ever felt you wanted to do that, you have felt God."

Nor would one lose anything at all by expanding. "The whole universe is one person," he declared in this same glowing passage; "let go the little things. Give up the small for the Infinite, give up small enjoyments For infinite bliss. It is all yours, for the Impersonal includes the personal."

Yet Swamiji had no criticism for those who wanted to remain with dualistic beliefs and practices. By its very nature, Advaita disturbed no one's faith, but included all. "If you seek a universal religion which can apply to every one," he said in "The Absolute and Manifestation," "that religion must not be composed of only the parts, but it must always be their sum total and include all degrees of religious development.... They are all parts, equally struggling to attain to the whole. "This is one of the great points to be remembered," he cautioned his class at the close of "Practical Vedanta-II" (for he had been urging his listeners to move forward), "that those who worship God through ceremonials and forms, however crude we may think them to be, are not in error. It is the journey from truth to truth, from lower truth to higher truth. . . . It must always be borne in mind that we should see others with eyes of love, with sympathy, knowing that they are going along the same path that we have trodden. And again; "[Dualists] want a consoling religion, and we understand that it is necessary for them. The clear light of truth very few in this life can bear, much less live up to. It is necessary, therefore, that this comfortable religion should exist; it helps many souls to a better one."Dualism and all systems that had preceded it are accepted by the Advaita not in a patronising way, but with the conviction that they are true manifestations of the same truth, and that they all lead to the same conclusions as the Advaita has reached." And in "Vedanta and Privilege": "Consciously or unconsciously, . . . The whole universe is going towards that goal… . One benefit from this theory we practically see is that the idea of a real universal love is only possible from this point of view. All are our fellow passengers, our fellow travellers-all life, plants, animals; not only my brother man, but my brother brute, my brother plant; not only my brother the good, but my brother the evil, my brother the spiritual, and my brother the wicked. They are all going to the same goal. All are in the same stream, each is hurrying towards that infinite freedom.

Nevertheless, as is evident from his teachings, with their strong emphasis on the divinity of man, Swamiji was anxious to free that universal current wherever it had become entrapped and stagnant.

I have no objection to dualism in many of its forms [he said in "The Freedom of the Soul"]. I like most of them, but I have objections to every form of teaching which inculcates weakness. . . . I know it is truth alone that gives strength. I know that truth alone gives life, and nothing but going towards reality will make us strong, and none will reach truth until he is strong. Every system, therefore, which weakens the mind, makes one superstitious, makes one mope, makes one desire all sorts of wild impossibilities, mysteries, and superstitions, I do not like, because its effect is dangerous. Such systems never bring any good; such things create morbidity in the mind, make it weak, so weak that in course of time it will be almost impossible to receive truth or live up to it.

Swamiji never inveighed against devotion to the Personal God; on the contrary, he always spoke of true devotion to God in any form or aspect as a sure path to freedom. But weakness was not devotion, and he was giving his life to the effort to dehypnotize human beings of the sense of limitation, guilt, and fear. "For those who want to be practical," he said, "this is the first thing to learn. Never tell yourselves or others that you are weak." And this he meant for everyone.

The very fact that Swamiji was giving the highest truth to people whose lives, as far as we can know, were closely woven into the world's social fabric-housewives, educators, nurses, men of various professions, women campaigning for the right to take part in life outside the home, men attempting to better the world-the very fact that he was pouring out the highest of Vedantic teachings to such men and women was clear evidence of his conviction that the highest truth could be put into practice and realized by anyone with a yearning for it, "in all possible conditions of life." In his view, no man or woman was ordinary; no one was less than divine, and there was no one who should not be told so.

[To teach the monistic ideal to everyone] appears now a very big and a very great undertaking [he said in "The Freedom of the Soul"]; to many it appears very startling, but that is because of superstition, nothing else. By eating all sorts of bad indigestible food, or by starving ourselves, we are incompetent to eat a good meal. We have listened to words of weakness from our childhood.

And carrying forward the same theme in his next class, "Practical Vedanta-I," he went on as it were:

And most of us think that this ideal can never be reached; but the Vedanta insists that it can be realised by every one. There is neither man nor woman nor child, nor differ¬ence of race or sex, nor anything that stands as a bar to the realisation of the ideal, because Vedanta shows that it is realised already, it is already there.

From first to last, Swamiji taught man's divinity, which stood clear before his eyes. Even when explaining in "Practical Vedanta-IV" "a few of the popular ideas of dualism" which have been retained in the body of Vedantic thought, he was soon back without transition to the concepts of monism. Then, as though realizing where his thought or vision had led him, he said, "I have been going into things which do not belong to the dualists possibly. I cannot stand long with the dualists, I am afraid, and he went ahead full sail with his main theme-the practicality of Advaita in everyday life.

The traditional idea that the realization of the Self or Atman was a goal so far-off from the average person that any thought about it was but idle chattering of the mind was to Swamiji the most obstructive of all delusions. "In and through the Self all knowledge comes," he declared in one of his many affirmations of the immediacy and availability of the Impersonal Brahman.

Therefore, it is the best known of all. . . . Limitation can never come upon the unlimited; it is a fiction. The Self is known, therefore, to every one of us-man, woman, or child-and even to animals. . .,. The God of the [monistic] Vedanta is the most known of all and is not the outcome of imagination. If this is not preaching a practical God, how else could you teach a practical God? . . . For you are He, the omnipresent God Almighty, the Soul of your souls, and if I say you are not, I tell an untruth. I know it, whether at all times I realise it or not. He is the Oneness, the Unity of all, the Reality of all life and all existence.

Why, then, should riot this truth be told to all? There was no knowing what life of spirit and release from burden the teaching of man's true nature might bring to the least of men; nor did external modes or conditions of life determine in whom the ideal might take flame. "Perchance a prophet thou " Swamiji liked to say to his listeners, "who knows!" "Men, animals, and gods are all common recipients of this one truth. Let them all receive it," he said in "The Freedom of the Soul " and continued:

Why make life miserable? Why let people fall into all sorts of superstitions? I will give ten thousand lives if twenty of them will give up their superstition. Not only in this country, but in the land of its very birth, if you tell people this truth, they are frightened. They say, "This idea is for Sannyasins who give up the world arid live in forests; for them it is all right. But for us poor house holders, we must all have some sort of fear, we must have ceremonies," and so on.

Dualistic ideas have ruled the world long enough, and this is the result. Why not make a new experiment? It may take ages for all minds to receive monism, but why not begin now? If we have told it to twenty persons in our lives, we have done a great work.

And in a passage that rings like a sky of carillons he ex¬claimed:

I do not believe at all that monistic ideas preached to the world would produce immorality and weakness. On the contrary, I have reason to believe that it is the only remedy there is. IF this be the truth, why let people drink ditch water when the stream of life is flowing by? If this be the truth, that they are all pure, why not at this moment teach it to the whole world? Why not teach it with the voice of thunder to every man that is born, to saints and sinners, men, women, and children, to the man on the throne and to the man sweeping the streets?

Though the number of people who strove to put monistic philosophy into continuous practice might be relatively small in any given community, their influence for good would be incalculable. "If we are Advaitins," Swamiji told his class, "we must think from this moment that our old self is dead and gone. . . All weakness has vanished from us, and our only work is to arouse this knowledge in our fellow-beings. We see that they too are the same pure self, only they do not know it; we must teach them, we must help them to rouse up their infinite nature. This is what I feel to be absolutely necessary all over the world. Indeed, "the salvation of Europe depends on a rationalistic religion, he said, referring to Advaita Vedanta, and he foresaw the day when "the whole of mankind will become Jivanmuktas-free whilst living." And one is reminded here of his nudge, which touched Margaret Noble so forcibly, toward total dedication to the monistic ideal: "If this is true, what other thing could matter? If it is not true, what do our lives matter?"

Again on November 30 he exclaimed to her, "I really believe his lectures here are better than ever!" And as though Swamiji were call¬ing to people to come to hear these classes-the last of his first Western visit-the attendance grew. "The morning lectures are now largely attended,": Goodwin told Miss MacLeod on November 20, "about 200 every time. Fresh people come every class day.Others returned after an absence. Mr. John Gals worthy (senior or junior, we do not know) came on the morning of Thursday, November 19, to hear "Practical Vedanta-IV." It was his first time that season. (He and Swamiji would lunch together the following Tuesday.) Mme Antoinette Sterling also came to that lecture after a long absence. Old friends and new comers filled the classroom; nor was it only Swamiji's teachings that drew them and held them, it was also the radiance that streamed from the teacher himself. In America and London both, many told of the experience of attending his lectures. "After the first few sentences," Sister Christine would once say, " . . . It always used to be more of realising than listening. And Miss Muller, writing later of a talk Swamiji would give in India, remembered other lectures, other days:

Sometimes it seemed as though the Teacher, his words, his audience, and the Spirit pervading them all, were ONE. . . . Those who have frequently heard him will recall and recognize a similar experience-a moment when he ceases to be Swami Vivekananda lecturing to critical and attentive hearers; all details, and personalities are lost, names and forms disappear, only the Spirit remains, uniting Speaker, Hearer, and spoken word:

One can but remember and repeat here the words of Mahendra Nath Datta telling of Swamiji's classes earlier that year: "What Spirit is could clearly be understood. It was as if the room was flowing with Brahmajnana and wisdom, and Swamiji, smiling, was sprinkling it around, offering anjali with both his hands"-a picture that brings to mind, in turn, the vision Sri Sarada Devi had when sitting one moonlit evening on a ghat of the Ganga: she saw Sri Ramakrishna walk swiftly into the river and dissolve into its waters; then suddenly Naren appeared and, crying "Jai Ramakrishna!" "Victory to Ramakrishna!" took up handfuls of that shimmering, immeasurably sacred water and scattered it over the multitudes of men and women who had gathered there, liberating them.

In an earlier chapter we spoke of his London lectures on Mayavada, which had constituted the first series of this fall season and had included his classes on the Isha and Katha Upanishads. In his second series he would take up the Chhandogya Upanishad, starting on Thursday morning, November 5, with `The Freedom of the Soul." A day or two after he had held this class, one of his students requested him to say something about the practical position of the Vedanta philosophy. Swamiji did not reply, as he well could have, that he had been doing just that all along; rather, he readily and perhaps beamingly agreed that "the Vedanta . . . as a religion must be intensely practical." "We must," he said, "be able to carry it out in every part of our lives. And forthwith, starting with the Tuesday morning class of November 10, still using the Chhandogya Upanishad as his text, he gave his famous series of four class-lectures entitled "Practical Vedanta." Related to these five classes in tone and subject matter are three undated lectures in the Complete Works; one of these, "Reason and Religion," was almost certainly given in the Victoria Street classroom on Wednesday evening, November 18, and the other two, "The Absolute and Manifestation" (originally entitled "Realisation and Knowledge") and "Vedanta and Privilege," were most probably held in the same place on other Wednesday evenings of November or December. Let us say, then, for the sake of convenience, that this second fall series consisted of eight lectures or class-lectures, all of which pertained to the thesis that Vedanta was practical, not only in the sense that its ideal could be put into practice by anyone in any condition of life, but also because the deeply felt effort toward its realization would tangibly benefit the world. While Swamiji had little use for those who would apply religion to material ends, his concern was not alone with the spiritual liberation of the few; it was with the whole of humanity and with every aspect of human life-moral, cultural, social, economic, political. He believed that through a broad and infinitely deep spiritual culture the whole life of mankind in all its richly varied expression could be nourished and rescued from the devastating materialism of the modern age. In this sense, the practice of Advaita Vedanta was, he said, "the only remedy there is.

In addition to his regular Tuesday and Thursday morning and Wednesday evening classes at Victoria Street, Swamiji went every Monday by train through the bleak November countryside to Wimbledon, where he gave an afternoon class at Miss Muller's house, Airlie Lodge. Of these classes we know almost nothing, for even if Mr. Goodwin took them down, we have no identified transcripts of them. In the town of Wimbledon, however, Swamiji's course of eight classes, which started on October 12 and continued through November 30, did not go unremarked.

Later on, Margaret Noble would write a Wimbledon news¬letters for the Brahmavadin, in the course of which she spelled out the difficulties some of the students had had with Swamiji's "views in detail," as mentioned above by Mr. Beatty._x000d_ _x000d_ Of course [she wrote] there are cases in which the name of a given formula arouses a certain repugnance, which it takes time to overcome. Reincarnation is an outstanding rock to this day with very many. That sin is Ignorance is another alien notion. On the whole it may be observed that the last point to be taken quite seriously is the opposi-tion between the Real and the Apparent.

Like a number of Unitarian ministers in America, the Reverend John Page Hopps, the liberal, indeed "radical," but well esteemed pastor of the Unitarian and Free Christian Church of West Croyden-a residential suburb south of London-found in Swamiji a strong inspiration and invited him to give not one sermon but a series of five on the Sundays of November 8, 15, 22, 29, and December 6. On the last of those Sundays Swamiji gave not one lecture but two, returning to London to deliver at the Sesame Club that evening a talk entitled "Privilege," which one can find in volume one of the Complete Works. As far as is known, however, none of the West Croyden "sermons" have been published, though very likely at least one was taken down, far we know that Goodwin went along at least once. Of the first lecture at West Croyden. he wrote to Mrs. Bull, "(The Swami) preached a most excellent sermon last Sunday . . . & has sermons for the next four Sundays." "The (first) Croyden sermon," he continued in this same letter, "is being printed by (the Unitarian Church): No copy of this printing has been found to date; nor have recent inquiries turned up any record of Swamiji's West Croyden talks, possibly because the old church was bombed during the Second World War and, though made of iron, was totally destroyed.

Although in November and a part of December Swamiji regularly gave five lectures a week ("better and better every time," said Goodwin and although he was deeply tired and had a bad cold in mid-November, he still had energy enough to lunch and dine with friends, to see the sights, to go to the theatre now and then, and to attend at least one lecture he himself was not giving. Such diversions were no doubt welcome in lieu of the "thorough rest" of which he was feeling great need and which, as Goodwin wrote to Josephine MacLeod on November 14, "no man ever deserved more." It is largely _x000d_ from Goodwin's confiding letters to his friends who also loved Swamiji-Mrs. Bull and Miss MacLeod-that we learn some¬thing of his outings. Additional bits of information come from a precis of Swami Abhedananda's diary for this period. Entitled "Londone Swami Vivekananda" (Swami Vivekananda in London), it was written by Brahmachari Satya Chaitanya and published in 1920 in three issues of the Bengali-language maga¬zine Vishwavani. Swami Swananda, head of the Berkeley Vedanta Society, has very kindly translated the articles for use in this book.

1. Goodwin to Mrs. Bull, Friday, October 23:_x000d_ I took Swami Avedananda to the Indian Exhibition the other evg & today I took both [Swamis] to the United Services Museum & the aquarium._x000d_ [The Royal United Services Museum contained a large number of national trophies, emblems, weapons, and models of warships and battlefields. Most fascinating of these material memorabilia was a huge model of the Battle of Waterloo complete with tens of thousands of toy soldiers.]

2. Goodwin to Mrs. Bull, Tuesday, November 11:_x000d_ [The Swami] heard a lecture at the Royal Asiatic Socy yesterday on Tao. I had told him as I told the Rev. Mr. James that Taoism was an offshoot of Vedantism, & it is interesting to note that in addition to Mr. Sturdy making the claim at yesterday's meeting [in Wimbledon (?)] a letter was read from probably the chief Professor in China making the same admission, in distinct terms. There is, the Swami says, distinct evidence of Vedanta's Missionary enterprise long before the advent of Buddha.

3. Goodwin to Miss MacLeod, Friday, November 20:_x000d_ The Swami saw Irving the other evening in Cymbeline. He did not like him, but thought Ellen Terry very good. I took them the other evening to see Charley's Aunt, and I am sorry to say the Swami laughed most at the wicked parts._x000d_ [Henry Irving was a famous Shakespearian actor, who, some thought, overplayed his roles; Ellen Terry, an actress of equal fame at the time and better remembered today, had been his leading lady for almost twenty years. As For Charley's Aunt, this was the second time, at least, that Swamiji had seen this hilarious comedy, which is still being produced today by repertory theatres and high school drama classes. The first time he saw it was in Chicago in the summer of 1894, when, as he said, he had nearly killed himself laughing.]

4. From Swami Abhedananda's Diary regarding the same occasions;_x000d_ One evening, Swamiji was taken to see `Cymbeline' by Miss Sutter [sic]. Captain and Mrs. Sevier, Mr. Sturdy and Swami Abhedananda accompanied him. The Prince of Wales was also at the Theatre that night. . . . Another night, Swamiji, together with Mr. Goodwin and Swami Abhedananda, went to see a comedy called `Charlie's Aunt'. Swamiji waited a long time in line to get inexpensive gallery tickets. [He] was smiling and saying, "You can't make friends here without knowing their customs, behaviour, politics. You have to know the manners of the rich, the cultured and the poor."

5. Goodwin to Miss Macleod, Friday, November 20 (cont.): _x000d_ At Cambridge, tomorrow, the undergrads. Are giving a complimentary banquet to Ranjit Sinjhi, the famous Indian cricketer, and the Swami has accepted the invita¬tion to attend and respond to the toast of India.

6. From Swami Abhedananda's Diary:_x000d_ Swami Vivekananda would visit various parts of the city of London. . . . accompanied by Swami Abhedananda. One day Swamiji said, "Let's go see what an English market is like." And they went to see a weekly farmers' market in the poorer section of town. They did not see many of the tropical vegetables common in Bengal, but even then, there was a wide variety of greens and fruits. . . . Seeing oysters and clams being sold, Swamiji ex-claimed, "See, they eat crabs, clams and oysters like Bengalees!"

7. Goodwin to Mrs. Bull, Friday, December 11:_x000d_ I took the two Swamis to see the Smithfield Club Cattle show this morning. Our Swami was very anxious to see the very fat pigs of which he has been told.

On December 16, 1896, the Indian Mirror printed a long article about the banquet to Ranjit Sinjhi, the opening sentences of which, together with what is to us the most interesting part, read:_x000d_ On the 21st of this month [November], the Cambridge "Indian Majlis" gave a complimentary dinner at the University Arms Hotel [in Cambridge] to Prince Ranjitsinhji and Mr. Atul Chandra Chatterjee. Mr. Hafiz G. Sarwir of St. John's College, took the chair. There were about fifty Indians present and a few Englishmen. . . .

Swami Vivekananda rose next to respond [to the toast of India] amidst loud and deafening cheers. The Swami began by saying that he did not know exactly why he should be chosen to respond to the toast unless it be for the reason that he in physical bulk bore a striking resem-blance to the national animal of India (laughter). He desired to congratulate the guest of the evening and he took the statement which the Chairman had made that Mr. Chatterjee was going to correct the mistake of past historians of India, to be literally true. For out of the past the future must come and he knew no greater and more permanent foundation for the future than a true knowledge of what had preceded before. The present is the effect of the infinity of causes which represent the past. They had many things to learn From the Europeans but their past, the glory of India which had passed away, should constitute even a still greater source of inspiration and instruction. Things rise and things decay, there is rise and fall everywhere in the world. And though India is fallen to-day she will assuredly rise again (loud cheers). There was a time when India produced great philosophers and still greater prophets and preachers. The memory of those days ought to fill them with hope and confidence. This was not the first time in the history of India that they were so low. Periods of depression and degradation had occurred before this but India has always triumphed in the long run and so would she once again in the future.

Swamiji must have been a familiar figure in Westminster as he walked from his flat to his classroom, or, in the other direction, to the Victoria Station or the Sesame Club, or, again, to the United Services Museum, or any place within an easy distance. When he wore his turban and his brilliant robe, street urchins would, to his amusement, hoot at him; an alarmed and irate coal-cart driver once, with fortunately poor aim, hurled a lump of coal at his head; other Londoners might turn to watch a maharaja striding by. Sometimes he wore a top hat, which must have also been an arresting sight. But whatever his headgear, Swamiji never passed by unremarked.

A very pretty incident happened the other day. The Swami was walking to a Ry Station when a little raga muffin caught hold of his arm & began rubbing his head against it. The Swami did not remember him at first, but the child said "You remember me, you gave me a penny the other day." It turned out that the Swami saw this boy & another fighting, and after stopping them gave each of them a penny, & this was the boy's way of showing his affection.

The two Swamis-Swamiji and Swami Abhedananda-most likely went sightseeing more often than Goodwin recorded, but they also must have stayed at home many afternoons and evenings on those dark, cold days of fall and winter when thick yellow fog blanketed London. Visitors came to talk or dine with them, and certainly the two gurubhais conversed at length together, recalling perhaps days under different skies at Dakshineswar when they and their companions had sat at the feet of Sri Ramakrishna, listening enrapt as he spoke to them, his mind barely this side of samadhi. The two Swamis also took pleasure in debate, choosing one philosophical point or another for a subject. There was, for instance, the unpublished statement Swamiji had made toward the end of "Practical Vedanta -IV" (and on other occasions as well): "A jiva," he had said, according to a letter of Goodwin's, "can never attain absolutely to Brahman until the whole of Maya disappears. While there is still. A jiva left in Maya, there can be no soul absolutely free. "Swami Avedananda takes exception to this," Goodwin told Mrs. Bull, "and they are going to argue it out." But the argument would have been in Bengali, and Goodwin could not report the outcome-which, in any case, was perhaps not conclusive, for, as Swamiji had said in his lecture (in the same unpublished passage), "Vedantists are divided on this point."

There was work to do at home as well. Throughout November, Swamiji's London class-lectures were being prepared for publication, Goodwin doubtless typing them on the "new kind of typewriter-very cheap" that he had bought at the United Services Museum when he had taken the Swamis there. (Before this, he had written out all the London transcripts in longhand, page after page of small neat script, and had copied them for Mrs. Bull as well.) The London lectures were to be in lieu of, or the beginnings of, a magazine that Mr. Sturdy hoped to produce and that Swamiji encouraged. "There must be work for the people here to do when I am gone," he wrote to Ala singa in November, "else the whole thing will go to pieces. Therefore there must be a paper here, so also in America by and by." "Mr. Sturdy begins publishing on Dec. 1st the Swami's London lectures-in monthly parts," Goodwin in-formed Mrs. Bull. "The first months will be a lecture each month with just a few notes perhaps. Three or four papers of other matters, with the idea of developing out Of this into a magazine. . . . The subscription is 6/- [or] $1.50 per annum, to include postage. These pamphlets would come out regularly for twelve months from December 1, 1896, to November 1, 1897.* Each contained a lecture of Swamiji's, and four of them did indeed include a page or two of news, some of which would be contributed by Goodwin from India, and some by Mrs. Bull from America. But as it happened, the pamphlets did not develop into a magazine. At the end of 1897 Mr. Sturdy went on a trip around the world, and by the time he returned to London the magazine idea had died, never in his lifetime to be revived. But that is another story. In November of 1896 things were humming in London with the vitality that Swamiji's presence gave them. Not only were the London lectures being prepared for publication, but the second edition of Raja Yoga was on its way to press; further, Swamiji and Goodwin were going over the New York lectures for their second edition, and Goodwin was making up an index (now lost) of their leading subjects._x000d_ _x000d_ * The twelve London lectures that Mr. Sturdy published in pamphlet form were, consecutively: "The Necessity of Religion"; "The Real and the Apparent Man"; "Maya and the Evolution of the Conception of God"; "Maya and Freedom"; "God in Everything"; "Realisation"; "Unity in Diversity"; "The Freedom of the Soul"; "Practical Vedanta" (parts I through IV).

Along with all his other activities, this young man, Goodwin, whose energies were seemingly inexhaustible, continued to work on his Year Book, which he had started in America and which had by now expanded to include verses from the Upanishads, Swamiji helping him with untranslated selections until he had learned Sanskrit, which he was studying on the side. He planned also to include many more Western authors than he had at first contemplated. "It requires a great deal of reading," he told Mrs, Bull, and indeed, as far as is known, the required reading never ended, and the Year Book, over which he had labored hard, died unfinished. Another project o1 Goodwin's was " a handbook of the Philosophy of the Vedanta for beginners." "The Swami liked the idea of it when I told him," he wrote to Mrs. Bull. "My idea also is to use Western philosophies to support the theories of the Vedanta and to give the whole subject in a simple reasoned out manner." This book, too, was never to see the light. But Josiah Goodwin, so devoted to Swamiji, so spirited and hard-working, was once again by his guru's side, taking down and transcribing his lectures; what else he accomplished or failed to accomplish would make no difference-not even to him. The New York people had, to be sure, not forgiven him for highhandedly flouting their work, as they saw it, but under Swamiji's wing he was impervious to blame. "I am getting letters of the most violent condemnation and denunciation from N.Y. almost daily," he wrote to Josephine MacLeod in November, "but the Swami has supported me in the arrangement by which Saradananda will work in Boston through the winter, and to tell you the truth, N.Y.'s displeasure falls rather flat. Living with Swamiji and Swami Abhedananda that busy autumn in the flat at 14 Greycoat Gardens, Goodwin was perhaps at the peak of his short, strenuous, and invaluable life.

As early as November 11, Swamiji had definitely decided to return to India by way of Europe rather than by way of America-a route he had at one time considered, partly to prevent the increasingly difficult Miss Muller from traveling with him. ("I think Miss Muller is going mad," Goodwin wrote to Miss MacLeod in his letter of November 14. "She is acting very strangely.") Now that the Seviers had been included in the voyage, the situation had become a little complex: the American route would be inconvenient and expensive for them; and yet one suspects that they had no liking for Miss Muller's tempestuous behavior and no desire to travel with her."* Swamiji now dealt with the problem head-on. "Miss Muller has given up the idea of going to India, after some plain speaking from the Swami, which she has taken very well." Goodwin reported to Miss MacLeod the following week. Actually, she did not give up the idea of going to India but, rather, agreed to go on her own, accompanied by a companion -a Miss Bell. Swamiji's plain speaking, for which there had been no alternative, was perhaps a tonic she had badly needed at the time. "Miss Muller has recovered from more things than one," Sturdy would write to Miss MacLeod in January of 1897, "and has gone to India. I am sincerely sorry for her, but Swami is her medicine. I can hardly give detailas but she has cast off the adopted son [Akshay Kumar Ghosh] and I, hope all the nonsense and superstition which led her into that affair." (It was not until two years later that Henrietta Muller would turn publicly against Swamiji and his country. "Her defection was a great blow to me," he would write in 1900 to Sister Christine, "-as I loved her so much and she was a great helper & worker."_x000d_ _x000d_ * Captain Sevier's attitude toward Miss Muller surprised even Mr. Goodwin. Writing to Miss MacLeod from India on March 16, 1897, Goodwin described what seems to have been an outburst of sorts on the part of the good Captain: "By the bye Miss Muller came [to Calcutta] the other day unexpectedly, and Mr. Sevier has become mad in consequence. He is going back to Bangalore (in Madras Presidency) and I expect home soon. He is certainly unreasonable in this case, for Miss Muller put herself quite in the Swami's hands, offered to go anywhere so that Mr. Sevier might be satisfied, but Mr. Sevier studiously set himself to make a row with her, and it must be said to Miss Muller's credit unsuccessfully. She, in fact, has become unwell-nervously-from having to sit at the table and listen to his really insulting remarks. I think the heat has affected him somewhat" (Leg. Col.).

One reason Swamiji was eager to return to India was to implement what Goodwin called "his biggest project'-“the building of the Monastery in Calcutta as a training ground for Vedanta teachers." The London newspapers had been full of accounts of the severe famine that was devastating India in the fall of 1896, and such news could not but have moved him deeply. He sent money to the Indian Mirror's famine relief fund, but he whose mind was always thinking of way: and means to bring lasting well-being to the Indian people could not be satisfied with patchwork relief; nor did he attribute the depredations of famine to the will of a Creator God and resign himself to them. "As if it would not be one's right and duty to fight such a God and slay Him!" he would later exclaim in grief over another senseless tragedy. Persistently he had sought a remedy for India's ills and had found it in the application of her own highest teachings. "In India there is a famine now," he said in "Practical Vedanta-II," "but there are temple in each of which there are jewels worth a king's ransom! If the priests taught this Impersonal idea to the people, their occupation would be gone. Yet we have to teach it-unselfishly, without priestcraft." There was no other way to raise the nation whose life's blood was spirituality than to give her basic religion to the people, from whom it had been kept and to whom it belonged. "It is there for every one in every occupation of life," he would say in India itself. "These conceptions of the Vedanta must come out, must remain not only in the forest, not only in the cave, but they must come out to work at the Bar and the Bench, in the Pulpit, and in the cottage of the poor man, with the fishermen that are catching fish, and with the students that are studying. . . . How can the fisherman and all these carry out the ideals of the Upanishads? . . . Let everyone do what little he can. If the fisherman thinks that he is the Spirit, he will be a better fisherman; if the student thinks he is the Spirit, he will be a better student. If the lawyer thinks that he is the Spirit, he will be a better lawyer, and so on." To establish a monastery from which the great truths of Vedanta and of Sri Ramakrishna's teachings would flood over India was his most pressing mission, now taking precedence over the establishment of a math for women. As we have seen in the previous chapter, he had done all he could through correspondence to imbue his brother disciples and disciples with his ideas; his presence was now needed in India to put those ideas into action.

Swamiji spoke of his project to his close English friends, and they handsomely responded-Miss Muller offered two hundred pounds a year (and later much more), Mr. Sturdy gave five hundred pounds, and Miss Souter, who had also contributed to the famine relief, one thousand. On November 20 he was able to write to Alasinga: "My present plan of work is to start two centres, one in Calcutta and the other in Madras, in which to train up young preachers. I have funds enough to start the one in Calcutta, which being the scene of Shri Ramakrishna's life-work, demands my first attention. As for the Madras one, I expect to get funds in India." Thus at long last, Swamiji obtained substantial Western help for his, Indian work. Nor was it only his English disciples who came forward. Unbeknownst to him, Goodwin wrote to both Mrs. Bull and Miss MacLeod-to the latter by way of cautiously approaching the practical Mr. Leggett-about Swamiji's Calcutta project. Mrs. Bull wrote to Swamiji at once, offering him a very large contribution (30,000 rupees), but still unsure of details, Swamiji refused it. "I don't want to encumber myself with a large sum of money at the first start," he wrote to her on December 9, "but as things progress on I will be very glad to find employment for that sum. My idea is to start on a small scale." (Later on, Swamiji accepted Mrs. Bull's offer to help him establish Belur Math on the property he had purchased in 1898 with Miss Muller's contribution of Rs. 40,000.)

By November 14. Swamiji's passage to India was booked on the Prinz Regent Luitpold, which would sail from Naples on December 30. "I am doing my best to go," Goodwin wrote to Mrs. Bull, "as the Swami seems to want me to." Swamiji did indeed want his faithful disciple with him. As early as October 25, after Goodwin had returned from America, Swamiji had decided to give him sannyasa and to keep him close by his side. Furthermore, he wanted this young Englishman, with his good comprehension of Vedanta, to lecture in India. Goodwin was skeptical. "The Swami says he is going to put me up to speak to the 50,000 people (these are his figures) who will make the pilgrimage on Ramakrishna's birthday," he informed Mrs. Bull, "but I regret to say the Swami sometimes speaks nonsense, as an antidote, I suppose, to the amount of sense which he dispenses." And again, "I do not know exactly what I am to do [in India], but the Swami evidently wants me to lecture there, & of course I shall do my best, although the idea of lecturing there after heating the Swami so often seems absurd to me. But his idea is that an Englishman living among the natives-the poorer natives-and as a native, can have some influence, & I shall only be too glad if I am able to help his work in any small way, either by what I say or by personal example, altho in this respect I need an awful lot of improvement myself."

It all came about as Swamiji had said. On March 16 of 1897 Goodwin would write to Mrs. Bull from Darjeeling: "There were 60,000 at the [Sunday, March 7) anniversary [celebration] at Dakshineswar, and the Swami made me make a speech to goodness knows how many people. Fortunately there was so much noise that nobody could hear what a fool I made of myself. I live quite as a Hindu, eat on the ground with my fingers and everything. It has helped me to make hundreds of friends here already." But during the year or so he had left to him, Goodwin would find that he was "about 50 per cent American and the rest English (and, in a whisper please, not a bit Hindu).

The human mind tends to read patterns into everything, and perhaps rightly (or inevitably), for that which is in essence One is not apt to be chaotic in its temporal and spatial modes. But Swamiji's mission seems especially rich with synchronies. Goodwin's entrance onto the scene, for instance, had occurred right on cue. He appeared just as Swamiji's second season in New York was getting underway-the season during which his message in its well-formulated and integrated parts would pour from him in such torrents that only a highly experienced and expert shorthandist, one who was, to boot, educated, intelligent, energetic, and ready to dedicate his life at Swamiji's feet, could take it all down. Josiah J. Goodwin, who walked in the door at 228 West Thirty-ninth Street on December 12, 1895, was exactly such a person. From that day forward he caught the whole Western message verbatim, as it fell fresh from Swamiji's lips, taking down almost every lecture and class from mid-December of 1895 to mid-December of 1896 and, as far as we can know, transcribing the most important of them. A year and a half later he died.

Swamiji had intended to give him the vows of sannyasa on the auspicious day of Sri Ramakrishna's 1897 birthday (March 5), and he had been ready to receive them* "I want you to know," he had assured Mrs. Bull at the end of January (1897), "that my being a Sannyasin makes [will make?] no difference to my continuing as the servant of the Swami. There is a blanket Swami here, & all sorts of Swamis. I will be the Silent Swami. For one reason or another Swamiji put off giving Goodwin the vows. As late as June 2 of that year he wrote from Almora to an English friend (Marie Halboister), "You ought to have seen [Goodwin] in his Indian clothes. I am very soon going to shave his head and make a full-blown monk of him. Somehow - things did not work out that way, and Goodwin was to remain the faithful J. J. Goodwin all his life._x000d_ * Swamiji had given Goodwin the vows of brahmacharya in New York in February of I896. See World feacher- `, chapter seven, section seven. See also Complete Works, 8: 373.

But however that may be, he was witness to Swamiji's triumphal journey from Colombo to Madras, wide eyed all along the way to see such scenes as that at Ramnad, where "the rejoicing was tremendous. Cannon roared, torches flared, fire works were set off, both English and native music played, the Rajah's body guard accompanied the Swami, who was seated in the State Palanquin, & the Rajah's brother commanded the guard. The cheering & shouting of Hara Hara Maha Dev was terrific. He voyaged with Swamiji From Madras to Calcutta and stayed for a time at Alambazar Math, apparently enjoying himself to the full. Swami Akhandananda, writing of those days, remembered him well: "The three devotees of Madras [Alasinga, G.G., and Dr.] and Goodwin stayed mostly at the Math. . . . Goodwin danced and sang in his boyish way. The piece `Sankara siva vyom vyom bhola' in his mouth was very sweet to hear. He would often catch hold of me and dance around. Swami Virajananda also remembered Goodwin with affection. "Goodwin and the Madras disciples always remained with the Swami," he recalled. "Goodwin used to serve the Swami day and night. Oh, what a wonderful spirit of service he had!"

A HINDU PHILOSOPHER._x000d_ _x000d_ On Monday afternoon [November 30] the Swami Vivek¬ananda delivered the last of his course of lectures on "Vedanta Philosophy" at Airlie Lodge, Ridgway gardens. The lectures have aroused great interest, on one occasion over 70 persons being present. At the conclusion of the lecture Mr. O. H. Beatty expressed the thanks of the class to Miss Muller for kindly allowing them to meet in her house, and then presented the Swami with a number of books which had been subscribed for by those who had attended his lectures. In making the presentation Mr. Beatty said that, while all could not agree with his views in detail, yet all could find very much to admire in his philosophy. He had placed noble ideas before them, and amid the fret and turmoil of life, noble ideals were more than ever necessary. In addition to the above presentation the following was separately addressed to the Swami by some of his admirers:

"To the Swami Vivekananda from a few members of his Wimbledon class, with their sincere good wishes, and in grateful appreciation of his inspiring teaching in ex¬position of the Vedanta Philosophy, lifting them a little higher on the altar-stairs which slope through darkness up to God:--

"By many ways the world comes home to God-_x000d_ ¬Of all-men's wanderings the common goal;-_x000d_ `By each disciple,' cried the strenuous soul,_x000d_ `Let his own proper pilgrim-path be trod!_x000d_ _x000d_ "“The Devotee beneath his banyan-tree;_x000d_ The child of Jesus kneeling at the Cross;-_x000d_ If each but, selfless, count the world as loss,_x000d_ He comes at last to God's felicity!' "*_x000d_ _x000d_ * These lines may well have been written by Eric Hammond, who was later to contribute a number of poems on Vedantic themes to the Brahmavadin and Prabuddha Bharata. Swamiji was extremely fond of both Eric and his wife, Nell. In August of 1898 Margaret Noble (then Sister Nivedita) would write from India to Nell, "He thinks the world of you two, you know" (Letters of Sister Nivedita, ed. Sankari Prasad Basu, I :I7).

I am naturally bound [he wrote in this same letter], when the Swami sends me about from place to place, to rely on the funds on the Math for travelling expenses, & I hardly like this. You were good enough to tell me some time ago to let you know of a case of this kind. If you think it a proper case I should be very glad if you would let me have a little money for this purpose, but only for this reason. If you think there is no reason for scruples on the point I do not need anything for other purposes.

"The Math, Alambazar, Calcutta, will be a better future address," he added as a postscript to this letter of April 14, "as we shall be rarely in the South, & shall always be returning from time to time to Calcutta." But in regard to himself, this was a false predict

Swamiji came to Almora in early May with three of his brother disciples, and here again, as so often before, Goodwin witnessed an ecstatic reception for his guru, the whole town turning out to honor him. By this time, however, he was not so impressed as he had been at first.

I think [the Swami] has come to see what, to tell the truth, I have felt for some time, that in India he will do very little [he had written to Mrs. Bull from Darjeeling]. His chief weapon is in his Western work. For every success he has there the influence here is tenfold, but when he is among his own people the truth of the old saying-"A prophet . has no honour in his own country" is verified as far as active help is concerned. The people will run after him & shout `Jai Vivekananda' by the thousands, & will applaud him when he says the God of India is the cooking pot & the religion of the country the kitchen, but the same people go home & throw away their meal if anyone looks at it. There are a few strong sterling spirits here, but the many are hopelessly weak, & have no idea of religion outside of hard & fast observances in the kitchen. It is astonishing to a European.

Particularly, perhaps, to a European ready to throw in his lot with India. Goodwin's British pride, if not his innate friendliness, may have been as deeply affronted by India's "kitchen religion" as was his Vedantic idealism. "There can be no assimilation & lasting fusion while the sahib is studiously kept out of the place in which, even in England, he most unbends-the dining room," he went on in his letter to Mrs. Bull with all the irrational indignation of a piqued sahib. And indeed, though Goodwin was much loved by Swamiji's Indian friends, his position in the India of that day was not comfortable. Shunned by the English community (which, in any case, did not consist, he wrote, of "the real John Bull") for fraternizing with the "natives" and, except where Swamiji's influence prevailed, kept at arm's length by upper-caste Hindus, he pardonably stewed. Swamiji, discouraging Mrs. Bull from coming to India with an idea of serving the poor, would write to her, "Even Goodwin smarts now and then [at all the indignities of isolation which a Mlechcha is made to undergo here] and has to be called to ordcr.

A week or ten days ago I left the Swami at Darjeeling, which was continuing to do him immense good, &, at his wish, returned to Calcutta, where Swami Sivananda joined us & we came on here. During the week we are going on to Almora with Miss Muller, who is here at present, & we are to set on foot there between us an institution to act as an adjunct to the institution which the Swami is having founded in Calcutta. We are going there by way of Rishi Kesha, one of the most sacred spots in India, & a great center of pilgrimage. Almora is within I5 days journey of Kedar Nath, one of the four sacred temples of which Ramesvaram, Juggernath, & one in Ghoojerat are the other three. Swami Niranjan[ananda] (who is at Almora) & I are going there also. It is up in the mountains among the snows.

But in Almora with Swamiji and Swamiji's brother disciples and friends, Goodwin must have felt at home and at ease. The party traveled some twenty miles deeper into the Himalayas to Dewaldhar, a secluded and exquisitely beautiful estate owned by a relative of an Almora friend, Lala Badri Sah, and considerably cooler than the hot town. There in the lovely mountains they stayed for a month or so and then, perforce, returned. On June 20 Goodwin wrote to Mrs. Bull:

The Swami is again in Almora and seems now to be quite recovered from his indisposition. Alasinga Perumal and Prof Rangacharya (of the Brahmavadin) have also been here, mainly because they wished to visit Badri Narayan, and it was their presence which brought Swamiji up from Dewaldhar.

Was it also their presence that changed everything for Goodwin? Had the two Madras workers asked for his help in a new venture? One does not know, but with what appears to be terrible suddenness, Swamiji sent him to Madras. "Goodwin has gone to work in Madras on a paper to be started there soon," he wrote to Miss MacLeod on July 10.11 But as things turned out, he proposed third English-language paper was not started, and Goodwin, at Swamiji's request, went to work for the Brahmavadin.

There was, in fact, plenty to do in Madras without starting a third journal, and with enthusiasm still unbounded, Goodwin plunged in, helping not only with the Brahmavadin, which was in dire need of funds, but with the establishment of the Madras Math, which had been started a few months earlier by Swami Ramakrishnananda. Goodwin's energy, ability, and capacity for hard work is evident in a letter he wrote to Mrs. Bull on July 19, which can be given here almost in full, for little has been known of his valiant efforts in southern India.

The Swami is most anxious that the sphere of the Brahmavadin shall be increased, both as regards the teach¬ing it gives, and the width of its circulation. He has over and over again spoken to me about it, and it suggested itself to me to think out a plan for helping this on. There have been three general objections found, both by readers and those who have been asked to become readers. I say this from experience I have had in trying to obtain sub¬scribers. They are as follows:_x000d_ (1)The paper is altogether Hindu, and therefore, in a way, alien to Western readers. It wants local coloring._x000d_ (2) It is too small for the subscription,_x000d_ (3) It is too scholarly.

Taking the third first, it would unquestionably be a mis¬take to lower the scholarly tone, and any such idea may at once be dismissed. But there is a way in which all three objections may be obviated. The Swami himself has now a huge circle of acquaintances, friends and admirers, and the proposal I have made, and which meets with the approval of the Swami himself, as well as the management of the paper, is this-that 8 pages shall be regularly added (raising it from 12 pp to 20 pp) and thus meeting objection 2. This 8 pp shall be solely a record, systematically kept of Swamiji's work. It shall contain at least one fresh lecture by him each week. (Thus preserving what he says in the future in permanent form). Reports of the progress of the work from all the different centres (N.Y., Boston, Calcutta, Madras, London, etc.) and a concise report of all his own work beyond the one lecture given. This, I think, will give the required local colouring, and meet the first objection, at the same time, that without lowering the intellectual tone of the paper, it will give Vedantic teaching in the marvellously simple and easily understood manner of which Swamiji is facile princeps the master.

But the Brahmavadin people have already been issuing the paper at a personal sacrifice for the sake of Swamiji's work, and they have not funds for the increased undertaking. I have proposed therefore to raise the necessary funds ($500) by shares of ($25) among some of Swamiji's friends who are able to help. It will be understood that the assistance will be purely in the nature of an investment, return of which may be claimed at the end of one year, but at the same time I should tell you that it will not be interest bearing. The Brahmavadin people are largely out of pocket so far, but we hope that the increased support which may [be] expected from the new interest which will be given to the paper will help to place it on a sounder basis.

Claims are always being made on your purse and your readiness to help, and I am going to make yet another in this instance, to the extent of one or more shares as I have described. We propose to begin this with the new year's issue [the issue of September 15, 1897], and to thus keep a running and complete record of the autumn tour. I may add that I have undertaken to supply the whole of the matter for this supplement, as I shall be with the Swami on his tour.

I want also to speak to you about the other matter, the regular supply of a Boston letter. It need not be longone column, but it would be a great help. Can you induce someone to make this a regular duty out of regard for the Swami and his work? . . .

I am taking up as much as they will allow me of the Brahmavadin work, because the Swami has made it very clear to me that he has a real interest in the paper, and anxiety for its success. . . .

I have sent you by this mail a portrait of the Madras group and also of Swami Ramakashnananda. I hope you will find them interesting. At present I am helping to get the latter's work in Madras organised. There was actually no organisation before, and he had really been here for four months for nothing.

You would laugh to see an article by me in the Brahmavadin ("Hegel and the Vedanta," Brahmavadin, July 3, July 17, 1897) ; they were in trouble for a leader, and asked me to write it, but it was too advaitic for the Vishishtadvaitic Madrassis and they trembled at the idea of ex¬pressing such opinions, particularly about Isvara.

Goodwin's efforts to improve the Brahmavadin were hampered and complicated by the fact that he was working in a culture alien to him. Temperamentally, he was not suited to India: his whirlwind energy, his impatience, his ingrained British outlook and British self assurance all came up against the imperturbable, gentle, and unalterable pace of Hindu life. Unable to wait for help, he perhaps took too much upon himself. "I am very much occupied, & can hardly do all I have to do," he wrote to Mrs. Bull from Madras on September 16. "I hope you will think the Bvadin an improvement: I wish the paper were better (it was far inferior to the previous paper), but if we used English paper it would double the cost to us. As it is it will not pay, unless I can increase the subscr list materially as I hope to be able to do. . . . There is no one to help here; Madras is the laziest place I have ever been. I have joined the staff of the Mail. They asked me to several times, & as they allow me perfect liberty to make the Swami's work my first interest, & as, also, it will enable me to keep myself here, & help my mother out, I joined. My sister is being married & my mother will join me, as she will not care to remain at home under the new conditions.

In November, Goodwin, no doubt to his joy, was again in northern India with his guru, first at Jammu and then in Lahore, where he took down one of Swamiji's most stunning of lectures, "The Vedanta" (to be published in full in the December 1 issue of the Brahmavadin). It was the last he would record, and, as far as we know, he returned to Madras shortly thereafter. Understandably, Alasinga was not about to turn over the editorship of the Brahmavadin to Swamiji's English disciple; nor, as understandably, could Goodwin adjust to the Indian tempo and mode of work, try as he might. Inevitably, he felt a touch, at least, of frustration. We find him, for example, writing later on to Miss MacLeod, "I gave your letter the day I received it to Alasinga and as usual with the Brahmavadin people it still awaits attention. . . . If you will please let me know which [of Swamiji's lectures] you would like I will have it attended to by the Prabuddha people, who do attend to things." (Actually, the Prabuddha people were inclined to be more disorganized than the Brahmavadin people.) The magazine began to occupy less and less of his time, the Madras Mail, more and more, and one thinks that it was only because Swamiji was in India that Goodwin stayed there at all. In a letter on May 5, 1898, to Miss MacLeod, who was then in Calcutta and to whom he wrote with less reserve than to Mrs. Bull, one hears a cry. (His letter was from Ootacamund, where the Mail had an office and where he had gone for a time, perhaps on assignment or to escape the scorching Madras heat.)

When I came to India I need not say what my feelings were with regard to Swamiji, but I have been here 16 months, and I have completely come round to your point of view. I will do anything for him personally, but I simply do not care a pin for anything else. If I do any of his work it will be merely because he wishes it. Partly for this reason I am for the present really out of the work altogether. I also felt that recognising as I did that I could do absolutely nothing to help although I really tried in Madras, it was wrong to remain a burden on him or his, and for that reason I joined the Mail.

I should dearly like to go to Kashmere, but cannot. I am going to try hard when I go down from here to get a month off, which would allow me a week or ten days at Srinagar, but I cannot say I have great hopes. I have not seen the Swami since last November.

. . . I realise more and more every day that the Swami is not a Hindu-as Hindus go because everything must be judged by the sum-total, and the sum-total of India is meanness, and petty scheming, and not religion.

Beloved Swamiji,_x000d_ Poor Goodwin has passed from our midst and we one and all feel exceedingly sorry. When you sent him down here you asked me to put up with his bad temper and pull on with him smoothly. I did all I could to please him and work with him and I believe he had not much to complain against me. [The word However is here crossed out.] We grew to be fast friends and I grieve over his death all the more. He did splendid work for the Ramakrishna Mission and peace [be] to his soul. The day previous to his departure from this place to Ooty he came to me and spent some time. He had asked me to report the proceedings of a public meeting from which he wanted to go away, and he took the report from me and bade me good-bye & never did I dream that that would prove to be his last farewell. After going to Ooty he did not write to me & I was thinking of writing to him when another Mail reporter came down to Madras &, told me that Goodwin was soon coming down to Madras as he was tired of Ooty. He went there about the first of April & he was to come down about the middle of May. A friend of mine who came here from Ooty about the 26 or so told me that he was very reckless about his health & never cared a bit about it. It seems about the 16th or 17th there was a cricket match & Good¬win got drenched in the rain two or three times. But never changed his coat. The next day he was slightly feverish but went again to be present at the funeral of one Mr Ross, a member of the Madras Legislative Council. He seems to have again got wet. The fever continued to prog¬ress. He did not inform either the Mail office or any of us. The climate of Ooty is just now very bad, influenza, typhoid & dysentery all committing havoc. The papers have begun to complain only just now about the ill health at Ooty. The Mail Office learnt of it rather two [sic] late that Goodwin was seriously [ill] & that he refused to take any medicines. That very evening they sent another of their reporters and we got information in the night about his serious illness. I wired immediately to Goodwin & to some of my friends to nurse him & render every help. I wired to Goodwin that we were ready to start if he wanted help. The next evening i.e. on the second night at about 8 o'clock my friend wired to me that Goodwin was dying in the Hospital. It seems by the time Mr Bremner the Mail reporter reached Ooty Goodwin was delirious & was run¬ning away frequently from his bed. He had been removed to hospital & on the second night at about 10-30 he passed away. It seems he has left all his things in utter confusion. There are only a very few of his things-a bi¬cycle (which is out of order), a watch & a few papers. After receiving Mrs. Ole Bull's telegram I saw Mr Brencham, the Editor of the Madras Mail & learnt from him that he had wired to Mr Bremner to take an accurate list of his things & report to the District Magistrate who in his turn will place himself in communication with the Administrator General & only anyone who has a legal right or a power of Attorney from his mother that can get at them. Mr. Beecham also is very sorry for him & wanted to get at the core of Hinduism through Goodwin.

The news had shocked and saddened the entire party at Almora. Even Swamiji's Indian friends, such as Lala Badri Sah, were grieved-"so much the boy was loved," Sister Nivedita would write to Nell Hammond."* As for the Western dis-ciples, they had all known Goodwin-Mrs.Bull, Miss Mac¬Leod, the Seviers, Nivedita. Mrs. Bull had perhaps been the closest to him, for it had been through Frequent correspondence with him that she had kept in touch with Swamiji's work. Nivedita, who knew him least well, drafted a requiem poem, which Swamiji would rework and give beauty to, and Mrs. Bull, on her own behalf, wrote a letter to the Brahmvadin in tribute to her friend. Swamiji's now famous poem, his memorial paragraph for the press, and Mrs. Bull's letter are all given in Appendix D-flowers strewn on Goodwin's grave, to which every follower of Swamiji's must want to add his own.

* OnJune 5, I898, Sister Nivedita wrote from Almora to Nell Hammond: "Yesterday was made very sad for us here by a telegram towards noon announcing the death of Mr. Goodwin. Mrs. Ole Bull and Miss MacLeod knew him be~tter than I, but I was the last who had seen him, he was so good to me that day at Madras, and his goodness was so utterly characteristic of him! The grief of the Hindus who knew him here was evident and real. One young man who attends us night and day almost, sat here for 3 or 4 hours and scarcely spoke-another, a monk, sat the whole afternoon and told us tender loving memories about him. One man, Badri Shah, the richest man about here, had come to this monk early in the morning saying that he felt sure that his brother Govinda Lall, was dead. When the telegram came, Swami Saddhananda [Sadananda] wanted to suppress it, as the King [Swamiji] was away, and it was addressed to him, but he could not prevent'some tears rolling down,' and this man insisted on knowing the truth. 'Well,' he said, when he heard, 'Govinda Lall or Goodwin, it is almost the same to me.' So much the boy was loved. The King is still away and will be home this morning-the blow will be terrible" (Letters of Sister Nivedita, ed. Sankari Prasad Basu, I :I2).

APPENDIX D_x000d_ _x000d_ Tributes to J. J. Goodwin_x000d_ _x000d_ On receiving news of the untimely death of Josiah J. Good¬win, Swamiji sent the following paragraph and poem to the newspapers as well as to Goodwin's mother. They appeared also in the Prabuddha Bharata of August 1898:_x000d_ _x000d_ With infinite sorrow I learn the sad news of Mr. Good¬win's departure from this life, the more so as it was terribly sudden and therefore prevented all possibilities of my being at his side at the time of death. The debt of gratitude I owe him can never be repaid and those who think they have been helped by any thought of mine, ought to know, that almost every word of it was published through the untiring and most unselfish exertions of Mr. Goodwin. In him I have lost a friend true as steel, a disciple of never-failing devotion, a worker who knew not what tiring was and the world is less rich by one of those few who are born, as it were, to live only for others._x000d_ _x000d_ REQUIESCAT IN PACE_x000d_ Speed forth, O Soul! upon thy star-strewn path; _x000d_ Speed, blissful one! where thought is ever free, _x000d_ Where time and space no longer mist the view, _x000d_ Eternal peace and blessings be with thee!_x000d_ _x000d_ Thy service true, complete thy sacrifice,_x000d_ Thy home the heart of love transcendent find; _x000d_ Remembrance sweet, that kills all space and time,_x000d_ Like altar roses fill thy place behind!_x000d_ _x000d_ Thy bonds are broke, thy quest in bliss is found, _x000d_ And one with That which comes as Death and Life;_x000d_ Thou helpful one! unselfish e’er on earth, _x000d_ Ahead ! still help with love this world of strife!_x000d_ _x000d_ Mrs. Ole Bull, who had known Goodwin well and who was in Almora when the news of his death arrived there, wrote the following letter to Alasinga Perumal. It was published in the Brahmavadin of June 16, :1898:_x000d_ _x000d_ My Dear Sir,_x000d_ I have never received a sadder message than the words from you announcing the death of dear Goodwin. It causes us all who know him great sorrow. We had counted so much on seeing him here in India._x000d_ Such a life calls, for reverent recognition, so utterly generous, silent and untiring has he been in the service of his beloved Guru Swami Vivekananda and others._x000d_ He once told me that his early years had been spent knocking about the world as a journalist and in literary work and the best outcome of it all was agnosticism. After his experience in New York as stenographer to the Swami, with whom he lived day and night for months, the beauty of life's highest realization, knowledge of the soul and of God, came to him, as we know._x000d_ His entire devotion to the Swami as his servant and friend was the fruit of his new hope and belief and the Swami's published lectures as recorded by Mr. Goodwin are his permanent contribution to us. This young man embodied the integrity and honor of the gentleman to enemy and friend alike, in brief, he was a true Englishman with the spirit of sympathy, responsive to the noble and divine wherever he found it, at home or abroad. The Sannyasins of Vivekananda's order have in this layman an example of one, who worked for work's sake and loved for love's sake._x000d_ In Mr. Goodwin's death, the work of the Swami Vivek¬ananda meets with an irreparable loss to us of the West._x000d_ We are grateful for his brave loving life-a life that added richness of experience and pleasure, to all those whom he loved or served. You will, I know, sympathize with us as we with you and all of us with his family in England._x000d_ _x000d_ Sincerely yours, _x000d_ Sara C. Bull

But let us return now to London and to the days of November 1896 when Josiah Goodwin was joyfully busy with a variety of things and Swamiji was bringing his first Western visit to an end. He did not close this London season, even as he had not closed his New York season, without delivering a public, or semipublic, lecture on his Master. Although this lecture, given in Wimbledon probably in late November or early December, was (as far as we know) his only long and formal talk in England on Sri Ramakrishna, it was not on the first occasion on which he had spoken of him to an English audience. Once, during the course of a reply to a challenging listener at the close of a discourse at some London gathering, he had broken into an impassioned tribute to his Master.

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_ _x000d_ 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."

One might say that these two (or three?) interwoven threads of his Master's teaching constituted the main themes of Swamiji's own message during his first visit to the West; yet only twice, as far as is known at present, did he give a formal, sched¬uled lecture on Sri Ramakrishna, and this with reluctance, lest, as he would later say, "I ignore or explain away the truth, lest my little power does not suffice, lest in trying to extol him I present his picture by painting him according to my lights and belittle him thereby!" There were other reasons as well; the Westerner of the 1890s was either content with Christ as a Divine Incarnation or wanted none at all. Only to a few earnest, deeply devoted, and open-minded disciples, such as Mrs. Bull and those who followed him in 1895 to Thousand Island Park, did Swamiji speak at length of his Master. But perhaps one finds the most significant reason for his reticence in his reply in 1897 to his brother disciple Swami Yogananda, who had suggested that his methods of work in India were not in accord with Sri Ramakrishna's intention. Swamiji had flared up:

How do you know that all this is not on Sri Rama¬krishna's lines? He had an infinite breadth of feeling, and dare you shut him up within your own limited views of life?_x000d_ # _x000d_ I will break down these limits and scatter broadcast over the earth his boundless inspiration. He never instructed me to introduce any rites of his own worship. We have to realise the teachings he has left us about religious practice and devotion, concentration and meditation and such higher ideas and truths, and then preach these to all men. The infinite number of faiths are only so many paths. I haven't been born to found one more sect in a world already teeming with sects. We have been blessed with obtaining refuge at the feet of the Master, and we are born to carry his message to the dwellers of the three worlds.

Mindful of the tendency of the human mind to squeeze the universe into its own small purview, Swamiji was as careful in the West as in India never to preach anything that could be turned into a cult: He did not preach his Master as a Savior or Divine Incarnation; he did not introduce his worship into any of the places he visited; he did not encourage the adoption of Hindu customs or teach the worship of Hindu deities. "The real thing is the Religion taught by Sri Ramakrishna, let Hindus call it Hinduism and others call it in their own way," he implored his brother disciples. And to Mary Hale he wrote in 1900, "I preach only what is good for universal humanity. Religion is that which does not depend upon books or teachers or prophets or saviours, and that which does not make us dependent in this or in any other [life] upon others. In this sense, Advaitism of the Upanishads is the only religion." To preach "the pure Upanishadic religion," which he equated with the universal teachings of Sri Ramakrishna and which he knew had been fully exemplified, empowered, and made accessible to all by Sri Ramakrishna's life, was always the dominant aspect of his mission. And that aspect was eminently suited to the West, for self reliance and self effort were inbred in the Western character; they were, indeed, among the traits Swamiji most admired and would do the least to undermine. Seldom, if ever, did he stress in America or England a religion of supplication to an external God. Man, he taught, contains within himself, and can evoke, all the grace that man can ever need. Yet, he was never rigid, and in the same letter to Mary Hate he continued: "But saviours, books, prophets, ceremonials, etc. have their places. They may help many. . . . They are welcome."

While the "pure religion of the Upanishads," as illumined by the life and message of Sri Ramakrishna, found a fertile and uncluttered field in the West, it was not for the West alone, nor for the East alone, but for the world. "You must always remember that you are addressing the whole world, not India alone," Swamiji had written to Alasinga in connection with the Brahmavadin. Nor could he himself be confined to or contained within any nationality or culture. He belonged to the whole world, and the world to him. "What am I?" he would ask on his return voyage to India. "Asiatic, European or American? I feel a curious medley of personalities in me." And as though the gigantic power of a world teacher were pressing against its bounds he had cried to his brother disciples early in 1896, "Let the world shake on its hinges! Oh the grief! If I could get two or three like me, I could have left the world convulsed. As it is I have to proceed gently. Move the world to its foundations! Send one to China, another to Japan!" But in 1896 there was no one to venture so far afield but he himself, and now that the time was coming for him to travel once again, he thought of going not only to China and Japan, but to Russia as well.

Very likely, it was Mrs. Florence Adams who had opened up to him the possibility of a visit to Russia. She herself had been there in the summer of 1895 and had there introduced Swamiji's name. "I have been telling them in Russia that they must send him a call," she had written to Mrs. Bull in September of 1895, "Perhaps if I return to Russia in the spring to give a course of Lectures, such as the friends there wish to arrange for me, Swami would consider a Russian visit." Mrs. Adams's return to Russia would be postponed to the late winter of 1896 or early spring of 1897, and it would seem certain that during Swamiji's visit to Chicago in April of 1896 both she and Prince and Princess Wolkonsky, also in Chicago at that time, had offered to open Russian doors for him and had urged him to come. He had not forgotten. Although the Imperial Russia of Swamiji's day was not a cultural force in Europe, Swamiji sensed a world power growing there. "The next great upheaval which is to bring about a new epoch will come from Russia or China. I can't quite see which, but it will be either Russia or China," he had said in 1895. The Russians, moreover, were a deeply religious people, imbued with mysticism and without prejudice toward India. The Czar himself had, to Swamiji's delight, spoken of India as the land of spirituality and wisdom.*_x000d_ _x000d_ * On September 22 of I896 Swamiji wrote to Alasinga, "I send you a Daily J`fews article on a book of travel written by the Czar of Russia. The paragraph in which he speaks of India as the land of spirituality and wisdom, you ought to quote in your paper and send the article to the Indian Mirror"(Complete Works, 5: I Is).In the Brahmavadin of October 24, 1896, under "Notes and Thoughts," Alasinga duly published the paragraph. It was from The Travel in the East of Nicholas II, Emperor of Russia and read:_x000d_ "To-morrow, India! Sleep deserts mine eyes. I vainly sought it in the balmy night;-in the gold and crimson of the rising sun, the dawn greets the promised land, where the heavens are pervaded with the charms of love, but passion is conquered by an unspeakable sadness-where life glows bright, yet all is as a dream, and breathes with beauty irresistible as death. O land of daring dreams and soaring thought! Thou risest out of the azure deep, whose mournful moaning echoes sadly back the discord reigning in the weary heart. India lies before us! Here holiness and peace appeared in visions unto men contemptuous of pleasures; since their age the people live the self-same life, yearning for the Divinity, for freedom, and atonement. Here, where the earthly realm of sorrow borders on the heavens, and when the soul is crushed by unceasing torments, this magic land calls us into a world of wonders, into the realm of the eternal mysteries of boundless wisdom."

In late October of 1896, Goodwin wrote from London to Mrs. Bull, "[The Swami] would like to know if Mrs. Milward Adams is going to Russia. He is quite anxious to go if she would be able to get him an opening for a hearing there. Mrs. Bull assured Swamiji by return mail that she would "write to Mrs. Adams to learn of her Russian plans, if she has determined them." But what Mrs. Adams's plans were, we do not know, for meanwhile Swamiji had changed his, and the Russian visit (as well as a proposed visit to Boston) was dropped. He had decided to go directly to India. At least one reason for this change of plan is contained in a letter to Mrs. Bull dated November 13. "I am very soon starting for India," he wrote, " . . . And as I have arranged to take several friends from England with me to India, it is impossible for me to go to America on my way, however I might have liked it." For the same reason, a visit to Russia would also be out of the question.

As for China and Japan, Swamiji wanted to visit them on his way from India to America in the summer of 1897. "He says that while in Ceylon- where he intends stopping a week -he will arrange through Dharmapala's people for lectures [at some of the universities] in Japan and China," Goodwin wrote to Miss MacLeod on November 14, 1896. "He changes his mind almost daily, but I fancy he will not be in India more than six months and then Japan and China en route for California, where he intends to work before returning to the Eastern States." Ill health prevented Swamiji from carrying out this plan in either 1897 or 1898. Nor was he able to visit China and Japan in later years.

In both these countries, through which he had passed in 1893 on his way to America, he had sensed an immense vital¬ity. Of China, where, in Canton, he had seen extreme poverty and "a wilderness of human beings, pushing, struggling, surg¬ing, roaring," he would say that the country had had "the most admirable organisation of all nations," but that today it "is like a disorganised mob, because her men are not equal to the system contrived in the olden days." "Religion," he said, "goes to the root of the matter. If it is right, all is right." In Japan, where he had briefly visited several large cities, he had been much impressed by their cleanliness and neatness and by the drive of the Japanese toward modernization. As we have seen in the previous chapter, he had wanted his own countrymen to "pay a visit to Japan and China every year. Especially to the Japanese." "Come out of your narrow holes," he had cried, "and have a look abroad. See how nations are on the march!"

It had been for India's sake that he had wanted young Hindus to travel abroad. But by the end of his first visit to the West it was equally for the sake of other countries. "My plan is to send out numbers of Hindu boys to every civilised country to preach," he wrote to Mary Hale, "[and] get men and women from foreign countries to work in India. This would be a good exchange." His dream was to bring the best of India to the whole world and the best of the modern world to India. He wanted to flood the West with spirituality and India with material prosperity, and this not by disturbing thc basic culture of either but by stimulating each to borrow from the other and to flourish in its own way. Any living culture was, of course, the creation and, in turn, the molder of the people who gave it life; the most potent stimulus any culture could have, therefore, was the development within its own traditions of a new type of men and women, strong, compassionate, open minded, and wise in the knowledge of man's true nature and purpose. The assimilation by every people not only of each other's unique contributions but of the awakening message of Sri Ramakrishna would everywhere bring about, Swamiji felt certain, a "new order of humanity." "In time," he said, "the whole world must accept the universal and catholic ideas of Sri Ramakrishna, and of this, only the beginning has been made." And as a corollary of this vision he would prophesy, "The God of India who is guiding her destiny sent me [to America] and will send hundreds of such to all the nations of the world. No power can resist it.

From wherever a call came or a field opened up, there he would try to go himself or think of sending an emissary. He wanted, for instance, to spread the Master's message not only to Europe and Asia but also to South Africa, where an Indian community was living on uneasy terms with the British. In response to a request from a Bombay friend (a Mr. Setlur), to send someone "to look after the religious needs of the Indian emigrants [there]," he would consider sending Swami Shivananda. "The work will not be congenial at present, I am afraid," he would write to his brother disciple in December of 1897 from Jaipur, "but it is really the work for a perfect man. You know the emigrants are not liked at all by the white people there. To look after the Indians, and at the same time maintain cool-headedness so as not to create more strife-is the work there. No immediate result can be expected, but in the long run it will prove a more beneficial work for India than any yet attempted. I wish you to try your luck in this. If you agree, please write to Setlur about your willingness and ask for more information." More information came from a young Indian barrister who was then living in Durban, Natal, and championing the rights of his people. His letter, which was addressed to a Mr. B. N. Bhajekar, High Court pleader of Bombay, was forwarded to Swamiji, then in Kashmir. It found its way into the papers of Mrs. Bull and thence, through the kindness of her granddaughter, Sylvea Bull Curtis, into the pages of this book. The writer's name was Mohandas K. Gandhi. His letter, dated February 23, 1898.

Dear Mr Bhajekar,_x000d_ I have your very interesting & important letter. Let there be no haste in sending out a religious preacher, A religious preacher working on the European lines will not succeed here or for that matter anywhere amongst the orthodox Indians. And the Indians here although they have broken through the caste barriers are still old fashioned & simple minded. I use both the expressions in a good sense. A religious preacher is very badly wanted here but he must tower above all the priests here. He must be absolutely pure minded and unselfish & must not require money to support him. Such a man would extort reverence & wipe out the miserable false priests here who suck the life blood out of the people & work all sorts of mischief. I wonder what Mr. Goodwin would or could do here does he speak Hindustani or Tamil? Does he know the Hindoo scriptures & the great epics? He may come & perhaps he will be able to form a different opinion to mine. ["He has misunderstood our proposal," a marginal note in another hand read. "We said we wd send a Swamy and to help him that Mr. Goodwyn would accompany him if necessary. Poor Goodwyn is gone away from us once for all."] Though I yield to no one in the intensity of belief [,] my work lies in another department & therefore I may not be a sure guide in religious matters. A religious priest for Natal must know Tamil, Telegu & Hindi._x000d_ If we are to be self governing at any stage of our national life we would send out doctors to look after the health of our people outside India [,] lawyers to give them legal advice but more particularly to find out their grievances and voice them and priests to keep up the national religions. Our travellers go to Europe to be dazzled by the Western splendour but they would not go to the colonies & other parts of the world where they might not be wel comed & where they might have to rough it._x000d_ How can we ask the British Government to send out a priest or two with the immigrants? They do not interfere in religious matters. And have they the capacity to make the selection?_x000d_ Could not Swami himself be induced to pay us a visit? I shall do everything I can to make his mission a success. He can work both among Indians & Europeans. I take it he moves freely among the Indians the highest as well as the lowest. He is sure to do one thing if he comes. He will electrify the Europeans by his eloquence & possibly hipnotise [sic] them into liking the `Coolies' in spite of themselves. Though the Europeans here are very obstinate they are not so as never to listen to reason._x000d_ I very rarely write unreservedly but I thought this was one of those occasions when it is allowed to & even obligatory on a man to throw off his reserve._x000d_ You may place this letter before the Swami if you so wish it._x000d_ I am yrs truly_x000d_ M. K. Gandhi

While Swamiji may have "changed his mind daily" in the course of making an important decision, once that decision was made, once "the Command" had come, nothing could alter it. In reply to an invitation from Miss MacLeod to visit America (and, most probably, to be at Ridgely Manor for Christmas, as in 1895), he wrote, "the Dear God has disposed it this way, viz, I am to start for India on the 16th [of December]. . .. Of course, everybody here thinks it foolish to give [the London work] up just now the `boom' is on, but the Dear Lord says, `Start for Old India'. I obey."

He was more than satisfied with the work he had done in London and with its reception by the English people, about whom (having known them on their own ground) he had had a decided change of heart.

The work in London has been a roaring success [he wrote to the Hale sisters on November 28]. The English are not so bright as the Americans, but once you touch their heart, it is yours forever. . . . My ideas about the English have been revolutionised. I now understand why the Lord has blessed them above all other races. They are steady, sincere to the backbone, with great depths of feeling-only with a crust of stoicism on the surface; if that is broken, you have your man.

And after returning to India he would say, "My work in England has been more satisfactory to me than my work in America. . . . I firmly believe that if I should die tomorrow the work in England would not die, but would go on expanding all the time." But at other times he had made more accurate predictions. In October of 1896 he had written to Alasinga in connection with the success of his London work, "Of course, as soon as I leave, most of this fabric will tumble down." And in November, "There must be work for the people here to do when I am gone, else the whole thing will go to pieces.

Soon after he left England, the London work would indeed go to pieces, vanishing almost without a trace. This was not altogether surprising. On its surface levels the era, giddy with the promises of science and convinced of its supreme enlightenment, was not yet ripe for the serious study and practice of Vedanta. Most of Swamiji's followers had come to hear him because he was Swamiji; when his light, infinitely and universally attractive, was no longer visible, there was very little to hold them together. Swami Abhedananda, who later would be highly successful in America, did his best "to work according to the wish of Mr. Sturdy" (as he would write to Swami Brahmananda), but there was not even a minimal organization to stand behind him. There was only Mr. Sturdy himself, and Mr. Sturdy, torn between Vedanta and a jealous wife, was not a charismatic leader.

But however that would be, Swamiji's work in England did not fail to bear immediate fruit. For one thing, he had mined three jewels, three "lion-souls" who were to play vital parts in his world mission. Among them, perhaps most notable, was Margaret Noble, who would grow into Sister Nivedita. After having heard Swamiji three times in November of 1895, Miss Noble, her keen mind aflame with questions, came as often as she could to his London classes in the spring and summer of 1896 and again in the fall of that year, when she also attended his weekly class in Wimbledon. As early as June of 1896 Swamiji wrote a letter to this fiery, determined, and intense young woman, the tone of which indicated that he had recognized her potential greatness. After answering a question about his ideal, he went on to speak directly to her

Who will give the world light? Sacrifice in the past has been the Law, it will be, alas, for ages to come. The earth's bravest and best will have to sacrifice themselves for the good of many, for the welfare of all. Buddhas by the hundred are necessary with eternal love and pity.

. . . The world is in need of those whose life is one burning love, selfless. That love will make every word tell like thunderbolt._x000d_ It is no superstition with you, I am sure, you have the making in you of a world-mover, and others will also come. Bold words and bolder deeds are what we want. Awake, awake, great ones! The world is burning with misery. Can you sleep?

Those words did not fall on barren ground. If Margaret Noble had not at first fully accepted Swamiji's teachings, wor¬rying them endlessly in her mind, she had been won over when he returned to London in the spring of 1896. Her good friends Eric and Nell Hammond watched the dawning of her disciple¬ship with sympathetic eyes, and in later years Eric would recall the autumn and winter days in London when her joy of dis¬covery and acceptance was overflowing:

She responded to his call as a harp responds to the touch of a masterplayer. She listened to him at her club, the Sesame; at Miss Muller's, Wimbledon; at many religious and philosophical centres in and near London. Everywhere she went she hailed him as the Prophet of the age. She assisted his appearance at various places, including the Christo-Theosophical Society established by Sir Richard Stapley in Bloomsbury Square, where, by the bye, Swami Abhedananda made his maiden speech in English. There is no doubt that her influence and her persuasive faith, backed by Mr. E. T. Sturdy's solidity of aim and pecuniary aid, largely contributed to Swamiji's career in London. Immersed as she came to be in the Vedanta, she employed all her oratorical power on its behalf. Once caught in Vivekananda's wonderful web, she spoke of him and about him unceasingly. "Have you seen and heard the Swami?" she would ask. "If you have not seen and heard him, you simply must. There is no one like him, no one to equal him, no one at all!" Eloquent, persistent, imperious, she drew friends, acquaintances, even strangers, towards this Son of India who was, she assured them, the Sun of Truth. Her acceptance of, and adhesion to, the Swami's gospel was whole-hearted.

Two short notes from Swamiji to Miss Noble, which have recently turned up, show that in the fall of 1896 she had come to know him personally and was making arrangements for others to meet him. The first, dated "Oc.29.96," was addressed to her school in Wimbledon and read:

Dear Miss Noble¬_x000d_ I will be at yours on Friday next at 4. p.m._x000d_ I did not know of any arrangements made to meet any¬body friday last hence my absence._x000d_ Yours_x000d_ Vivekananda

By December 5, when Swamiji wrote the second note, Margaret Noble had in one way or another served his cause and earned his gratitude:

Dear Miss Noble-Many thanks for sending the kind present of Mr. Beatty. I have written to him acknowledging his beautiful gift._x000d_ As for you my dear noble kind friend-I only would say this-we Indians lack in many things-but there is none on earth to beat us in gratefulness-I remain_x000d_ Ever yours gratefully_x000d_ Vivekananda

As has been mentioned in the previous chapter, one of Swamiji's pivotal objectives was to elevate the women of his country; he wanted to accomplish this by giving them an education-intellectual, practical, and, above all, religious and cultural-such as would produce enlightened women who would be like flames to ignite the lives of others in their turn. _x000d_ "For this work a woman is needed," he had exclaimed in 1895. "No man can do it. But where is the woman?" "One after another was put to the test and failed," Sister Christine, with whom he had discussed the problem, would write in later years. "It was not easy to find someone who had the necessary qualifications, spiritual and intellectual, who had the devotion of the disciple, who was selfless, and who could pass on the living fire."

One can only imagine the growing delight with which Swamiji came to know Margaret Noble. This brilliant, highly idealistic, courageous young woman, in whom burned a spirit of self sacrifice, who was a trained educator, who was deeply absorbed in the ideals of Vedanta, and who, in the spirit of a disciple, had begun to call him Master-this young woman was the person he had sought. Yet Swamiji did not try to persuade her to come to India; so momentous a decision would have to be her own, and it would have to be made, not in enthusiasm, but with quietly considered resolve. His approach was almost offhand. During the course of a light conversation with a few people, he turned to her and said, "I have plans for the women of my own country in which you, I think, could be of great help to me: ' That was all. "And I knew," Margaret Noble would write years later when she was Nivedita, "that I had heard a call which would change my life." Even so, she did not rush to answer that casually dropped thunderbolt.

She experienced a very natural hesitancy [Eric Hammond wrote]. With the present writer she frequently referred to reasons for and against the proposal. If she went to India with that purpose, she must trust others to cherish her aging mother; she must relinquish all those interests for which London claimed her and for which she was endowed with peculiar fitness. Above all, she must endure harsh misinterpretation of her motive, and suspicion and disapproval on the part of the majority of her Christian connections.

After Swamiji's departure from England, Margaret Noble did all she could to help keep his work alive. She presided over the meetings in Wimbledon, sometimes spoke at them, wrote an occasional newsletter for the Brahmavadin (at Goodwin's request), and solicited subscriptions for both Madras magazines, all the while wrestling with her destiny. In June or July of 1897 she wrote what must have been an indecisive letter to Swamiji, placing the burden of decision upon him. He did not accept it -at least, not in the way she wanted: "You can do more work for us from England than by coming here," he counseled. "Lord bless you for your great self sacrifice for the poor Indians." But less than a week later, after learning from others of her determination to work for his country, and confi¬dent now that her desire to come was in earnest, he gave a very different reply:

Let me tell you frankly that I am now convinced that you have a great future in the work for India. What was wanted was not a man, but a woman-a real lioness-to work for the Indians, women specially.

India cannot yet produce great women, she must borrow them from other nations. Your education, sincerity, purity, immense love, determination, and above all, the Celtic blood make you just the woman wanted.

He went on to warn her of the difficulties she would encounter: harsh caste prejudice, severe criticism from her own people, inconvenience, discomfort, sweltering weather. "You must think well before you plunge in," he wrote. But he gave her the assurance of his own unfailing support-whatever might come:

After work, if you fail in this or get disgusted, on my part I promise you, I will stand by you unto death whether you work for India or not, whether you give up Vedanta or remain in it. "The tusks of the elephant come out, but never go back"; so are the words of a man never retracted. I promise you that.

Finally, Swamiji warned her of Miss Muller, who planned to take her and others under her wing in India and whose quirky disposition he well knew.

It is very kind and good of her [he wrote] but her Lady Abbess plan will never be carried out for two reasons-her violent temper and overbearing conduct, and her awfully vacillating mind. Friendship with many is best at a distance, and everything goes well with the person who stands on his own feet.

But the words that must have shone from Swamiji's letter, dazzling their reader to all else, were these: "You are welcome, and a hundred times welcome." She arrived in Calcutta on January 28, 1898, and the rest is history, for her subsequent life as Sister Nivedita is the subject of many biographies today and will no doubt be the subject of many more tomorrow.

Then there were James and Charlotte Sevier. In his welcom¬ing letter to Margaret Noble, Swamiji recommended them to her. "Mrs. Sevier is a jewel of a lady," he wrote, "so good, so kind! The Seviers are the only English people who do not hate the natives, Sturdy not excepted. Mr. and Mrs. Sevier are the only persons who did not come to patronise us." Captain and Mrs. Sevier, like Margaret Noble, "burned their boats" (as Eric Hammond wrote in connection with the latter), and this they did sooner than she, for they had no dependents to worry over and no budding careers to renounce. They simply disposed of their possessions in Hampstead, moved to temporary quarters in London, and waited in readiness for the greatest voyage of their lives.

These were the three jewels-Margaret Noble and the Seviers -that Swamiji had mined in England. (One cannot count here Josiah J. Goodwin, for though he was English to the bone, he had come to Swamiji in America and had there dedicated his life to him.)

But this, of course, was not the only result of Swamiji's English work. There were scores, if not hundreds, of people in England, both prominent and obscure, whose outlook on life had been clarified and whose burden forever lightened by attending his classes-those incomparable classes, in which he had not merely talked spirituality but had abundantly given it. There was no type of listener at any kind of lecture to whom he could not bring light. In New York he had described the endless fluidity of the "only true teacher," who "can convert himself as it were into a thousand persons at a moment's, notice: Swamiji himself was such a teacher; in his vastness he could, as it were, become each listener, identifying with his or her need and temperament, cutting through some knot, opening some long-locked door with a precisely tuned word or phrase. Whatever his lecture subject might have been, whatever the focus of his concentration, no one had been left out of his regard.

Vedanta work in London is quite quiescent [Mr. Sturdy would write to Miss MacLeod in July of 1898], but the strong interest in Vivekananda is here all the time and not only does it not die out, but people talk to their friends of their experiences with that wonderful teacher and his fame quietly and steadily spreads. . . .

Among those people were Eric and Nell Hammond. Writing to Swamiji in August of 1899, Sister Nivedita (then in England) told him of a visit with Nell:

How wonderful she is! She is simply a battery charged with devotion, it seems to me. She says the first time she saw you, as you entered the [Sesame] club room, she knew at once your significance to her and turned and said to her husband: "This is he for whom we waited." About her vision she says she told you "I am just as inert as Mr. Sturdy." She says "There is nothing to do but to stand aside. You see it's all done-It's all right now!"

Of Nell Hammond's "inert" state Nivedita wrote to Mrs. Bull the following day. It was a very different kind of inertia from that of Mr. Sturdy, who, at that time, had darkly turned from Swamiji and his work:

She has had a wonderful wonderful wonderful vision ¬a glimpse of the superconscious if ever there was one. Suddenly, in her little sitting room one day she floated as it were up into the vision of the Mother Kali-distinctly visi¬ble. Then when the first cry of surprise was over, she thought "Just the moment to see if it will help anybody." And she turned to "the train-horses" whose unhappy state worries her kind heart much. "But they were not there they were just shadows, whisking round a corner-& in their place was "Mother". Then she thought "I'll tell Swami" and she turned to him in her thought-but when she looked at him he was a shadow that passed away & left the Mother standing there. It was all Mother everywhere. "And so," she says, "Tho I only saw it once, still I know it now-it's all done. There's nothing to work for, nothing to be done. Everything's all right. We have only to stand aside."

Isn't it marvelous? She wrote to Swami she says & told him & had a sweet sweet note in reply.

There were many others who would never forget Swamiji. In Nivedita's letter to him of August 23, 1899, we catch a glimpse of one whom we otherwise would not have known, but who, in her gratefulness, is perhaps typical of scores of his English students.

I had a visit from your disciple-Miss Frances Williams of Epsom-who spoke with tremendous feeling of the peace and meaning that you had brought into her life by a sentence in a lecture here and there-and then by just a word about concentrating her mind on the heart. She cannot tell what it means or why it helped her, she said, but as a matter of fact her life is now satisfied and at peace. . . . She came to hear about India but I discovered that she had once been in a convent-and I kept her talking about rules and orgariisation.

Such people, whose lives Swamiji had touched, must, in turn, have touched the lives of others with that powerful magic, and so on, in ever-widening circles, until the impact of his thought would gradually spread on untraceable routes to every corner of the earth. "This British Empire with all its drawbacks is the greatest machine that ever existed for the dissemination of ideas," he wrote to Mr. Leggett on July 6 of 1896. "I mean to put my ideas in the centre of this machine, and they will spread all over the world."

But important though these results were-the capture of a few "lion souls" on the one hand and the quiet, slow spreading of Vedantic thought on the other-they did not constitute the only, or even the greatest, significance of Swamiji's work in England. It is said that a Divine Incarnation and his apostles work on a deep level of consciousness, where they introduce, as it were, a powerful shaft of spiritual light into the collective mind of humanity; that is the very purpose of their appearance on earth, the meaning of their birth, their sadhana, and their teaching. Through their activity (or play) in human form they awaken, so to speak, the "cosmic Kundalini," charging that state of existence called mankind with a spiritual power that will for centuries manifest itself more and more fruitfully in the world and, to a greater or lesser degree, in every individual. Swami Shivananda, one of Swamiji's great brother disciples, would say years later: "Swami Vivekananda once said: `In this age the Brahma-kundalini-the Mother who is responsible for the creation, preservation and destruction of the universe ¬has been awakened by the fervent prayers of Sri Ramakrishna: . . . That is why we see symptoms of a great spiritual upsurge everywhere. . . . We need have no worry this time. Could it not be said that Swamiji carried that tremendous power to the Western world and infused with it the deep levels of Western culture?

After Swamiji returned from the West his health completely broke down. He used to say, "Whatever I had I have left in that country (the West). During the lectures a power used to emanate from this body and would infuse the audience." The thought current of the country underwent a change. That was no easy matter. . . .

I had heard that Budo Baba (Swami Satchidananda} begged Swamiji to grant him Nirvikalpa Samadhi. Swamiji said, "If I put on the loin cloth and become absorbed in spiritual practice without thinking of ways and means of maintenance, then perhaps the power to grant Nirvikalpa Samadhi may come. It has become exhausted, or lost, by giving lectures in America."

Did not this influx of radiant power into the Western world, which is bound sooner or later to set the whole culture aglow, constitute the real significance of Swamiji's work in England as well as in America? Yet this is but a poor attempt to understand what Swamiji did in the West. Who can really assess his accomplishment? "If there were another Vivekananda," he was heard to say at the close of his life, "he would have understood what Vivekananda has done! And yet how many Vivekanandas shall be born in time!!" And of his last days Swami Saradananda would write to a brother disciple, "Sometimes he would say `Death has come to my bedside, I have been through enough of work and play, let the world realize what contribu¬tion I have made, it will take quite a long time to understand that " The coming centuries will indeed be the only other true assessor of his contribution-the rest is inference and speculation. There is, however, one thing we can say even now, and this is that throughout his mission, East and West, he gave himself heart and soul to his Master's work, awakening every where man's spiritual consciousness, setting in motion a spiritual tide that no power can stem. "Before this flood," he prophesied, "everybody will be swept off."

As the time for Swamiji's departure from England drew near, Miss Souter, as though to stay the sun in its passage, had the professional photographer Alfred Ellis take twelve studio pictures of him-one of which was the familiar meditation photo and another, the photo reproduced in the frontispiece of this volume-which perhaps do indeed capture him for us.* But Swamiji himself, "as impatient as a school boy," began to count the days. "Three lectures next week," he wrote on December 3 to Josephine MacLeod, "and my London work is finished for this season." Of those three lectures-his classes of December 8, 9, and 10-we have at present information about only the last. In the back pages of the pamphlet "The Real and the Apparent Man," _x000d_ * In recent years a proof sheet from the photographic studio of Alfred Ellis has come to light in which six (not twelve) poses of Swamiji are shown. These were without question taken at the sitting Miss Souter had arranged. They are: the well-known meditation pose; one bust with robe and turban (right profile); one bust with robe and bare head (full face); two full length with robe and turban; one full length with robe and bare head. All of these have been reproduced in Swami Vivekananda: A Biography in Pictures.

The last address was given by Swami Vivekananda to a crowded audience at the Room, in Victoria Street, on Thursday, December 10th. With this lecture the series which has been pursued during the past season, was brought to a conclusion.

The subject was the Advaita Vedanta, or that one of the three views taken by the Vedanta system which maintains the, Non-Duality of what is Real and Permanent in an otherwise eternally changing universe.

With the close of this lecture, Swamiji's first visit to the West was virtually over. That night at his flat he spoke to a few disciples of a path beyond work, in which the aspirant, as though having climbed to the summit of a Himalayan peak, takes flight into the sky, employing now a new kind of effort to reach the final goal-if it be effort at all.

One wishes Goodwin had taken shorthand notes that night, but at least he wrote to Mrs. Bull of Swamiji's soaring talk:

Last night [December 10, Swamiji] was talking phi¬losophy to two or three of us in his best mood. One or two points are worth telling you. He was talking about work, & gave his own ideas on the matter. He admitted that in lecturing it was essential to preach the ideal of work, but pointed out that a work philosophy (Buddhism for instance) is not sufficient. Good work produces good results, bad bad. Whether good or bad the chain of cause & effect is infinite. Work can only be regarded as a preparatory step & he emphasised very strongly that merely by work we will never become free. Good work is necessary to fit the mind to realise an always existing freedom (in other words that we always have been free) but good work must be done with discretion & men have to learn when the time is ripe for the abandonment of work. When we are ready for that no matter what we may do-good & bad will leave no effect on our struggle for freedom, but will, so to speak, be altogether outside &, unconnected with that struggle.

We have to discriminate between local & infinite commandments [he said this same evening], & in this respect Christ, as the typical example of the highest local commandment, falls before the Buddha, as the highest infinite. By "local" the Swami meant that Christ (1) made his teaching personal, (2) had love for some more than for others-&c-whereas Buddha was always working in the universal & from the Infinite. He quoted as an example the Buddha's death, when Ananda was chided by the Buddha for weeping.

He also spoke very strongly against the Personal God idea, & especially of the "special" Divinity of Christ. "If Christ was God & no one else, what hope is there for anyone else?"

His work done, the physically grueling routine of scheduled classes finished, Swamiji's health, still resilient, at once improved. "[He] is already better," Goodwin wrote to Mrs. Bull in his letter of December 11, "now that the `bondage' is over for the time being." There remained only the Farewell Reception, where speeches were made and he was presented with an ornately printed address from his English friends and disciples.* The reception, held at the Institute of Painters in Watercolours on the afternoon of Sunday, December 13, was "a triumphant success," Goodwin reported to Mrs. Bull. "There were over 500 there, & the Swami was in his very best style. He was evidently a good deal affected, because the people here as well as in America have been exceedingly kind to him." Swamiji was not alone in being affected; there was perhaps no one in that large gathering who was not sorrowful over his departure. Eric Hammond described that farewell day:_x000d_ _x000d_ * For the text of the farewell address from Swamiji's English friends and for other addresses of the_x000d_ same kind from his devoted American friends and disciples see Appendix E.

It was Sunday in London, when shops were shut, business at a standstill, and the city streets silenced for a while from some at least of the rattle and the rumble of their heavier traffic. Londoners wore their Sunday clothing, their Sunday bearing and manner, and grey, subdued, and semisilent folk wended their way to church and chapel. This afternoon the friends of Swamiji were to say "Good bye" to him whose coming had meant so much to them. In the hall of meeting, dedicated to the use of the artists, paintings hung upon the walls; palms, flowers, and ferns decorated the platform from which Swamiji would utter his final speech in England's great metropolis to the British people. All sorts and conditions of men were there, but all alike were filled by one desire; to see him, to hear him, even it may be to touch his garment once again.

On the platform musicians and singers at stated intervals "discoursed sweet sounds". Speeches illustrating the esteem and affection which Swamiji had won, were made by men and by women. Salvoes of applause punctuated and followed them. Many were silent, tongue-tied, and sad at heart. Tears were very near to some eyes. Grey and gloom without were intensified and deepened by grey and. Gloom within. One form, one figure, fought and triumphed over sorrow; arrayed in garments, glistering as of amber, Swamiji passed among the people like a living shaft of sunshine?

"His last words to me were notable words," Eric Hammond related elsewhere. "I stood before him, saying nothing. He was going back to India, and `Goodbye' stuck in my throat. He knew what I would say, if I could only say it. (He always knew that. I never remember putting a question to him; he replied without prompting.) Grasping my hands; pouring, as it seemed, his soul through his eyes to mine, he said, `Yes, yes, I shall come back!' And he has kept his word."

But Swamiji kept that word only by keeping another, which he had once made in Hammond's hearing: "It may be that I shall find it good to get outside of my body-to cast it off as a disused garment; but I shall not cease to work! I shall inspire men everywhere, until the world shall know that it is one with God." few of his English disciples would, it is true, briefly see him again in London in 1899, but he would never again be with them as a teacher, pouring the clear water of truth day after day, week after week, from his soul to theirs.

Impatient though he was to return to his motherland, Swamiji had come to love the Western world-not only England and the English people, but America and the Americans. Indeed, according to Swami Abhedananda, he extolled the "liberality and thirst for knowledge" that he had found in America, comparing them favorably with the conservatism and reserve of the English?"I love the Yankee land," he had written from London earlier in the year to Mary Hale. And again, "Those years there have been some of the best I have yet seen." He had made many close and dear friends in that Yankee land, the dearest of all being the Hale sisters themselves,* to whom he wrote on November 28 in a goodbye letter, "I think you are the four persons whom I love most in this world, somehow or other, and I am vain enough to believe that you four have the same love for me." And there was Mrs. Bull, "the noblest" and "least cranky" of women, and Josephine MacLeod, "always helpful, cheerful, and strengthening." These and uncounted others had become his own, and he theirs. Indeed, Swamiji and the Western world were forever linked with unbreakable bonds, some visible, some, perhaps most, invisible, lost to all knowledge; together they created an ineluctable and living force that slowly, surely would work its miracle._x000d_ * On his way back to India Swamiji would run Mr. and Mrs. Hale ("Mother Church and Father Pope") in Florence, but he would not see the "sisters" again until three years had passed. This not for lack of an invitation to Mary Hale. On August 30, I897, Josephine MacLeod would write to Miss Hale, with whom she was not yet on a first-name basis: "Swami Vivekananda wrote me a few weeks ago from India urging Mrs. Bull and me to come this fall to India and telling me to let you know-in case you to be of the party…. We would love to have you join us. This is but a line to let you know early in case you must make plans ahead.” (Leg. Col.) There was more correspondence on the subject, ending in a telegram dated January 8, 1898, to Mary Hale from Miss MacLeod: “We sail for India Wednesday [January 12] via England. Can you come?” (Leg. Col.) For one reason or another, Mary Hale did not, or could not, go along on that incomparable journey.

Three days after the Farewell Reception, Swamiji and the Seviers crossed the English Channel to France. Goodwin, who would meet the party in Naples, almost certainly went first to Batheaston to spend a few days with his mother, whom he much loved, before boarding the Prinz Regent Luitpold at nearby Southampton on December 21. Swamiji's tour through Italy with the Severs and his journey back to India has been told in the Life in as much detail as is presently known, and the story need not be repeated here. Let me just quote from two of Goodwin's letters to Mrs. Bull and thereby bring this narrative of Swami Vivekananda's first visit to the West to a close. The first letter was dated January 3, 1897, and was mailed from Port Said; the second; January 19, from Kandy, Ceylon;

There is nothing to write about on a voyage ever, but you will be pleased to hear that the Swami joined me at Naples in the best of health & spirits, & completely charmed with his tour. He was full of Rome. Rome & Delhi are the two cities in the world he says. He also liked Milan very well, & was, in fact, interested in every place he saw. We have had bad weather almost throughout the Mediterranean, & Swami & the Seviers have been under the weather. In fact the two latter are still so. . . . The Swami has entered for some of the tournaments on the boat-of the committee for which, by the bye, I was made chairman.

I am only writing a very few lines here owing to lack of time. There is a great deal to occupy our attention. The Swami received an intensely enthusiastic reception in Colombo, & India is mad with enthusiasm for him. Telegrams pour in: The people regard him in every sense of the word as a Divine Incarnation-as I do-& are constantly worshipping him. He was worshipped at the Temple on Sunday evg by the largest crowd ever seen there, who shouted_x000d_ Jai Jai Maha Deva-_x000d_ ¬All Hail Highest Deva.

After he had completed his first Western visit, letters of appreciation came to Swamiji from various groups of his disciples and friends. Two such letters, or addresses-those from the London and the New York students-were elaborately printed-in the style of the day, as though to make the words somehow carry more reverence than, unadorned, they could ever convey. The texts of the addresses from, respectively, the London students, the New York students, the Detroit students, the Cambridge Conferences, and the Brooklyn Ethical Association are given below.

In addition, a Christmas letter from Mrs. Ole Bull to Swamiji's brother disciples is given here, following the addresses._x000d_ _x000d_ THE SWAMI VIVEKANANDA IN ENGLAND_x000d_ _x000d_ At a large meeting of the Swami Vivekananda's Friends and Sympathisers held at the Galleries of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours, Picadilly, London, on December 13th 1896, the Chairman E. T. Sturdy Esq. was requested to present the following Address to the Swami on the motion of H. B. M. Buchanan Esq. B.A. (Cantab.). Seconded by Mrs. G. C. Ashton Jonson and unanimously supported:-¬_x000d_ The Students of the Vedanta Philosophy in London under your remarkably able instruction feel that they would be lack¬ing in their duty and privilege if they failed to record their warm and heartfelt appreciation of the noble and unselfish work you have set yourself to do, and of the great help you have been to them in their Study of Religion._x000d_ We feel the very deepest regret that you are so soon to leave England, but we should not be true Students of the very beautiful Philosophy you have taught us to regard so highly, if we did not recognise that there are claims upon your work from our Brothers and Sisters in India. That you may prosper very greatly in that work is the united prayer of all who have come under the elevating influence of your teaching, and no less of your personal attributes, which, as a living example of the Vedanta we recognise as the most helpful encouragement to us one and all to become real lovers of God in practise as well as in theory._x000d_ We look forward with great interest and keen anticipation to your speedy return to this Country, but, at the same time, we feel real pleasure that India, which you have taught us to regard in an altogether new light, and, we should like to add, to love, is to share with us the generous service which you are giving to the world._x000d_ In conclusion we would specially beg of you to convey our loving sympathy to the Indian People, and to accept from us our assurance that we regard their Cause as ours, realising as we do from you that we are all One in God.

Address from New York_x000d_ _x000d_ To our Indian Brethren _x000d_ Dear Friends:_x000d_ The Western Aryans send cordial greeting to the Aryans of India._x000d_ We, in New York who have been so fortunate as to hear the Vedanta Philosophy taught by the Swami Vivekananda, are desirous of expressing to you in some small measure our grateful recognition of his services to us._x000d_ He came, a stranger, unheralded, but, by the force of his magnetic eloquence, and the purity of his personal character, he commanded the attention and interest of thousands, and attracted their minds to the study of a subject almost entirely unknown to them. Here, in New York, where he taught and lectured for two seasons, the impression he produced is so deep, that we hope and trust it will extend until the Vedanta Philosophy shall take permanent root among us, and its comprehensive and tolerant teachings shall find lodgement in hearts, and expression in the lives of large numbers of our people. We who came into more immediate contact with him, are deeply grateful for the noble work he did among us, for the unselfish and self-sacrificing efforts he made in our behalf; and we will try to the best of our ability to establish on a lasting basis the study of the Vedanta Philosophy and to promote the growth of knowledge concerning it._x000d_ We wish to extend to you his fellow countrymen, our heartfelt sympathy in your present afflictions, with an earnest hope that a way may be found to lighten them._x000d_ May the Swami Vivekananda's work among his own people be blessed a thousandfold, and meet with the Fullest measure of success. Should he return to us in the years to come, he will receive a most cordial welcome. He has made us feel that we are all of one kin, and all expressions of that One Existence which is the background of the Universe._x000d_ Mary A. Phillips Secretary.

Address from Detroit_x000d_ _x000d_ From this far-away city, in a land, old yet young, ruled by a people who are a part of the ancient Aryan race, the mother of nations, we send to you in your native country-India, the conservator of the wisdom of the ages-our warmest love and sincerest appreciation of the message you brought to us. We, Western Aryans, have been so long separated from our Eastern brothers that we had almost forgotten our identity of origin, until you came and, with beautiful presence and matchless eloquence, rekindled within our hearts the knowledge that we of America and you of India are one._x000d_ May God be with you! May blessings attend you! May All¬ Love and All-Wisdom guide you!_x000d_ _x000d_ OM TAT SAT OM!_x000d_ [The above was signed by forty-two of_x000d_ Swamiji's Detroit friends.]

Address from the Cambridge Conferences_x000d_ TO SWAMI VIVEKANANDA-INDIA_x000d_ _x000d_ DEAR FRIEND AND BROTHER,_x000d_ As members of the Cambridge Conferences devoted to com¬parative study in Ethics, Philosophy, and Religion, it gives us great pleasure to recognize the value of your able expositions of the Philosophy and Religion of Vedanta in America, and the interest created thereby among thinking people. We believe such expositions as have been given by yourself and your colabourer, the Swami Saradananda, have more than. a mere speculative interest and utility; that they are of great ethical value in cementing the ties of friendship and brotherhood between distant peoples, and in helping us to realize that solidarity of human relationships and interests which has been affirmed by all the great religions of the world._x000d_ We earnestly hope that your work in India may be blessed in further promoting this noble end, and that you may return to us again with assurances of fraternal regard from our distant brothers of the great Aryan Family, and the ripe wisdom that comes from reflection and added experience and fresh contact with the life and thought of your people._x000d_ In view of the large opportunity for effective work presented in these Conferences, we should be glad to know something of your own plans for the coming years, and whether we may anticipate your presence with us again as a teacher. It is our hope that you will be able to return to us, in which event we can assure you the cordial greetings of old friends and the certainty of continued and increasing interest in your work.4_x000d_ _x000d_ We remain, _x000d_ Cordially and fraternally yours, _x000d_ LEWIS JANES, D.D., Director _x000d_ C. C. EVERETT, D.D._x000d_ WM JAMES_x000d_ JOHN H. WRIGHT _x000d_ JOSIAH ROYCE_x000d_ _x000d_ J.E.LOUGH (Pres.,Harvard Graduate _x000d_ Philosophical Society 1895-96)_x000d_ A.O.LOVEJOY(Secretary,do 1986-97) _x000d_ RACHEL KENT TAYLOR (Pres., _x000d_ Radcliffe Philosophical Club,_x000d_ 1896-97)_x000d_ SARA C. BULL_x000d_ JOHN P. FOX

Address from the Brooklyn Ethical Association_x000d_ The Pouch Mansion, _x000d_ 345, Clinton Avenue,_x000d_ Brooklyn, N.Y., December 31st,1896._x000d_ _x000d_ To our Indian Brethren of the Great Aryan Family._x000d_ _x000d_ Dear Friends:-The return to India of the Swami Vivekananda, the delegate of the Vedantists to the Parliament of Religions in Chicago, and the teacher of the Religion and Philosophy of the Vedanta in. England and America, is a proper occasion for the expression of our warm fraternal regard for our Eastern brethren, and our sincere hope that one effect of the presence and teaching of the Swami Vivekananda and the Swami Saradananda in our Western world will be the establishment of closer relations of sympathy and mutual helpfulness between India, England and America._x000d_ We wish to testify to our high appreciation of the value of the work of the Swami Vivekananda in this country. His lectures before the Brooklyn Ethical Association opened up a new world of thought to many of his hearers, and renewed the interest of others in the comparative study of religious and philosophic systems, which gives breadth to the mind, and an uplifted stimulus to the moral nature. We can heartily endorse the words of the Venerable Dean of the Harvard Divinity School: "The Swami Vivekananda . . . Has been, in fact, a missionary from India to America. Everywhere he has made warm personal friends; and his expositions of the Hindu philosophy have been listened to with delight. . . . We may not be so near to actual conversion as some seem to believe; but Vivekananda has created a high degree of interest in himself and his work."_x000d_ We thank you for sending him to us. We wish him god-speed in his educational work in his own country. We hope he may return to us again with new lessons of wisdom resulting from added thought and experience. And we earnestly hope that the new avenues of sympathy opened by the presence of himself and his brother Sannyasins will result in mutual benefits, and a profound sense of the solidarity and brotherhood of the human race._x000d_ On behalf of the Brooklyn Ethical Association_x000d_ Z. SIDNEY SAMPSON,_x000d_ President._x000d_ LEWIS G. JANES,_x000d_ Ex-President.

Christmas Letter from Mrs. Bull_x000d_ _x000d_ The following letter to the Sannyasins at Alambazar Math was written, in part at least, at the suggestion of Mr. Goodwin, who in a letter to Mrs. Bull dated December 11, 1896, had ventured: "By the by as I know it would be appreciated if you would write to the Math a letter of greeting &, particularly, expressing the ties of motherhood between the West & India in time for Sri Ramakrishna's birthday-Feb 20th." Mrs. Bull complied in her own way. She chose the more immediately at hand celebration of Christ's birthday as an occasion; and the style of her letter, the sentiments it expressed, and the gift it proffered were pure Sara Bull. (The reference in the following letter to a message from Swamiji's mother was possibly to Bhuvaneshvari Devi's nonextant reply to a Christmas 1894 greeting from Mrs. Bull and other women of Cambridge. See Prophetic Mission-2, chapter twelve, section four.) Mrs. Bull's letter to Alambazar Math read :_x000d_ To the Sons of_x000d_ Ram Krishna Paramhansa _x000d_ at the Muth in Calcutta_x000d_ The divine message of your master, the acceptance of which brings peace to the heart & good will to men, enlightens, purifies & strengthens each believer's concept of God & the Soul, whatever be his birth or environment. The Vedanta in the light & warmth of his sacred example vitalizes & establishes the pure teachings of Jesus; the way chosen by our people as we gladly testify. You, the chosen of his heart, with whom he lived & taught, have done us here a great & brotherly service. The truths of revealed religion have been made acceptable to modern thought & agnosticism, a gift than which none could be greater._x000d_ Faithfully & ably your Vivekananda & Saradananda have served us. Faithfully & affectionately may we share in your special legacy, the up building of the influence of your master's life & service. The ideal of Divine motherhood made luminous by Ram Krishna while sending your Sanyasis across the earth if needs be, not withholding in cloistered retirement or forest life your message of light & love, has indeed brought to western mothers the consolation of timely help. No sweeter or nobler message than that of Vivekananda's mother, blessing the work of her son in our midst, has come to us. The human weakness of a mother's heart received strength in wishing that her function be fulfilled to him in homes his message had entered. Such mothers are indeed worthy to bear & cherish children fit to become the Sons of a Ram Krishna._x000d_ And now my message to you in turn is, that giving on your part to these your mothers the spiritual bread of life as faithfully as they cherished your helpless infancy & childhood that you should become men & Sons of God, makes the bond of Motherhood the world over Divine. Like your revered Sankara Acharya, you will never fail to hear the call of your mothers, through whom all women are blessed by your labors. Their gift of their sons to homelessness & service makes the record of Mary of more effect to us at this Christmas time. Guest¬rooms for your mothers to be added to the Muth where they may retire for spiritual refreshment & help are a contribution I would like to offer. If God wills, I will one day hope to attend with one of them a devotional service at the Muth. With prayers for the safe return to you of Vivekananda, for a happy reunion of Ram Krishna's sons & people at the birthday, & my salutations to the revered Sarada, & to each of you sever-ally, I am_x000d_ Faithfully you,_x000d_ Sara C.Bull._x000d_ 168 Brattle Street, _x000d_ Cambridge. Dec. 25, 1896._x000d_ Massachusetts, U.S.A.

Swamiji had not expected the tremendous ovation that greeted him. Traveling by stages from Colombo, where he had landed on January 15, 1897, to Madras, he received everywhere the adoration and homage of thousands upon thousands of his countrymen. Everywhere the streets were elaborately decorated and lengthy speeches were delivered in his praise. At one place his carriage was drawn by a group of devotees, at another, hundreds flung themselves on the tracks in front of his approaching train, forcing it to stop so that they might catch a glimpse of him. Everywhere he addressed the multi¬tudes, firing them with his spirit and awakening them to an appreciation of their ancient culture. His nine-day stay (Febru¬ary 6-15) at Madras was a veritable festival, as was the re¬ception given him in the city of his birth, Calcutta, to which he had traveled from Madras by boat, arriving on February 19. No honor was too great to pay him, no words effusive enough to express the love and reverence the people felt for him. To Swamiji all this meant but one thing-that India's spiritual greatness still lived, that she was still able to give higher tribute to a homeless sannyasin than to a military hero, a statesman, or a king. He was profoundly moved.

In Calcutta he made his headquarters during the day at the riverside home of Gopal Lal Seal in Cossipore. At night he stayed with his brother monks at the Ramakrishna Math in Alambazar. To both places a stream of people came to visit him-scholars, students, householders, and monks asking questions that touched upon everything from abstruse philosophy to matters of personal concern. To all, particularly to the young unmarried men, in whom he saw India's hope, he communicated his dream of awakening thc giant soul of his motherland, inspiring them with his own enthusiasm and _x000d_ determination. On May 1, 1897, he called a meeting of his Master's monastic and lay disciples and inaugurated, with himself as General President, the Ramakrishna Mission Association, the purpose of which was to establish the humanitarian work of the Order on an organized basis.

Swamiji's poor health soon forced him to leave the hot , humid climate of Bengal. Most of March and April he spent in Darjeeling, and on May 6, accompanied by a party of brother monks and disciples, he left Calcutta for Almora, where Miss Muller and Mr. Goodwin awaited him. But rest was a factor that played little part in his life. Although the dry and cool air of northern India benefited him, his three months in Almora were spent in almost continual activity, in receiving streams of visitors, holding discourses, and granting interviews. In early August he started on a lecture tour of northern India, accompanied by several of his brother monks and disciples. For the next five months, though often ill, he lectured and talked almost unremittingly, visiting many places in the Punjab, Kashmir, Rajputana, and the Central Provinces, awakening in the minds of the people a luminous vision of a resurgent India and placing before them the ideals of renunciation and service.

Toward the end of January, having finished his tour, he returned to the Alambazar Math, and there, along with many other activities, continued the training of his young disciples: he held classes not only in Sanskrit scriptures, but in science and history as well, he gave lectures, spent hours with them. in meditation or devotional singing, and discussed with them every topic under the sun, until his ideas became an integral part of their thought and until they themselves became, as he wanted, "strong, vigorous, believing young men, sincere to the backbone."

Swamiji gave as much care and attention to his Western disciples as to his Eastern. At his call, Miss Margaret Noble had come from England in January, 1898, to work for the good of Indian women. In February, Mrs. Ole Bull and Miss Josephine MacLeod arrived to help him in whatever way they could. To the question of how this could best be done, Swamiji replied in two words: "Love India!"-and it was through his constant and careful guidance that they learned to do so. Indeed, it was not difficult to love his country when it was seen through his eyes and understood through his heart. From May to October his Western disciples, together with a number of his brother monks and Eastern disciples, traveled with him through northern India. He made them thrill as he did him¬self to the glories of India's history, to the beauties of her pres¬ent, and to the simple but noble life of the people, which was rooted in a tradition whose beginnings were lost in an un¬fathomable past and whose meaning had been continually enriched by generation upon generation of God-centered lives. The pasty journeyed from Naini Tal to Almora, where the Seviers were already established and where, in the early part of June, Swamiji received the shocking and heartbreaking news of the death of his young disciple, Goodwin. Traveling on, the party reached the beautiful Kashmir Valley, and there leisurely meandered in houseboats up the River Jhelum through the Vale of Srinagar.

In India a new side of Swamiji was revealed to his Western disciples: they saw not only the benign, all-loving and serene teacher they had known in the West, but the fervent, almost fierce, patriot and "man maker." They saw, moreover, the majestic and awesome moods of the supreme knower of God, whose spiritual experiences reached heights incomprehensible to the mind and who walked paths where none could follow. Even during the first weeks after his arrival in India, when the whole country had risen as one man to welcome him, he would enter during the course of the day into many a brief samadhi. Professor K. Sundararama Iyer, who has related his impressions of Swamiji's nine days in Madras in February of 1897, tells us of his moods of "sweet serenity when his face assumed the air both of a child and an angel from heaven," and of his sudden lapses into a strange state. "He was always having visitors about him," Professor Iyer writes, "and sat listening or speaking to them. Suddenly his eyes became still, though remaining open, and he seemed not to listen or even to be conscious of what was passing about him. When once more he became aware of the scene, he seemed as if he had been utterly insensible to it. He had been neither asleep nor awake. . . . His eyes . . . remained fixed and without the least sign of movement. . . . He seemed to me like one who for a while had left this physical tenement and fleeted away to another state of existence." Indeed, Swami Shivananda and Swami Niranjanananda, who were with Swamiji in Madras, both noticed his frequent though brief absorptions into samadhi, and the former was heard many years after to remark that ever since Swamiji's first return from the West he had dwelt in a continuous state of superconsciousness.

While in Kashmir with his Western disciples, Swamiji suddenly, in the last days of July, 1898, announced his desire to visit the Cave of Amarnath, the far-away shrine of Shiva, to which hundreds of devotees were making a pilgrimage. Alone of his Western disciples, Sister Nivedita was chosen to ac-company him, making the four-day climb on foot, up and across precipitous, snow-covered mountains. In the huge Cave of Amarnath, Swamiji, nude except for kaupina, or loincloth, his body covered with ashes and his face glowing with devotion, looked upon the great ice symbol of Shiva, and in a supreme moment of divine consciousness beheld the living God Himself He spoke little of this experience, but when he returned to the Vale of Kashmir it seemed to those near him as if Shiva, the Eternal One, had literally permeated his being.

Following his absorption in Shiva, Swamiji's mind and heart turned to the Divine Mother, the Power behind all relative forms. With the same awesome intensity with which he had been concentrated in the motionless and silent God, he was now absorbed in His dynamic aspect. At the end of September he abruptly left his disciples and retired for a week to the Colored Springs of Kshir-Bhavani, a famous shrine of the Mother. There, lost to the world, he performed daily worship and practiced severe austerities. Although we know that at Kshir-Bhavani Swamiji heard the voice of the Divine Mother speaking to him, we know little of his other experiences, of which he no doubt had many; for, after returning from the shrine he quoted from his own poem "Kali, the Mother"¬ "Who dares misery love,/and hug the form of Death,/Dance in Destruction's dance,/To him the Mother comes"-and he said, "It all came true, every word of it. To him the Mother does indeed come. I have proved it. For I have hugged the form of Death !"

The impact of the spiritual experiences through which Swamiji had passed left his body shattered; yet his work continued. Returning to Calcutta in October he took up as strenuously as ever his task of guiding the activities of his brother monks and disciples. In December he installed the sacred relics of Sri Ramakrishna in the new Math at Belur ¬where, earlier in the year, he had purchased seven or so acres on the Ganga. A month later the monastery was moved to these permanent headquarters and thenceforth became known as the "Belur Math." Until June of 1899 Swamiji remained, for the most part, in Calcutta, and then, on the advice of his doctors and friends, set sail once again for the West.

He was aware that there were but few years left to him on this .earth. "I am getting ready to depart to return no more to this hell, this world," he wrote to Mrs. Bull as early as August, 1896; and to Mary Hale in July of 1897: "At most three or four years more of life is left. . . . My time is short " Knowing how little time he had, he worked with impatience to finish his task and to train others to feel as he felt and to work as he worked. It was an almost terrible impatience, in which his spirit thrashed against the inertia of the world that he longed to lift and exalt-an impatience which led Sister Nivedita to write: "From the moment of my landing in India . . . I found something quite unexpected. . . . It was the personality of my Master himself, in all the fruitless torture and struggle of a lion caught in a net.

Torture it may have been; but fruitless it was not, for during Swamiji's two and a half years in his motherland he had put his "machine in strong working order." Aside from the immeasurable influence he had exerted over the minds and hearts of his countrymen, he had permanently organized the Ramakrishna Math and the Ramakrishna Mission-the monastic and humanitarian branches of the Order. (In 1900 Swamiji was informally to hand over the presidency of both the Math and the Mission to Swami Brahmananda [see note for page 420, chapter fifteen]. "Now I am free," he would write to Sister Nivedita on August 25, 1900, "as I have kept no power or authority or position for me in the work. I also have resigned the Presidentship of the Ramakrishna Mission. The Math etc. belong now to the immediate disciples of Ramakrishna except myself. The Presidentship is now Brahmananda's-next it will fall on Premananda etc., in turn. I am so glad a whole load is off me, now I am happy."6 Swamiji would also express his relief at no longer being the head of the Ramakrishna Order to Sister Christine. "I am sending all the money I earned in America to India," he would write to her in October of 1900. "Now I am free, the begging-monk as before. I have also resigned from the Presidentship of the Monastery. Thank God, I am free!" But in 1897, '98, and '99 the "whole load" of organizing and supervising the work of the Order was mainly his.) Under his direction, Swami Ramakrishnananda had successfully started a center in Madras. On November 14, 1896, Sister Nivedita had opened her girls' school. His disciples, Swamis Virajananda and Prakashananda, had, at his wish, gone to Dacca in East Bengal to preach Vedanta; two of his brother monks, Swamis Saradananda and Turiyananda, had departed to preach in Gujarat (the former, in December of 1899, went also to Dacca and other cities of East Bengal), and Swami Shivananda had traveled to Ceylon, where he formed classes in raja yoga and the Gita.

Aside from having established monastic centers in Calcutta and Madras, Swamiji realized through the help of his London disciples, Captain and Mrs. Sevier, his long cherished dream of setting up a monastery in the Himalayas. The site of Mayavati, which the Seviers had found after much searching, was an entire hill, 6,400 feet above sea level. After its purchase, Swamiji commissioned four of his disciples to construct additional buildings on the property, to make roads, and to landscape the grounds. The monastery was dedicated to the principle of Advaita, or Nondualistic, Vedanta. External worship of any kind was barred. "Here will be taught and practised," Swamiji wrote, "nothing but the Doctrine of Unity, pure and simple; and though in entire sympathy with all other systems, this Ashrama is dedicated to Advaita and Advaita alone."

The message of Sri Ramakrishna and Swamiji was disseminated not only by the preaching activities of the Order, but through the medium of the written word. Very dear to Swamiji's heart were the three magazines he had established between 1895and 1899. As we have seen during the course of the present volume, the first of these, the Brahmavadin, was published in English by his Madras disciples and had been under way since September of 1899, and in 1898, while he was in Almora, Swamiji arranged to revive the Prabuddha Bharata, an English language monthly, the editor of which had recently died. With the help of the Seviers the editorial offices were moved from Madras to Almora and, with Swami Swarup¬ananda as editor, the magazine was published as an organ of the Ramakrishna Math and Mission. Later, the offices were transferred to Mayavati, where, to this day, Prabuddha Bharata, or Awakened India, is edited monthly, spreading the ideals of the Order. A third magazine was the Udbodhan. Since 1894 Swamiji had urged his gurubhais (brother monks) to start a Bengali periodical. Swami Trigunatita was the first to take up the idea of the magazine with enthusiasm and, as early as 1895, made plans to publish it. It was not, however, until January 14, 1899, that the Udbodhan made its first appearance with Swami Trigunatita as its editor and manager.

The publication of books, which today forms an important function of the Ramakrishna Order, was also undertaken during Swamiji's lifetime, his own works being published in both English and Bengali by the Math.

An important part of the work of the Ramakrishna Mission was the opening of temporary relief centers in times of disaster. In 1897 Swami Akhandananda, who had earlier established schools in Khetri under Swamiji's encouragement and detailed direction, began to work in the famine-stricken district of Mzrshidabad in Bengal in an effort to give what help he could. On hearing of this Swamiji was, of course, overjoyed. He sent two of his disciples as assistants and, with the help of the Mahabodhi Society, started a fund to which contributions poured in. With his approval, Swami Akhandananda instituted a nonsectarian orphanage for both boys and girls at Mohula¬the first of its kind to be founded under the auspices of the Ramakrishna Order. The orphanage had-as had all of Swamiji's work-the support of his brother monks.

Other relief work was set up under the guidance of Swamiji by his various brother monks and disciples. In August of 1897, Swami Trigunatita opened a famine relief center in Dinajpur. Later in the same year a third relief center was established at Deoghar by Swami Virajananda, and between October of 1897 and January of 1898 Swami Prakashananda gave out rice to the famished people of Dakshineswar. In May of 1898 Swamiji prepared for relief operations in Calcutta to meet a threatened outbreak of plague, coming down from a needed vacation in Darjeeling to do so. "If the plague comes to my native city," he had written from Darjeeling on April 29, 1898, "I am determined to make myself a sacrifice." In the few days during which the epidemic seemed imminent he did all that was necessary to meet it. Through means of plague manifestoes, he brought confidence to the panic-stricken people; further, he made arrangements for setting up a quarantine camp and also for teaching sanitation to the people and, if need be, for cleaning the lanes and houses of various districts. The following year, 1899, when an epidemic actually broke out in the city, the Ramakrishna Mission plague service went at once into action under Swamiji's direction. The management of the work was placed in the hands of Sister Nivedita as secretary and Swami Sadananda as officer-in-¬chief. In four areas of the city the poor quarters were cleared of cartloads of filth and with the help of scavengers thoroughly disinfected. Swamiji himself went to live in the slums, that he might bring comfort and courage to the people. On April 22 he presided over a public meeting held in Calcutta, during which fifteen students volunteered for service in response to his stirring plea. As an outcome of this a permanent plague service was established at the Math, making it possible, when the most virulent epidemic of all broke out in 1900, for the Ramakrishna Mission to give invaluable aid.

By mid 1899 Swamiji's health had become dangerously shattered; for rest, more than for anything else, he set sail in the company of Swami Turiyananda and Sister Nivedita for his second visit to the West. As it turned out, that visit would prove to be a momentous chapter of his mission, and its story is the subject of another book.