"It was about an hour’s ride on the electric train for them to reach our house," Mrs. Hansbrough said. "The train stopped just at the corner, and then they had only a few steps to our door. I can see the picture of them now, standing at the front door, so I must have met them when they arrived. After speaking to each of us as he came in, Swamiji turned and walked into the living room. The tall windows looked out through the trees in our garden. He walked to one of them and stood for some minutes looking out, the white curtains framing him against the sunlight. Then he turned and spoke, answering again the question I had asked him at Mrs. Blodgett’s. `Yes,’ he said, `I will come to visit you!’ Then he wanted to come right away, and he soon did.

What Mrs. Hansbrough meant by "soon" is not clear, but it is certain that Swamiji did not move to the Meads’ house until after January 24, for on that date he was still heading his letters with Mrs. Blodgett’s address and speaking of her as his hostess. Entangled in the problem of when he moved are a number of short visits with other people. For instance, we learn from Mrs. Hansbrough (and also from Mr. Bransby’s letter to Mr. Allan) that he stayed for a week or so with "a wealthy family called the Stimsons, to whom Mrs. Blodgett had introduced him"; he stayed also for a few days with Mrs. Emeline F. Bowler, the president in 1900 of the Shakespeare Club, and one finds an item in the Pasadena Section of the Los Angeles Times of January 14 (to be given in full later on) which states that he was then the "guest of Mrs. J. [Jacob] C. Newton of South Pasadena."

In January of 1900 the Swami moved to the nearby town of South Pasadena, becoming the guest of the three Mead sisters, all of whom had been attending his Los Angeles lectures and classes, and had become his devoted friends and helpers. Although there is evidence that the Swami was a guest of others during this period, staying, for instance, for a time at the home of a Mrs. J. C. Newton in South Pasadena, and spending a few days in January at Mrs. Blodgett's in Los Angeles, he remained for the most part at the Meads' home until mid February, lecturing in Pasadena almost every day.

It contained in abundance citrus and olive groves, orchards, vineyards, and gardens, and boasted as well of many mansions set in landscaped grounds, nine excellent schools, several women’s clubs, twenty-eight churches, and no saloons. "The people of this city are not greatly given to pleasure and hilarity," the Pasadena Star commented; "they may dissipate mildly by going to the Orpheum (vaudeville] on Saturday afternoon." Some-the mansion-dwellers-also dissipated mildly now and then by attending the cultural events in Los Angeles, making the ten-mile trip in the electric railway’s "Poppy," a luxuriously appointed parlor car, equipped with a Brussels carpet, movable wicker armchairs, a kitchen, and, on request, a caterer. On the whole, however, Pasadenans stayed at home, for clearly there was no better place to be. Not only was their town sheltered by the motherly Sierra, cooled and aired by soft breezes from the Pacific, and nurtured by the fruitful valley, but it was "famed for its intellectual and artistic atmosphere and imaginativeness." The very name of the town, its inhabitants concluded, quite wrongly, meant " `Gateway of Paradise’-Paso-de-Eden.

By a process of reasoning with which I need not trouble the reader, one can be fairly sure that this Sunday dinner took place either on December 24 or 31-either, that is, on Christmas or New Year’s eve. And more likely than not, it was the clear, warm day of Christmas Eve; for according to Mts. Hansbrough, the day of the dinner was sunny, and according to the Los Angeles papers, New Year’s Eve was cloudy with a trace of rain. Let us say, then, until new evidence shows us to be wrong, that Swamiji and Miss MacLeod first visited the Mead sisters on December 24.

Indeed, if the Swami had "lost the zest for work", there was no evidence of it in his lectures. They were as vigorous, as powerful, and as stirring as any he had given during his earlier mission in the West. Many of them were taken down in shorthand and have come to us with their eloquence intact. Some were unique in subject-matter, particularly those delivered in Pasadena, namely, "Women of India", "My Life and Mission", or "The Great Teachers of the World". Let us quote here a passage or two from this last, which was one of his most striking. The Swami said: _x000d_ These great Teachers are the living Gods on this earth. Whom else should we worship? I try to get an idea of God in my mind, and I find what a false little thing I conceive; it would be a sin to worship that God. I open my eyes and look at the actual life of these great ones of the earth. They are higher than any conception of God that I could ever form. For, what conception of mercy could a man like me form who would go after a man if he steals anything from me and send him to jail? And what can be my highest idea of forgiveness? Nothing beyond myself. Which of you can jump out of your own bodies? Which of you can jump out of your own minds? Not one of you. What idea of divine love can you form except what you actually love? What we have never experienced, we can form no idea of. So, all my best attempts at forming an idea of God would fail in every case. And here are plain facts, and not idealism — actual facts of love, of mercy, of purity, of which I can have no conception even. What wonder that I should fall at the, feet of these men and worship them as God? And what else can anyone do? I should like to see the man who can do anything else, however much he may talk. Talking is not actuality. Talking about God and the Impersonal, and this and that, is all very good; but these man — Gods are the real Gods of all nations and A races. These divine men have been worshipped and will be worshipped so long as man is man. Therein is our faith, therein is our hope, of a reality. Of what avail is a mere mystical principle! _x000d_ The purpose and intent of what I have to say to you is this, that I have found it possible in my life to worship all of them, and to he ready for all that are yet to come. A mother recognizes her son in any _x000d_ dress in which he may appear before her; and if one does not do so, I am sure she is not the mother of that man. Now, as regards those of you that think that you understand Truth and Divinity and God in only one Prophet in the world, and not in any other, naturally, the conclusion which I draw is that you do not understand Divinity in anybody; you have simply swallowed words and identified yourself with one sect, just as you would in party politics, as a matter of opinion; but that is no religion at all…. _x000d_ Will other and greater Prophets come? Certainly they will come in this world. But do not look forward to that. I should better like that each one of you became a Prophet of this real new testament, which is made up of all the old testaments. Take all the old messages, supplement them with your own realizations, and become a Prophet unto others. Each one of these Teachers has been great; each has left something for us; they have been our Gods. We salute them, we are their servants; and, all the same, we salute ourselves; for if they have been Prophets and children of God, we also are the same. They reached their perfection, and we are going to attain ours now. Remember the words of Jesus: "The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!" This very moment let everyone of us make a. staunch resolution: "I will become a Prophet, I will become a messenger of Light, I will become a child of God, nay, I will become a God!"

The Throop Institute represented one of the aspects of southern California that Swamiji no doubt liked-the spirit of enterprise and growth. But he liked also the area’s then prevailing atmosphere of peace, which he had more than once likened to that of India. All in all, he found Los Angeles and its vicinity a "great field" for the propagation of Vedanta. "I am going soon to work in California," he had written to Mrs. Bull on December 27 (somewhat mystifyingly, for he had already started his classes) ; "when I leave I shall send for Turiyananda and make him work on the Pacific coast. I am sure here is a great field. (When Swamiji left San Francisco in June of 1900, he did indeed send for his brother monk, asking him to take charge of the new-founded San Francisco Vedanta Society.)

Perchance a prophet thou--_x000d_ Who knows? Who dares touch_x000d_ The depths where Mother hides_x000d_ Her silent failless bolts!_x000d_ _x000d_ Perchance the child had glimpse_x000d_ Of shades, behind the scenes,_x000d_ With eager eyes and strained,_x000d_ Quivering forms--ready_x000d_ To jump in front and be_x000d_ Events, resistless, strong._x000d_ Who knows but Mother, how,_x000d_ And where, and when, they come?_x000d_ _x000d_ Perchance the shining sage_x000d_ Saw more than he could tell;_x000d_ Who knows, what soul, and when,_x000d_ The Mother makes Her throne?_x000d_ _x000d_ What law would freedom bind?_x000d_ What merit guide Her will,_x000d_ Whose freak is greatest order,_x000d_ Whose will resistless law?_x000d_ _x000d_ To child may glories ope_x000d_ Which father never dreamt;_x000d_ May thousandfold in daughter_x000d_ Her powers Mother store.

The three Mead sisters, whose brother was a Los Angeles banker, were well connected in southern California, and helped the Swami in every way possible. Mrs. Hansbrough, particularly, was instrumental in arranging classes for him and would go to any length to be of service to him. She was, indeed, to act as his secretary and, for a time, his housekeeper during his coming stay in northern California.

"Tomorrow if it be fine," Miss MacLeod had written on December 15 to Sister Nivedita, "Mr & Mrs Baumgardt, Swami & I go to Mount Lowe where there is a fine observatory, and we shall have a rare sight looking through the telescope-& do some fine excursions in the neighborhood, returning home here about 5 on Sunday afternoon. As it had happened, December 16 had not been fine, and the outing had been postponed. It was not until the second weekend in January that Swamiji made the trip up Mount Lowe, a high peak of the San Gabriel Range that rose just northeast of Pasadena.

In a photograph taken unquestionably at Mount Lowe (not, as has generally been supposed, in Switzerland), one sees Swamiji standing in the very center of a funicular-load of excursionists and looking, at the moment, none too happy. The people around him are unidentified, but just behind his right shoulder appears a man whose photograph resembles one of Mr. Baumgardt. The funicular is about to ascend the first steep slope of the mountain by way of the Great Cable Incline, a track that climbed straight up for a dizzy half mile to Echo Summit-a small plateau from which one could halloo once and be answered by the friendly mountains thirteen times.

The Mead household consisted of Mr. Mead, his three daughters, his two grandchildren-Mrs. Hansbrough’s daughter, Dorothy, who was four years old, and Mrs. Wyckoff’s son, Ralph, who was seventeen-and the housekeeper, Miss Fairbanks. How so many people could fit comfortably into so small a house is a marvel. But even with guests, they managed with apparent ease. (Mrs Hansbrough’s daughter, Mrs. Paul Cohn, has shown me two photographs taken one day-possibly in the spring of 1901 when all the people who lived in the little house plus Swami Turiyananda, a Miss Minnie Boock, and a few others were on a picnic in the foot¬hills of the nearby mountains. As far as I know, these two photographs are the only extant pictures of the Mead house¬hold as it was around the time of our story, and thus, with the kind permission of Mrs. Cohn, I am reproducing both photos here.)

During Swamiji’s stay, the three sisters (and for a time Miss MacLeod) all slept in the larger of the two front bedrooms ("hospital system," Mrs. Hansbrough put it), giving to Swamiji, as we have seen, a room to himself. Old Mr. Mead (he was eighty-four) slept downstairs, Ralph in the smaller front bedroom, and Miss Fairbanks and Dorothy in the loftlike attic, which one reached, Mrs. Cohn remembered, by a narrow staircase between Swamiji’s room and the bathroom. Thus in this populous house Swamiji had privacy, and in its friendly and relaxed atmosphere he could live as he pleased, without the ceremony, bothersome to him, of a more formal m6nage. "Though he was very careful about his dress when he went out or met strangers," Mrs. Hansbrough said, "he was casual about it at home. He remarked one Sunday morning: `Why should I be careful of my dress at home? I don’t want to get married!’ And once while my nephew Ralph was blacking his shoes, he said, `You know, Ralph, this fine-lady business is a nuisance!’ All the Western fussiness about there being a `proper’ dress for different times and places he put down as show."

Every morning around seven Swamiji would come downstairs in a worn black-and-white herringbone-tweed bathrobe, tied at the waist by a cord. His hair would be still tousled and damp from his bath - just as it had been in the mornings at Mrs. Blodgett’s-and as one can see from photographs taken of him at this period, it was fairly long. This was not by chance, but was, rather, a concession to popular demand. "His hair was beautifully wavy," Mrs. Hansbrough recalled. "In fact, it was so beautiful and it set off his features so well that we would not let him cut it. Swamiji himself," she continued, "did not object. He was wholly devoid of self consciousness."

Between the time Swamiji came down from his room and the start of breakfast he would walk alone in the secluded garden behind the house or along the almost equally secluded driveway at the side, sometimes singing or chanting, sometimes silent and absorbed. Breakfast was at seven-thirty, for Ralph was due at school at eight-thirty, and Helen, youngest of the sisters (she was in her twenties), was due as early in Los Angeles, where she was secretary in an insurance firm. Swamiji ate a good, though light, American meal, consisting mainly of fruit, two eggs (he liked them poached), two pieces of toast, and two cups of coffee with sugar and cream. Mrs. Hansbrough once pressed upon him a third cup, persisting, until at last he said, "All right. Woman’s business is to tempt man." But as a rule he was moderate in eating, drinking coffee, and smoking his pipe. (He no longer smoked cigars, as he had during his first visit to the West, and, like most men in those days, seldom smoked cigarettes.)

Although "Niece Helen" and Ralph had, perforce, to hurry away, Mrs. Hansbrough, Mrs. Wyckoff, and Swamiji made breakfast a leisurely meal. They never rushed. And afterward, on those rare days when Swamiji had no morning class, he would stroll again in the garden or browse through the library. _x000d_ "Often he would play with the children in the yard," Mrs. Hansbrough recalled. "Dorothy had several friends who would come, and he would hold hands with them and play ring¬around-the-rosy and other games." No doubt Swamiji enjoyed these games for their own sake, as perfectly happy as his small companions; but he liked also to observe the ways of children and was interested in their early education. "He used to like to talk with them," Mrs. Hansbrough continued, "and would ask them many questions about their activities: why they played this game or that, and so on. He was much interested in the problem of child training, and we often discussed it. He did not believe in punishment. It had never helped him, he said, and added, `I would never do anything to make a child afraid.’ " Sometimes Swamiji would sit with the children in a shed in the back garden and look at their picture books. "He particularly enjoyed Alice in Woaderland and Alice Through the Locking Glass. He said that their portrayal of the processes of the human mind was absolutely correct and that Lewis Carroll had some kind of intuition-that his was not an ordinary mind-to have written those books." (Indeed, Swamiji thought Alice in Wouderland "the most wonderful book for children that has been written in this [the nineteenth] century." "There is no such thing as law or connection in this world, but we are thinking that there is a great deal of connection," he had said in 1896 during a New York class. " . . . The world is the same unconnected thing [as in] Alice in Wonderland-with no con¬nection whatever.

In the Mead household, which consisted of seven members, there were two children: Ralph, Mrs. Wyckoff's seventeen-year-old son, and Dorothy, Mrs. Hansbrough's four-year-old daughter. The Swami became an intimate friend of both. On those rare days when he had no morning class, he would play in the back garden with Dorothy and her young friends, giving himself to ring-around-the-rosy and similar games. While he was no doubt as happy as his little playmates, enjoying the games for the reasonless reasons of a child, he liked also to observe the ways and thoughts of the children, and was interested in their early education. "He used to like to talk with them," Mrs. Hansbrough recounted, "and would ask them many questions about their activities: why they played this game or that, and so on. He was much interested in the problem of child-training, and we often discussed it. He did not believe in punishment. It had never helped him, he said, andadded,'1 would never do anything to make a child afraid."' Sometimes the Swami would sit with the children in a shed in the back garden and look at their picture books. He particularly enjoyed his old favourites Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass.

Ralph loved the Swami and always tried to serve him in whatever way he could. He would shine his shoes, fetch tobacco from upstairs for his pipe, and do other little things that the Swami asked of him. Often they talked together. "Can you see your own eyes?" the Swami asked Ralph one day. Ralph answered that he could not, except in a mirror. "God is like that," the Swami told him. "He is as close as your own eyes. He is your own even though you can't see Him."

The Swami had his own spontaneous way of dispelling any feeling on the part of those with whom he lived that he was a superior being. But while the elder members of the Mead family felt fully at ease with him, they could not, at the same time, help feeling "as if Christ himself were in their midst". His great presence and his talks could charge the very air with a spiritual atmosphere; his ocean like compassion could absorb and dispel the burdens and pains of those who came close to him.

One memorable morning-it must have been a weekend or a holiday, for Ralph had not rushed off to school-Swamiji suddenly laid aside his after-breakfast pipe and called Dorothy to him. Recalling this particular occasion, Mrs. Hansbrough related that her little girl went to him and stood between his knees with her hands on his thighs. "Swamiji put his hands at the back of her neck at the hairline and tapped up and over the top of her head to the eyebrows. Then he called Ralph and did the same thing. Ralph must have knelt, because I remember that Swamiji did not leave his seat." To Mrs. Hansbrough the moment was clearly a sacred one; it seemed that her daughter and nephew had received a special blessing, to which she gave the name "baptism." But Swamiji himself gave no name to his act, nor would he explain it. "It is just a custom we have in India," was all he would say when Mrs. Hansbrough ques¬tioned him. And there, in silence, the moment ended.

Ralph loved Swamiji and served him personally whenever and however he could. He would shine his shoes, fetch his tobacco from upstairs, and do other little things that Swamiji asked of him. Often they used to talk together, and Mrs. Hansbrough remembered that once Swamiji asked Ralph: "Can you see your own eyes?" Ralph answered that he could not, except in a mirror. "God is like that," Swamiji told him. "He is as close as your own eyes. He is your own, even though you can’t see Him." If one were able to talk with Ralph today, he could no doubt tell much else that Swamiji had said to him. But the time for searching out those memories passed long ago; for Ralph Wyckoff was accidentally killed when he was forty-two.

But while there were mornings when Swamiji was able to stroll leisurely in the garden or to talk with Dorothy and her friends, more often than not he held a ten o’clock class in nearby Pasadena. On such occasions he would leave the house around nine or nine-thirty, accompanied by Mrs. Hansbrough. He would wear his loose black coat and black hat and would carry in a suitcase his gerua robe and turban, into which he would later change. (As we have seen, he did not always wear his robe while lecturing, but apparently he sometimes did. Mrs. Hansbrough tells us that when Mrs. Bowler, the president of the Shakespeare Club, first invited him to speak, she specifically requested that he wear his turban. Swamiji obliged. "Don’t you understand?" he explained to Mrs. Hansbrough who had objected, "She wants the whole show!") To get to the Shakespeare Club, where Swamiji held most of his morning classes, was a simple matter. A few steps from the house he and Mrs. Hansbrough (and perhaps also Mrs. Wyckoff) could board the electric train and travel to Pasadena and thence up Fair Oaks Avenue directly to the clubhouse, which in those days stood on the corner of Fair Oaks and Lincoln. It was a fairly short trip, and almost no walking was involved.

At other times, however, Swamiji may have taken walks for the sheer pleasure of it. He was feeling well, or at least much. improved. "I am decidedly better in health," he wrote to Mrs. Bull on January 17. "The healer [Mrs. Melton] thinks I am now at liberty to go anywhere I choose; the process will go on and I shall completely recover in a few months. She insists on this, that I am cured already; only nature will have to work out the rest. Mrs. Melton had her ideas and methods; but it was a fact that during his stay at the Meads’ Swamiji was not noticeably ill. "He always looked bright," Mrs. Hansbrough recalled, "especially when he was particularly interested in something. . . . Miss MacLeod said she had brought him West `for his health,’ but he never complained of ill health while he was with us. He never missed a meal or showed in any other way at that time that he was unwell."

As we have seen, he had a good breakfast. For lunch there was usually lamb (never beef), and there were vegetables, all sorts of which he liked, particularly peas. "In place of dessert," Mrs. Hansbrough remembered, "we would have fruit. He was especially fond of grapes." But some kinds of fruit he disliked. "We always had a plate of spring fruit on the table," she continued, "and one evening there were some guavas among the others. Swamiji was walking up and down in the dining room while the table was being set for dinner, and we were speaking of Lent and the custom of giving up some favorite food or pleasure during the forty days. He said that a similar custom existed in India which was always observed by the monks. `All but the wicked fellows like me renounce something they like,’ he said. `Now I, for example, will renounce these guavas.’ _x000d_ We took the hint and did not have guavas any more after that.

Often Swamiji would invite one person or another from his morning class to lunch at the Meads’; and in addition, Miss MacLeod and Mrs. Leggett, who would come from Los Angeles to the classes, were frequent lunch guests. The con¬versations at these gatherings were lively and aglow with the wealth of insight he would bring to them. Sometimes, perhaps often, the talk would turn to India-to that land never far from his heart, to those people whose problems could at times plunge him into silent despair, at times wring from him some impassioned protest. "On one occasion when Mrs. Leggett was there," Mrs. Hansbrough related, "Swamiji, who was walking up and down, said that actually the English did not come to India to conquer the Hindus but to teach them. The great misfortune, however, was that the English soldiers-even the officers-were of such low caste. And he told of a time when he was sitting on the lawn in a park close to a footpath. Two soldiers passed by and one of them kicked him. Surprised, Swamiji said, `Why did you do that?’ `Because I like to, you dirty something-or-other!’ `Oh, we go much further than that,’ Swamiji had retorted, `we call you dirty mlechchhas!’ Then he spoke of the raping of lower-caste Hindu women by the English soldiers. `If anyone should despoil the Englishman’s home,’ he said, `the Englishman would kill him, and rightly so. But the Hindu just sits and whines!’

"At this, Mrs. Leggett, who always agreed with everything Swamiji said, remarked in admiration of the gentle Hindu, `How very nice!’ `Do you think,’ Swamiji went on, `that a handful of Englishmen could rule India if we had a militant spirit? I teach meat-eating throughout the length and breadth of India in the hope that we can build a militant spirit!"‘

But the best lunches of all were the picnics that took place on the open top of the nearby hill. "We would make up a party of people who were attending Swamiji’s classes more or less regularly," Mrs. Hansbrough related, "or he would even hold some of his smaller class groups there. Naturally the talk was always on spiritual subjects. You have seen that photo-graph of Swamiji in a picnic group; it was taken on top of ,that hill." In this photograph, Swamiji is sitting cross-legged at what might be called the head of the picnic cloth; on his left sits Mrs. Hansbrough (identified by her daughter) ; behind him stands Mrs. Wyckoff; and on his right, a Mrs. Bruce (also identified by Mrs. Cohn). On either side one can see two or three of the guests-ladies with the long skirts, tight bodices, leg-of mutton sleeves, and overburdened hats of the period. The photograph was taken at a relaxed moment; two of the women talk together, and Swamiji appears to be reading with amusement a scrap of paper, about the size of a fortune from a Chinese cookie, while Mrs. Bruce reads over his shoulder. To judge from the absence of coats, shawls, or wraps, the weather was pleasant, as it was almost every day that winter. "It was said to be the pleasantest winter in five years," Mrs. Hansbrough noted; and indeed, from the farmers’ point of view the weather was altogether too pleasant; a drought was under way, and the ministers of the various churches in Pasadena were banding together to pray for rain.

Unhappily, there are no known records of Swamiji’s talks and informal classes on this sunny hilltop. Yet from a snatch of conversation that Mrs. Hansbrough remembered, it is clear that he was seeing all the world-its good and its evil alike-as a divine play, all supremely Good. On one of the picnics a young woman, a Christian Scientist, put forth the belief that one should teach people to be good. Swamiji smiled and waved his hand to indicate the trees and the countryside. "Why should I desire to be `good’?" he asked. "All this is His handiwork. Shall I apologize for His handiwork? If you want to reform John Doe, go and live with him; don’t try to reform him. If you have any of the Divine Fire, he will catch it."

In those still, warm days of January, seated where they could overlook the rich valley with its escarpment of snowpeaked mountains, the picnickers listened to his words and felt themselves lifted into another level of existence altogether a level in which they surely caught the "Divine Fire" that blazed in their midst. "When he had talked for some time "

Mrs. Hansbrough said, "the air would become surcharged with a spiritual atmosphere." And she spoke of one occasion in particular when, absorbed in some subject he was discussing, "he talked for six hours without interruption-from ten in the morning until four in the afternoon.." "The air," she said, "was just vibrant with spirituality by the time it was over."

And what must the air have been like in the Meads’ house! The sisters felt, as one of them later said, "as if Christ himself were in their midst. Whatever he did, in his most relaxed or most active moments, his mind in its deep layers was plunged, consciously, in God; for such was his nature. And from those luminous depths he brought a power that not only charged the air with spirituality, but could transform the whole tenor of one’s thought, change the direction of one’s life, lift one’s burden-and this as though it were the most natural thing on earth. He did not seem a superhuman, remote being, but one’s very own. "Swamiji had marvelous patience with all of us," Mrs. Hansbrough recalled. "He took away any feeling on our part that he was superior to us. Though some people found him aloof, I never did. I felt as though he was someone to whom I was closely related, someone whom I had not seen for a long, long time, and who had been a long time coming. I had felt I carried a burden-not on my back, but on my chest. After I met Swamiji I felt the lifting of the burden that had been on my chest for so long I had ceased to be conscious of it."

Aside from lecturing in Pasadena the Swami often held small outdoor classes for a number of interested students, generally choosing a hilltop near the Mead's house for his class-room. The weather, happily, was warm and sunny, and proved to be most salutary for him, and despite his almost daily work he lived a relaxed life-reading, strolling in the garden, writing. He was, for instance, jotting down at this time some Hindu legends for Sister Nivedita's use; also he wrote for her, his now famous poem, "Who Knows How Mother Plays?" Sometimes he joined in long talks with his disciples and friends, and would now and then accompany them on picnic parties and outings.

Better known and more concrete is the story of how Mrs. Wyckoff once experienced relief from physical and mental suffering just through contact with an object that had belonged to Swamiji-his pipe. "Sometime before Swamiji left South Pasadena," Mrs. Hansbrough related, "he said one day, `I always leave something behind wherever I go. I am going to leave this pipe when I go to San Francisco.’ He left it on the mantelpiece in the dining room, and we kept it there for a long time as an ornament. Then one day Mrs. Wyckoff picked it up. She had been suffering from some nervous ailment and had been having personal difficulties in her life. For some days the pain of her illness had been almost unbearable, and this, added to her other troubles, made her feel extremely depressed. She went to the mantelpiece and picked up Swamiji’s pipe. No sooner did she have it in her hand than she heard his voice saying, `Is it so hard, madam?’ For some reason she rubbed the pipe across her forehead, and instantly the suffering left her and a feeling of well-being came over her. After that we felt that the pipe should belong to her; and she still has it." (Today the pipe is in the possession of the Vedanta Society of Southern California.)

But the most significant miracle lay in the constant light Swamiji shed over the world around him. Those who were close to him remembered the small, apparently casual things he said and did with as much reverence as they remembered those words and acts more obviously fraught with superconsciousness. In his every gesture there was the quality of grace. To Mrs. Hanabrough it was, indeed, the everyday things that meant the, most. "My inclination," she said, "has always been to remember him as the real human being he was-to take off any paint of artificiality others tried to apply to him. For he was so great in himself that no paint was ever needed to make him so." It was this steady miracle of grace, as much as the sudden, brilliant, and often dazzling bursts of power, that made the Mead sisters feel, from moment to moment, that Christ himself was there. The events of those days were not continually remarkable; rather, the days, the hours, were themselves transfigured, as is a lamp when it is lighted.

After lunch Swamiji would generally recline on the couch in the living room, and there he would read or talk, while Mrs. Wyckoff busily pursued her various household tasks. "Madam," he one day said to her, "You work so hard that it makes me tired. Well, there have to be some Marthas, and you are a Martha, and sometimes he would ask her to stop her work and stroll with him in the garden. Strolling, he would sing Bengali songs or chant Sanskrit verses and "explain them," Mrs. Hansbrough tells us, "in a much more personal way than from the platform." Or sometimes he would sing the Christian hymn: "The heathen in his blindness bows down to wood and stone," the words of which Mrs. Hansbrough had taught him and which amused him greatly. "I am that heathen," he would laugh.

Perhaps Swamiji also did some writing in the afternoons. In his letter of December 27 to Mrs. Bull, he said, "I am sorry I could not write any more of the stories [which he had been working on in New York]. I have written some other things and mean to write something almost every day. And in another letter to Mrs. Bull that was probably written from South Pasadena in January, he remarked, "I am doing some writing. But what Swamiji was writing at this time, we do not know; possibly he was jotting down Hindu legends for Sister Nivedita’s use. "You have the Gopala already-add the Savitri story to that," he advised her in a heretofore unpublished note, which though undated was most probably written from southern California._x000d_ I send you four more herewith [he continued]. They ought to make a nice volume. Work on them a bit will you-if you get a publisher in Chicago all right, if not, Mr. Leggett promised to publish them some time ago.l5_x000d_ Referring no doubt to the "four more" of the above, he wrote to Nivedita in a now published letter, dated February 15, "I am glad you got the stories; re-write them if you think so -get them published if you find anybody to do it and take the proceeds, if any, for your work._x000d_ Aside from writing stories, Swamiji wrote at least one poem during his stay in southern California. This, too, he sent to Nivedita. It was, almost certainly, the beautiful and now famous poem "Who Knows How Mother Plays," which opens: "Perchance a prophet thou-/Who knows? Who dares touch/ The depths where Mother hides/ Her silent failless bolts!" and closes: "To child may glories ope/ Which father never dreamt;/ May thousandfold in daughter/ Her Powers Mother store.Your birthday-poem reached me here last night," Nivedita replied on January 13. (January 12 was Swamiji’s birthday, not hers.) "There is nothing I could say about it that would not seem commonplace: except that if your beauti¬ful wish were possible it would break my heart. . . . I cannot conceive of perfect bliss without the assurance that [the guru’s] was greater. . . . .

Very likely, Swamiji would sometimes give private interviews in the afternoons or talk with visitors who came to see the Mead sisters. Yet he was by no means always in a mood for conversation. "A friend of the sisters came to visit one day," a story goes in "Swamiji in Southern California." "The ladies chatted for more than an hour while Swamiji sat in the parlor with them, smoking his pipe in perfect silence. Obviously the visitor had no idea who he was, because to the sisters’ and Swamiji’s vast amusement, she asked as she was leaving: `Does this gentleman speak English?" Nor did Swamiji care to just sit in silence with everyone and anyone. There was the woman who was determined to do a portrait of him. "She had approached him several times after the meetings," Mrs. Hansbrough related, "but Swamiji had always declined. One day the woman came to our home and asked me if I would help her by letting her sketch him unawares. Somehow Swamiji sensed her presence and called me to him. `You get that woman out of here or I’ll leave!’ he told me. Needless to say, I saw her to the door."

In the late afternoons Swamiji would help Mrs. Wyckoff prepare dinner, and often he himself cooked the whole meal. "He liked to prepare one meal every day while he was at our home in Lincoln Park," Mrs. Hansbrough said. "He cooked curries and often chapaties, of which Ralph and Dorothy used to be very fond. . . . Several of the ingredients that he used had to be ground, and since he did not like to stand beside a table, he would sit cross-legged on the kitchen floor with a wooden butter bowl in front of him." After Swamiji had finished grinding his apices, he would proceed to fry them in butter, during which ceremony, as one learns from Brahmacharini Usha’s article in Vedanta and the West, quantities of eye-smarting smoke would arise, distressing to the sisters. "Here comes grandpa!" Swamiji would cry out in warning. "Ladies are invited to leave.

As a rule, Mrs. Hansbrough said, Swamiji did not laugh and joke much. He was perhaps at his gayest when he had free run of the kitchen and was allowed to prepare for the family elaborate, and at times alarming, dishes. But to be with him even in his most merry of moments was to grow. He never sermonized; he simply opened one’s eyes, and one rarely forgot those offhand lessons. Once when he asked Mrs. Wyckoff whether she liked a spicy dish he had created she said, politely, yes, she did indeed. But one could not fool Swamiji. After a moment’s pause he inquired, "Was it true, or just for friend¬ship’s sake?" "I am afraid," Mrs. Wyckoff confessed, "It was for friendship’s sake." "Another time," Mrs. Hansbrough recalled, "while Lalita [Mrs. Wyckoff] was preparing some¬thing in the kitchen for Swamiji, he was walking to and fro across the room. Suddenly he asked her, `Were you happily married?’ For a moment she hesitated, then she answered, `Yes, Swamiji.’ He left the kitchen for a moment and then came back. `I am glad,’ he said drily, `that there was one happy marriage!"‘ Had he not, at that moment, wished to take a burden away? The moment passed. But as those who knew her in later years have testified, Mrs. Wyckoff became "a stickler for telling the truth" even in matters of small import.

Dinner in the Mead household was generally at six-thirty, and perhaps on those evenings when Swamiji was scheduled to lecture at eight o’clock, it was even earlier. The meal, as Mrs. Hansbrough remembered, was substantial. "We would usually have soup and either fish or meat, vegetables, and dessert-pie, perhaps, which Swamiji sometimes liked, or some other sweet. He did not, as a rule, take coffee in the evening." And often, of course, there were Swamiji’s curries and chapaties and other dishes. After dinner, the table would be cleared, a fire would be lighted in the open grate, and the family and their guests would linger in the warm room; "some would sit at the table, others in easy chairs. We had an easy chair for Swamiji that was large enough for him to sit cross-legged in. He usually wore either what you would call a dinner jacket or a smoking jacket." The room, people-filled, fire-heated, and gas-lit, would sometimes grow too warm for him, and once when the flames had been allowed to die unnoticed, he gave forth a sudden hallelujah: "Praise the Lord! That fire’s out!"

In Mrs. Hansbrough’s "Reminiscences" one senses at times a certain impatience with Miss MacLeod. Yet when she was the Meads’ guest, all friction seems to have disappeared. "She set aside her superior airs when she was with us," Mrs. Hansbrough remarked. "It was principally with people who affected the same airs that she put them on. And she never made the mistake of putting on airs with Swamiji. He often told her `where to get off’ when she had a tendency to be too high-toned. But the only time I ever heard him speak sharply to her was before a class in the ballroom of the Green Hotel [in Pasadena]. She was expressing an opinion as to what should be done about some phases of his work, and he suddenly turned on her. `Keep quiet about what should be done!’ he said. `We will do whatever has to be done.’ But he also said of her, `Joe has a very sweet nature.’ He always called her `Joe.’ " (Mrs. Hansbrough he called "Madam," and sometimes "Madam Moses," because, she said, of her fondness for law.) As for Joe, she readily admitted that Swamiji did not take her advice or accept her opinion without reservation. To Mary Hale she wrote in February of 1900, "Swamiji recognized my _x000d_ limitations when he said to me in California, `You have never been a worker, therefore your judgment is of little value in regard to workers.

Any member of the intimate group who listened to Swamiji in the evenings after dinner could perhaps have written a book on those talks alone-but no one did. After forty years, however, Mrs. Hansbrough remembered a few details. "He would speak on a variety of subjects," she said, "-on philosophy, science, the development of the United States, and so on. He was very much interested in all phases of our national life; but he did not like to see the great concentration on material affairs. In private conversation he said that our civilization would fall within fifty years if we did not spiritualize it. He said we were deifying material values and that we could never build anything on such a basis.

Often during these evenings Swamiji would read aloud. He was, as Mrs. Hansbrough recalled, an excellent reader with a fine pronunciation of English. He read from various books, "and once when he was talking about Advaita, he asked for his `Song of the Sannyasin,’ which he read to us. On another occasion late one evening as we sat by the fire, he asked for `The Need of a Guru’ [from his book Bhakti yoga]. He had been talking to Helen, and then he began to read from this. For some reason, after he had read for some time, Helen got up, lit his bedroom candle and offered it to him. `Does that mean I must go to bed?" Swamiji asked. `Well, it is eleven o’clock,’ Helen replied. And so the conversation closed." "Niece Helen’s" precipitous act was long remembered by all three sisters. "Long afterward we were talking of the incident," Mrs. Hansbrough recalled, "and all three of us felt that indirectly Swamiji had been inviting Helen to ask for discipleship. She said that she didn’t know why she hadn’t taken it; she just hadn’t felt impelled to at the time which would seem something of an understatement.

Curiously, none of the Mead sisters took formal initiation from Swamiji or considered themselves to be, informally, his disciples. Mrs. Wyckoff and Helen later became disciples of Swami Turiyananda, who gave the former the Sanskrit name Lalita. As for Mrs. Hansbrough, Swamiji once put to her the question: "Why can’t you ,join our Order?" Her answer was that she had her own little world to take care of. Later, she was given the name Shanti by Swami Turiyananda but did not become his disciple.

Yet while the Mead sisters may not, strictly speaking, have been Swamiji’s disciples, they loved and served him devotedly, and they were indeed his own. "I have known all three of you before, he once said to them; and in a letter written to Mrs. Hansbrough from New York in the summer of I goo he declared, "You three sisters have become a part of my mind forevet.

During this same week Swamiji was scheduled to give two additional morning lectures at the Hotel Green (familiarly known as "the Green") and two evening lectures at the Shakespeare Club. Announcing these events, the Pasadena Star, usually sparing with its headlines, let fly with the following:_x000d_ _x000d_ THE SWAMI VIVE KANANDA._x000d_ _x000d_ An Illustrious Visitor in Pasadena_x000d_ _x000d_ The most conspicuous figure in the World’s Congress of Religions at the World’s Fair in Chicago was probably the great Indian teacher, The Swami Vive Kananda, who represented the Hindoo religion and aroused the people of Chicago to great enthusiasm by his charming and unique personality and his presentation of his country’s religion._x000d_ The Swami Vive Kananda was a visitor in Pasadena today, lecturing to the guests of the Green this morning. He will give lectures here Wednesday and Friday at Hotel Green at ten a.m. and at the Shakespeare club tomorrow and Thursday at 8 p.m. A reception will be given him from three to five o’clock Saturday in the Shakespeare club rooms.

Swamiji’s five lectures of the week were also announced, as to date and place, in the Los Angeles Times and Herald-a fact that shows they were open to the public and that the people of Los Angeles were as welcome as those of Pasadena.

In its heyday the Green was as elegant a hotel as one could find anywhere in that age of elegant hotels. According to a Pasadena historian, writing in 1895, the mammoth edifice was awe-inspiring: "Its frontages are in Moorish and Roman architecture, but the dining mom [which sported marble pillars and a vaulted ceiling] is a typical specimen of classic Greek style, and the whole structure, both internal and ex¬ternal has own fame as a grand symposium of the most imposing, elegant, chaste and esthetic elements of architectural science, scarcely excelled in New York or London except by mere bulk. Even in bulk this grandeur was not negligible. Actually, the Green was two complete hotels, each, with its gardens, covering a whole block, and connected one to the other by an enclosed bridge, where every afternoon tea was served. At the date of this writing the Hotel Green still exists, but the East Wing, in whose theater Swamiji lectured, has been torn down, and the remaining wing, though enlarged shortly after 1900, is nothing at all in splendor compared to what it was.

As one learns from a letter written on January 19 by Betty Leggett to her husband, Swamiji’s friends had suggested that he give a few talks in the theater of this most prominent hotel and that somehow a collection be taken for him at a later date. This scheme does not strike one as having been particularly sound, but as far as I know, a record of its results is not at present available. Nor does one know a great deal about the lectures themselves; indeed we know at present only the title of the first "Bhakti Yoga, or the Religion of Love." One glimpses, however, as through a lens momentarily unshuttered by Mrs. Hansbrough, a small incident that took place in the hotel, very possibly on the occasion of this first talk. "Professor Baumgardt was talking with some other gentlemen before the lecture began," she related. "One of them asked him, `He is a Christianized Hindu, I suppose?’ With considerable pride in Swamiji, Professor Baumgardt replied, `No, he is an unconverted Hindu. You are going to hear about Hinduism from a real Hindu.’ Later on in the week, it was to become more than apparent how very real a Hindu Swamiji was.

Although it had been formed in 1888 for the purpose of studying the works of Shakespeare, its women were not afraid, as a contemporary historian noted, "to undertake any problem, no matter how intricate or how difficult." These numerous problems, "affecting themselves personally, the city and the public at large," occupied much of the ladies’ time; but Shakespeare was not thereby abandoned. Nor were other cultural pursuits: French and German Conversation Circles were held regularly, as were Art Study Classes, and now and then special days were celebrated, such as Ruskin Day, Newspaper Day, and William Morris Day.

In 1900 the club, whose membership numbered around seventy-five, occupied a building known as the Stickney Memorial Building-a one-and-a-half story, vine-adorned, and many-gabled house, which looked, fittingly, much as though it had been transported from Stratford on Avon. The Assembly Hall, where Swamiji spoke, was an intimate, picture¬hung room, with a dais for the speaker and rows of movable rattan chairs for the listeners. Although the Stickney Memorial Building has long since been demolished, the Shakespeare Club today still exists, and in 1965, through the kindness of its then secretary, I was able to obtain photographs of the old clubhouse as Swamiji knew it and of the hall where he so often spoke.

Whether the club engaged Swamiji to lecture or whether the hall was rented or donated to him for the purpose is not made clear by any existing records. Toward the end of the first week of lecture the Pasadena Star noted several times: "The Swami will be pleased to lecture further next week if people will organize classes and each contribute what he is able to the support of the Industrial English schools in India, which the Swami Vivekananda is working for."42 Classes, all free of admission and open to the public, were organized the following week and, again, the week after that, but by whom we do not know. In the Shakespeare Club’s 1900 year Book, which briefly notes the programs for that year, Swamiji is not mentioned; nor were his classes announced in the club’s daily newspaper notices. It would seem, then, that his talks were not considered a part of the club’s activities. On the other hand, there is no doubt that many women of the club attended his classes, and it is certain that at least once Mrs. Bowler, the president, invited him to speak before the group. Further, the Shakespeare Club held for Swamiji a gala reception.

This was one of the few times Mrs. Hansbrough had heard Swamiji use slang in his lectures, and the words, as she repeated them some forty years later-"take my tom-fool tin pot and be happy! That is all you need"-had stuck indelibly in her mind, so effective, so telling had they been when he spoke them.

The impact of Swamiji’s words upon his audience is hard to measure from the printed page. A simple sentence, a turn of phrase, could carry an incalculably high charge of thought. His criticisms as well as his exhortations struck deep; and he hesitated not at all to criticize when he saw fit. "One evening as we were going home after a lecture he asked me how I liked it," Mrs. Hansbrough recalled. "He had been very outspoken that evening in criticisms of the West, and I said that I had enjoyed the lecture, but feared that he sometimes antagonised his audiences. He smiled as if that meant nothing to him. `Madam,’ he said, `I have cleared whole halls in New York.

As far as we know, no one stalked out, indignant, from the halls of Los Angeles or Pasadena when Swamiji touched the quick of the Western ego. But inevitably he made enemies, for inevitably fraudulence and hypocrisy stood exposed in his light. Readers familiar with his first visit in America will recall that one of the weapons used against him by those who feared him was scandal-mongering. In a small measure, it was the same in southern California. But Swamiji was as little disturbed by this in 1900 as he had been in 1894, perhaps even less so, for his work was now safely, unshakably established. "I think the finest gesture I ever saw him make," Mrs. Hansbrough said, "was in connection with a rumor of scandal which arose about him while he was in Los Angeles. Professor and Mrs. Baumgardt came to see him one morning, and the subject came up in conversation. They had heard of it but thought nothing of it. We were all seated in the dining room except Swamiji, who was walking slowly up and down the floor. Finally he said, `Well, what I am is written on my brow. If you can read it, you are blessed. If you cannot, the loss is yours, not mine.’

Many were those who were blessed-who appreciated his greatness and who came to hear him-and his classes continued in full swing. On January 28, an item in the Los Angeles Times read: "The Swami Vivekananda lectures the past week in the rooms of the Shakespeare Club have attracted club people to a very large extent. They will be continued next week. These lectures are free and have created considerable interest in religious matters in the Orient."

As we have seen, Swamiji lectured on Sunday, January 28, at the Universalist Church, taking as his subject "The Universal Religion." Apparently, he gave no lecture on Monday. On Tuesday evening he spoke at the Shakespeare Club on "The Aryan Race" ; on Wednesday his subject was "The Ramayana" ; on Thursday, "The Mahabharata"; on Friday, "Buddhistic India"; and on Saturday, "The Great Teachers of the World." With the exception of "The Aryan Race," transcripts of all these lectures have been published, "Buddhistic India" appearing for the first time in the Swami Vivekananda Centenary Memorial Volume (and later incorporated in the 1964 edition of the third volume of the Complete Works), and the rest in volume four of the Complete Works. In this same volume one also finds two short, undated religious legends, "Jada Bharata" and "Prahlada," both of which, as one learns from the Life, Swamiji delivered in Pasadena. There are, to be sure, Four lecture morning in Pasadena for which we have no titles and on any two of which Swamiji could have told these charming stories. (Or did he tell them during one of his informal hilltop classes, with someone taking notes?)

Even if Swamiji had done no platform work in southern California but had simply moved among the people, simply lived and meditated in that land, his quickening influence would no doubt have spread, subtly but surely, for such was his spiritual power. Yet Swamiji did speak from the platforms of Los Angeles and Pasadena. He gave a message; and it will not do to close this chapter on his life and work in southern California without asking ourselves what, specifically, that message was. What was it he wanted to accomplish? Was he repeating on the Pacific Coast what he had taught during his first visit to the West, giving the same message in slightly different language to people who had not heard it before, and creating, as it were, a new center from which that message would spread? Yes, he was doing these things. But knowing Swamiji, one cannot rest satisfied with this interpretation alone.

He was anything but static. True, his basic purpose remained constant throughout his mission: "My ideal can indeed be put into a few words," he once wrote in reply to a question, "and that is to preach unto mankind their divinity, and how to make it manifest in every movement of life."But the concepts that flowed like a living force from that single ideal were as endless in variety as the people to whom he gave them and the circumstances to which he applied them: Further, as Swamiji saw more and more of the multileveled needs of this world, his ideas of how best to fill those needs changed in both emphasis and expression. In the responsibility of his mission, never did he cease to agonize over the sufferings of man, and never did he cease to examine and reexamine his own concepts. Only three years had elapsed since he had left London at the close of 1896; yet in the course of those years how much had he not felt and thought! Even excluding the profound spiritual states he had known, one can still say that a world of experience separated his first and second visits to the West, and unless we think of him as stone (and we cannot), we cannot think that he would be saying exactly the same things in exactly the same way after his Indian mission as before.

Moreover, in California Swamiji, aware of his approaching death, knew he was giving his last public message to the Western people. It would seem inevitable, therefore, that he would deliver what he considered to be his essential teachings, that he would emphasize what he had come to feel was most important and give from his heart the heart of his mission. Indeed, when he was in the Bay Area, he was heard to say that he gave his highest teachings in California. When we take this statement in conjunction with another that he also made in California-"I only preach what is good for universal humanity"we cannot think that by "highest teachings" Swami meant something that applied only to a few highly advanced souls. It would seem, then, that this period of his mission was an exceedingly significant one, representing, in a sense, the essence of his teaching to all men everywhere; and it would seem well worth our while to ask what it was, specifically, that he emphasized. This question, of course, cannot be fully answered without taking into consideration his work in northern California, which was to follow, as well as that in southern California, and thus the scope of this present chapter precludes even an attempt at a full discussion. But through an analysis of his work in Los Angeles and Pasadena we should be able to make a beginning and to discover at least the general trend of his last words to us.

In "Hints on Practical Spirituality" he explained briefly the methods of gaining control over one’s mind from top to bottom, conscious and unconscious. "The great task," he said, "is to revive the whole man, as it were, in order to make him the complete master of himself." But control of the conscious and unconscious mind was only the first part of the study. The next part was to go beyond the conscious. "Just as unconscious work is beneath consciousness, so there is another work which is above consciousness. When this superconscious state is reached, man becomes free and divine; death becomes immortality, weakness becomes infinite power, and iron bondage becomes liberty. That is the goal, the infinite realm of the superconscious.

"I have one other gain more than even health," he wrote to Sister Christine on January 24. "I am no more despondent. I am perfectly resigned.

Although the Swami seems to have lectured almost every day in the latter part of January, he felt dissatisfied with the amount of work he was doing. "I am not working hard right now," he wrote to Christine on January 24, "because I cannot get work enough. The first boom is over — and people do not want to pay. I am thinking of going to San Francisco — that is a new field. I am tired of working completely and have lost the zest for work that I had before." In this letter, written from Mrs. Blodgett's cottage in Los Angeles, to which he had evidently returned for a time, one sees him in a mood of fatigue and resignation — but it was a mood that drew from him only words of strength and encouragement: _x000d_ 1 am afraid … what rest and peace I seek for will never come. But "Mother" does good to others through me—at least some to my native land and it is easier to be reconciled to one's fate as a sacrifice. We are all sacrifices, each his own way. The great worship is going on — no one can see its meaning, except it is a great sacrifice. Those that are willing, escape a lot of pain. Those who resist are broken into submission and suffer more. I am now determined to be a willing one…. I have no news to tell — happy I am not of course — I am not born to be happy —nor do I care for it now — I am so used to the other side. To work am I born — and I will — till I drop down. I am content now — that is all…. Cheer up, Christina. This world has no time for despondence, none for weakness. One must be strong or pass out. This is the law.

But before settling down with Swamiji’s long stay at the Meads’, we should make two excursions. The inhabitants of southern California, many of whom had come from the relatively flat and unscenic Midwest, were an excursion-loving people. They went by electric or steam train to the ocean, to the mountains, to the poppy fields, to the heartlands of the rich valleys, by boat to Catalina Island, and once a year, en masse, to Pasadena’s New Year’s Day Tournament of Roses. How many such excursions Swamiji undertook we do not know; perhaps not many, for according to Mrs. Hansbrough he did not particularly care for sightseeing. "Once when we were up on the range of hills not far from our house," she related, "my sister Helen was calling his attention to different views. `Niece Helen,’ he said (he always called her `Niece Helen’), `do not show me sights. I have seen the Himalayas! I would not go ten steps to see sights; but I would go a thousand miles to see a (great] human being!’ In that place and age, however, it was inevitable that Swamiji was taken on at least a few excursions, and of these, two have recently come to our knowledge.

The people of southern California were excursion-loving, and the Swami's hosts were no exception. Thus he was persuaded during his stay in Pasadena to make excursions here and there. There may not, however, have been many of these, for as Mrs. Hansbrough reminisced, he did not particularly care for sightseeing. "Once when we were up on the range of hills not far from our house," she relates, "my sister Helen was calling his attention to different views. 'Niece Helen,' said the Swami, 'don't show me sights; I have seen the Himalayas! I would not go ten steps to see sights; but I would go a thousand miles to see a [great] human being!' "

In the second weekend of January, he made the trip up Mount Lowe, a high peak of the San Gabriel Range that rose just north-west of Pasadena. He was accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. Baumgardt, Miss MacLeod, and Mrs. Leggett, the last of whom had come to Los Angeles in early January. Part way up the mountain, the party stayed overnight at the then famous hotel called Echo Mountain House, where, on the morning of Sunday, January 14, the Swami gave a talk. That same day, he and his party proceeded to the summit of Mount Lowe via the tortuous but scenic Mount Lowe Railroad, and that evening, the excursion complete, they returned home.

Two days later, the Swami, accompanied by Miss MacLeod and Mrs. Leggett, made a round trip by train to Redlands, a small town some seventy miles cast of Los Angeles, renowned for its natural scenic beauty and its extensive landscaped park. They had lunch there at the Casa Loma Hotel and returned to Pasadena in time for the Swami to give a lecture at the Shakespeare Club.

On Echo Summit perched the Echo Mountain House, a small but elaborate hotel, built in 1894 Because of its lofty location and odd manner of access, this white structure with its imposing dome and giant searchlight, salvaged from the Chicago Fair, was famous the world over and one of the marvels of the countryside-"a glorious landmark by day, a brilliant, flashing electric jewel by night, visible for miles and even at sea." Here, as we learn from the following item that appeared in the Pasadena Star of January 16, Swamiji stayed overnight ¬Saturday, January 13-and no doubt (though this we are not told) he, Mr. and Mrs. Baumgardt, Miss MacLeod, and Mrs. Leggett looked at the stars through the telescope at the nearby Lowe Observatory:_x000d_ _x000d_ The guests of Echo Mountain House indulged in a social dance Saturday evening. Sunday morning, Swami Vivekananda, the Hindoo lecturer, gave a clever talk. In the evening the guests were entertained with songs by Mrs. Frances Lewis Hord.

In the Pasadena Section of the Los Angeles Times the following announcement appeared on January 14:_x000d_ _x000d_ SWAMI IS COMING_x000d_ Swami Vivekananda the Hindu philosopher who made a world-wide reputation during the Parliament of Religions at the time of the World’s Fair at Chicago, is now a guest of Mrs. J. C. Newton of South Pasadena. He will speak in the Hotel Green parlors Monday [January 15] at 10 a.m. on `Bhakti yoga, or the religion of Love.’ The ladies of the Shakespeare Club will honor Vivekananda with a reception at their clubhouse next Saturday after¬ - noon (January 20] from 3 to 5 o’clock.

Before being entertained with songs by Mrs. Frances Lewis Hord; Swamiji and his party completed the main part of the excursion. In the late morning or early afternoon of Sunday, January 14, they boarded a small trolley car, similar in appearance to the cable cars of San Francisco, and proceeded up the mountain. For three and a half miles the tracks of what was known as Mount Lowe Railroad snaked on a narrow roadbed around the mountain’s face "in a hundred curves," traversed deep canyons on spindly supports, spanned ravines, and once simply looped out over empty space. The view was glorious. At length the excursionists arrived at a rustic hotel called Alpine Tavern and then continued (optionally) by horse or mule for a more gentle mile or so to the summit of Mount Lowe, some 5,000 feet above the valley floor. Whether Swamiji made this last part of the journey is not known, but in the late afternoon he and his party returned from Alpine Tavern to Echo Mountain House, gliding by force of gravity down and around the mountain in the sunset glow, "the thousand electric lights of the City of the Angels, twenty miles away; increasing in brilliancy as the night came on."

It is regrettable that the Pasadena Star (from which that quotation comes) could say no more about Swamiji’s Sunday morning talk than it did. Yet for the Star, a homey paper given to daily repetitions of the same news, its small report was a masterly bit of journalism. Without it, moreover, we would not have known on what day Swamiji ascended the mountain, for no existing hotel register would have told us. Just three weeks after his stay at Echo Mountain House, that edifice, with all its seventy bedrooms, burned to the ground, sending up in the still morning air as flawless a pyramid of flame and smoke as the enthralled people of Pasadena had ever witnessed - a fascinating scene," said the Star, "as viewed from this city.

As far as can be determined from the contemporary newspapers, Swamiji’s first lecture in this fair and happy city took place on the morning of Monday, January 15. It should be mentioned here, however, that in a letter published in the Complete Works and there dated December 22, he wrote to Mrs. Bull, "I am grinding on in Pasadena; hope some result will come out of my work here. From this it would seem not only that Swamiji was lecturing in Pasadena by December 22, but that he had been lecturing there for some time. Yet there is no other indication that this was the case; there is, in fact, many an indication that it was not the case, and one is inclined to think that Swamiji’s letter has been misdated. Indeed in the letter itself there is more than one hint that he wrote it in January of 1900. In any event, the newspapers of the day took the view that Swamiji’s Pasadena work started with a lecture at the Green Hotel on January 15.

The Swami's work in Pasadena started with a lecture in the small theatre of the then famous and luxurious Green Hotel on the morning of Monday, January 15. His subject was "Bhakti-Yoga or the Religion of Love". On the mornings of January 17 and 19 he also lectured at the Green Hotel, but apart from the fact that his lectures there (unlike those given elsewhere) were free of charge, we have little information about them. Even the titles of the second and third lectures are unknown.

The largest number of the Swami's Pasadena lectures were delivered at the Shakespeare Club, one of the most prominent women's clubs of Southern California. Here in the last two weeks of January and the first three days of February he gave at least twelve talks, covering a wide range of topics. Included among his subjects were "Women of India" January 18), "Persian Art" (January 20), "The Ideal of a Universal Religion" January 22), "The Science of Yoga" (January 25), "My Life and Mission" (January 27), "The Aryan Race" (January 30), "Buddhistic India" (February 2), and "The Great Teachers of the World" (February 3). He also gave a number of talks on the epics and legends of ancient India, namely, "Religious Legends" (January 16), which may have included "The Story of Jada Bharata" and "The Story of Prahlada"; "The Ramayana" (January 3 1), and "The Mahabharata" (February 1). On Sunday, January 28, he spoke at the Universalist Church on "The Universal Religion". With the exception, perhaps, of "Persian Art", which the Swami gave at a. reception held for him by the ladies of the Shakespeare Club, the lectures mentioned above were open to everyone, and as many of them were announced in the Los Angeles, as well as the Pasadena, newspapers, the attendance was not limited to the local public.

At the close of the nineteenth century Redlands, with a population of 4,800, was the showplace of southern California, outdoing in this respect even Pasadena. _x000d_ "For scenic beauty, both natural and artificial," one visitor wrote, "there is only one Redlands." Terraced citrus groves, landscaped gardens, and spacious Victorian mansions graced the hills; snow-clad mountains towered to the north and east; the fertile valley, to the south and west, produced the very best of oranges; the climate was ideal the year round, and a large percentage of the people were retired millionaires. To this crown of southern California, Swamiji, Miss MacLeod, and Mrs.Leggett traveled by train on Tuesday, January 16. They had lunch at the grand and famous Casa Loma Hotel, and in the hotel register, preserved now in the vaults of the University of Redlands, one can find their names-all three written in Mrs. Leggett’s hand. Nor did Swamiji’s presence in Redlands go unremarked.

Swami Vivekananda, the Hindu, who is lecturing before the Shakespeare Club at Pasadena this week, visited this city today and drove to Canyon Crest Park.

Canyon Crest Park was the estate of the brothers A. H. and A. K. Smiley, who, in their generosity and to their regret, had opened it to the public. The Park was the crest jewel of the town, described as "transcendent in its uniqueness and beauty, and grand in its conception, affording a panorama that has few equals in any country." There were few superlatives not used in describing the horticulture, landscaping, and views of Canyon Crest Park, and fortunate it was that Swamiji visited it when he did, for crowds of tourists-"principally Eastern tourists," the Los Angeles papers said-were rapidly destroying it.

Thus we can assume that he, Miss MacLeod, and Mrs. Leggett left Redlands on the afternoon train. (Indeed, a mention of their trip in one of Betty Leggett’s letters to her husband indicates that it was almost certainly a nine-hour sightseeing excursion on the then famous "Kite-Shaped Track. See a new county every mile, a newspaper advertisement for this trip read. "Leave Los Angeles at 8:30 a.m. returning train arrives Los Angeles 5.47 p.m. Gives ample time at Redlands and Riverside for drives and sightseeing.")* As far as we know, Swamiji went on no further excursions in southern California; rather, for the next three weeks he held classes and gave lectures in Pasadena almost daily, making the Meads’ home his own for much of that time._x000d_ _x000d_ * I have found no records that tell us whether or not Swamiji and his party visited the beautifully laid out resort town of Riverside during this particular ex¬cursion. But the chances are that they did, that they drove along its spectacular avenue of pepper trees, saw its gardens, and gazed at the San Bernardino range across. lush groves of navel oranges, which, they would have been proudly informed, had been introduced into the United States at this very spot.

We know more about the two lectures given on the evenings of January 16 and 18 at the Shakespeare Club than of those at the Green. The first of these (at which Swamiji obligingly wore his robe and turban) was on the subject of the religious legends of India, and a reporter, who seems to have been both baffled and impressed by the occasion, wrote an account of it for the Los Angels Times. (This account, printed in the Times on January 17, has been reproduced in its entirety in Vidanta and the West (No. 158) but will bear inclusion here, for it constitutes, to date, our most lengthy and comprehensive record of this particular talk.)_x000d_ The Swami_x000d_ Clad in his maroon robe, Swami Vivekananda addressed a small audience composed mostly of women, at the Shakespeare Club this evening [January 16]. He gave an account of the religious legends of Brahmanism, which are embodied in the daily lives of the Hindus, of the origin of Shiva and his surrender to the pure spirit of his wife, today the mother of all India, whose worship is carried to such an extent that no female animal can be killed. Vivekananda quoted freely from the Sanskrit, translating as he went along. Speaking in his soft, low voice, of the mysticism of subtile India to a little gathering of people listening with rapt attention to things of small significance to the uninitiated, the striking young Hindu scholar with the glow of the zealot on his swarthy face, was the center of an esoteric tableau.

At Swamiji’s second lecture (January 18) the tableau was not so esoteric. As told in the introduction to the published version of this lecture, "Women of India," Swamiji declared at the outset that his chief dificulty that evening was that he did not know what subject he was to lecture on. "If you, ladies and gentlemen, will suggest anything," he said, "I will be very glad." At this point, Mrs. Hansbrough related, she noticed several women and a man conferring together. The man finally stood up and asked Swamiji if he would speak on Hindu women. The request was put in a goading way: "We would like to know the result of your philosophy," the gentleman said. "Has your philosophy and religion lifted your women above our women?" This was a trap into which Swamiji was certainly not going to step. "You see," he replied, "that is a very invidious question: I like our women and your women too." The questioner was not to be put off. "Well," he said, "will you tell us about your women, their customs and education, and the position they hold in the family?" "Oh, yes," Swamiji replied; for the subject of Indian women, as such, was one he had often spoken on and in which he himself was deeply interested. "Those things I would be very glad to tell you. So you want to know about Indian women tonight and not philosophy and other things?

Thereupon Swamiji gave, extemporaneously as always, one of his most beautiful and comprehensive talks on Hindu women that we possess. He placed before his audience the age old ideal of Hindu womanhood-the ideal of motherhood-that marvelous, unselfish, all suffering, ever-forgiving mother. It is only through the ideals of a people, he said at the outset, that those people could be correctly judged. "In each nation, man or woman represents an ideal consciously or unconsciously being worked out. The individual is the external expression of an ideal to be embodied. The collection of such individuals is the nation, which also represents a great ideal; toward that it is moving. And, therefore, it is rightly assumed that to understand a nation you must first understand its ideal, for each nation refuses to be judged by any other standard than its own. And at the close of the lecture, he spoke forcibly, eloquently of the great spiritual ideal underlying the life of his country: "The ideal of the Indian race is freedom of the soul. This world is nothing. It is a vision, a dream. This life is one of many millions like it. The whole of this nature is Maya, is phantasm, a pest house of phantasms.

Mindful that in the audience sat critics of India, Swamiji did not spare them. "Western people," he thundered, "say what you have to say. This is your day. Onward, go on, babes; have your prattle out. This is the day of the babies, to prattle. We have learned our lesson, and are quiet. You have a little _x000d_ wealth today and you look down upon us. Well, this is your day. Prattle, babes, prattle-this is the Hindu’s attitude. The Lord of Lords is not to be attained by much frothy speech. . . Says the Hindu, `Yes, we have buried all the old nations of the earth and stand here to bury all the new races also, because our ideal is not this world, but the other. Just as your ideal is, so shall you be. If your ideal is mortal, if your ideal is of this earth, so shalt thou be. If your ideal is matter, matter shalt thou be. Behold! Our ideal is the Spirit. That alone exists. Nothing else exists, and like Him, we live forever.

Certain members of Swamiji’s audience were undoubtedly squirming in their seats. During the question period that followed, it became more than clear, Mrs. Hansbrough related "that the group who had asked for this subject had done so in an attempt to trap Swamiji into saying something that would discredit him. We learned later," she added, "that they belonged to some church that had missionaries in India.

The questions these people asked were the same old questions he had answered time and time again throughout his tour of the Middle West in 1894. They touched upon the alleged mistreatment of Hindu women, child marriages, early motherhood, infant eating crocodiles, and so on. "One of the women in particular set out to corner Swamiji," Mrs. Hansbrough recalled. "She started talking about how the English we are trying to reform his country, and he simply said, `Madam, I am a monk. What do I know about politics?’ He answered ‘ several of the questions relating to Hindu marriage directly; then finally he said that the relationship between the husband and wife in India, where the basis of marriage was not physical enjoyment, was so entirely different from that between a married couple in the West that he did not think Western people could understand it. As the questioner continued to press him, Swamiji became really angry. It was the only time I ever saw him angry on the platform. At one point, to em¬phasize a statement he hit his knuckles on the table so hard that I really feared he would break the skin. `No, madam,’ he burst out, `the relationship in which children creep into life amid lust at night and in darkness, does not exist in India!’

"Finally the woman openly called him a liar. `Madam,’ Swamiji replied, `you evidently know more about India than I do. I am leaving the platform; please take it yourself!’ He was thoroughly aroused. We had already gotten up, for we feared anything might happen now, and our only thought was to see him safely out of the building and home. He started up the middle aisle, but the woman blocked him and, with her friends, tried to continue the argument. Again he told her to take the platform herself. At last we got through, but as I passed her, the woman turned on me and exclaimed, `You little fool! Don’t you know he hates you?’ I said no, I hadn’t found that out yet.

As far as we know, this unpleasant incident constituted Swamiji’s only direct encounter with missionary groups during his second visit to the West. It was a minor skirmish. The days of serious battle in which he had taken on the forces of bigotry in America were over. With every weapon at their command they had attacked him, and with the sheer majesty and purity of his person he had cut at the root of their power. The story of his achievement in this respect has been told elsewhere; we need only say here that in 1900 the more bigoted element among Christian missionary groups no longer constituted a force to be reckoned with. Yet, as we shall see later, Swami did not altogether omit a public rejoinder to the Pasadena attack.

"Swami Vivekananda has been lionized by the club ladies of this city," read an item in the "Out of Town Society News" of the Los Angeles Times on January 21. "He was given receptions at the Shakespeare Club and at Hotel Green." Of the reception at the Green nothing further is known; but news of the Shakespeare Club reception was given in an item that appeared in the same paper on the same day:

The Shakespeareans._x000d_ The Shakespeare Club had the largest attendance of the year at its reception this afternoon [Saturday, January 20]. A recitation was given by Miss Lillian York, which was well received. Swami Vivekananda gave an exceedingly interesting lecture on Persian art, dwelling particularly on the architecture, the decorative art, the manufacture of shawls and carpets by the Persians, and also speaking of the philosophy of art. The ladies were delighted and at the close gave to the Swami a reception, serving refresh¬ments. The Swami will give a series of lectures at the Shakespeare Clubhouse, beginning Monday at 10 a.m. and continuing every forenoon exceptTuesday during the week.

Shakespeare reception._x000d_ The grandest and best attended reception of the season was held today at the Shakespeare clubrooms, Memorial hall, on Linden [Lincoln] avenue. The reception was tendered to the Swami Vivekananda. There were music and recitations, and then the guest of the occasion delivered a lecture upon the Persian art of making rugs, carpets, shawls and in decorations of the kinds in which the natives of Persia excel. The lecture was highly instructive to those interested in these things and was received with many expressions of pleasure on the part of the ladies. The Persian was engaged (?) to deliver a series of lectures on kindred subjects during the week beginning on Monday and continuing at 10 o’clock every morning through the week, with the exception of Tuesday.

While it is true that he could talk fascinatingly and with scholarly knowledge on almost any subject one could name, this was one of his few known public or semipublic talks in the West not on the topics of the religion, philosophy, history, or culture of India. Unfortunately, we know no more of it than that he gave it-and gave it with such thorough and sympathetic knowledge that he was assumed by some to be a Persian. (In the same way, whenever Swamiji spoke on Buddhism, some listeners took it for granted that he was a Buddhist.)

The announcement in the above newspaper items that Swami Vivekananda was to speak almost every morning of that week, beginning on Monday, January 22, was repeated in the Times and Herald, with the additional information that the subject for Monday would be "The Ideal of a Universal Religion."

This was a topic to which Swamiji gave much importance during his mission in the West. He had spoken on it often during his first visit to America, and he was to speak on it twice in Pasadena: once at the Shakespeare Club and again on Sunday evening, January 28, in the city’s liberal pulpit, the Universalist Church. We have no transcript of the Shakespeare Club lecture,

According to an incident related in "Swamiji in Southern California," Swamiji’s stay at the Meads’ followed directly upon one or another of these visits-one that he had not particularly enjoyed. "One morning," the story reads, " . . . a horse carriage drew up in front of the Meads’ house. To the surprise and delight of the sisters, Swamiji climbed out of it, dropped his bags and baggage at the door, and announced: `I have come to stay with you. That’s too much of a lady!4 From whose home Swamiji was escaping and at what date this incident took place there is today no knowing. Indeed only one thing in regard to dates is certain: during some of January and most of February the Meads’ house in South Pasadena was Swamiji’s home-and with this fact, fuzzy at its outer edges, we must at present be content.

The house stood at 309 Monterey Road in South Pasadena. It was a two-story frame house with gable roofs and a roofed¬over front porch. Up the east end of the porch and over the roof grew a bushy Gold of Ophir rose vine, full of reddish yellow bloom. In a photograph published in Vedanta and the West (No. 158) one sees Swamiji standing at a corner of the house, the rose vine at his back, while Mrs. Wyckoff, standing on the porch; peeps from behind a pillar. Only a portion of the house is visible in this particular photograph; but in the book Swami Turiyananda by Swami Ritajananda (Sri Ramakrishna Math, Madras, 1963) there is a full view of it. Clearly this latter photograph, which is reproduced here, was not taken during Swamiji’s visit: the garden is untended and the rose vine less profuse. According to Mrs. Hanabrough’s daughter, Mrs. Paul Cohn, who has told me her memories of the house, where she had spent many years of her childhood, there was a wide, well-kept lawn between the front porch and the road, in the middle of which grew a large pine tree. In later years, after the Mead family had moved away, the road was widened and the lawn thereby narrowed-and, as one sees in the photograph, let go to seed. "It was never so when we lived there!" Mrs. Cohn declared.

The house, today owned by the Vedanta Society of Southern California and carefully restored to its original state, is surprisingly small-a good deal smaller than it looks in its photographs, and a good deal more charming, as well. Though redecorated in the late-Victorian style prevailing at the turn of the century, it has none of the clutter and stuffiness of that period; it is airy and gay and, despite its smallness, gives one a sense of space. Indeed, no visiting devotee would find it hard to think that Swamiji once walked through these rooms and filled this house through and through with his presence.

One enters a small but light-filled hall, which leads straight back into the dining room. To the right of the hall a recessed staircase rises to the second floor, and to the left, double sliding doors open wide into the living room. Here, in the living room, windows look out onto the front porch, and a windowed alcove at the far end looks to the east, where in Swamiji’s time was an orange grove. The dining room, which opens without doors off the living room and which one can enter either this way or by way of the entrance hall, runs the full width of the house and is the largest room of all. (To judge from Mrs. Hansbrough’s memories, it was also the most lived-in room. Here the sisters’ father, Mr. Jesse Mead, had his screened-off bedroom, and here also the family and their guests sat in the evenings enjoying the warmth from the little fireplace, with its low and narrow mantel, often talking, when Swamiji was there at any rate, until late at night.) Beyond the dining room and centred at the back of the house is the kitchen, its gable roof a story lower than the roof proper, its back door opening in Swamiji’s day onto a large back porch and adjoining wash¬room. These three rooms and hall, with their redwood doors and woodwork, their high ceilings and tall windows, were (together with the front and back porches) all there was of the first floor.

Leading from the entrance hall, the narrow little stairway, lighted by a mullioned window, makes two right-angle turns to a diminutive hallway on the second floor. On the left are two bedrooms, the second twice as large as the first. On the right is the bathroom-a convenience that Mrs. Hansbrough once mentioned with special and pardonable pride. (In 1900, she pointed out, an upstairs bathroom was no ordinary matter, particularly in a small-town house; and it was a boon to Swamiji.) At the end of the hall, catercornered on the right, is the door that led to Swamiji’s bedroom-today a shrine. Some nine or ten feet square, this room has two windows in the far corner, one facing east, the other south. In the photograph here reproduced, one can see the east window, outside of which (Mrs. Cohn remembered) a large apricot tree grew. The south window looks over the kitchen roof and the back garden to a steep and wooded ridge. Indeed, the little house nestles almost at the foot of this southern ridge, which in 1900 was an uncultivated and unpeopled wildness.

In those days South Pasadena, a town separate in government from Pasadena, was not closely built up, and the Meads’ house had ample space around it. At the back was the garden where M;. Mead grew vegetables, berries, and fruit trees; to the east, the orange grove; to the west, a neighboring house, hidden by shrubs and a large oak tree (upon which Mrs. Hansbrough’s daughter had a swing) ; and across the unpaved road there were no houses at all. Although the electric train passed by at the corner now and then, Lincoln Park was a quiet section of the quiet little town, and as Swamiji told Mrs. Hansbrough, he found the atmosphere restful and not unlike that of India.

In America and England Swamiji had lived in many homes, sometimes making stays of several weeks; yet we have no really detailed accounts of his life at these places: we do not know the small, everyday things he did or the routine he generally followed. To a large extent, Mrs. Hansbrough’s "Reminiscences" make up for this lack, and in the following pages I have drawn from them as many small details as possible regarding Swamiji’s stay at the Meads’-what he ate; how he dressed, and so on. Some students of Swami Vivekananda may not care too much about such matters; but on the other hand, perhaps none of his present-day followers will find them insignificant.

Although the titles of the week’s remaining classes at the Shakespeare Club were not announced in the newspapers, we learn from the following item that appeared in the Los Angeles Herald of January 26 that Thursday’s class was on the science of yoga:

Swami Vivekananda, the Oriental seer, lectured at the Shakespeare club this morning [Thursday, January 25] on "The Science of Yoga". He said that there is no difference in kind between anything in nature, but that all differences are of degree merely. The mind is the supreme power, the motor of the world.

Was it perhaps after this lecture that a man in the audience stood up and (as related by Mrs. Hansbrough) asked, "Then, Swami, what you claim is that all is good?" "By no means," Swamiji replied. "My claim is that all is not-only God is! That makes all the difference

Now, ladies and gentlemen, the subject for this morning was to have been the Vedanta Philosophy. That subject itself is interesting, but rather dry and very vast._x000d_ Meanwhile, I have been asked by your president and some of the ladies and gentlemen here to tell them something about my work and what I have been doing. It may be interesting to some here, but not so much so to me. In fact, I do not quite know how to tell it to you, for this will have been the first time in my life that I have spoken on that subject._x000d_ Now, to understand what I have been trying to do, in my small way, I will take you, in imagination, to India. We have not time to go into all the details and all the ramifications of the subject; nor is it possible for you to understand all the complexities in a foreign race in this short time. Suffice it to say, I will at least try to give you a little picture of what India is like._x000d_ It is like a gigantic building all tumbled down in ruins. At first sight, then, there is little hope. It is a nation gone and ruined. But you wait and study, then you see something beyond that. The truth is that so long as the principle, the ideal, of which the outer man is the expression, is not hurt or destroyed, the man lives, and there is hope for that man. If your coat is stolen twenty times, that is no reason why you should be destroyed. You can get a new coat. The coat is unessential. The fact that a rich man is robbed does not hurt the vitality of the man, does not mean death. The man will survive. _x000d_ Standing on this principle, we look in and we see--what? India is no longer a political power; it is an enslaved race. Indians have no say, no voice in their own government; they are three hundred millions of slaves--nothing more! The average income of a man in India is two shillings a month. The common state of the vast mass of the people is starvation, so that, with the least decrease in income, millions die. A little famine means death. So there, too, when I look on that side of India, I see ruin--hopeless ruin._x000d_ But we find that the Indian race never stood for wealth. Although they acquired immense wealth, perhaps more than any other nation ever acquired, yet the nation did not stand for wealth. It was a powerful race for ages, yet we find that that nation never stood for power, never went out of the country to conquer. Quite content within their own boundaries, they never fought anybody. The Indian nation never stood for imperial glory. Wealth and power, then, were not the ideals of the race._x000d_ What then? Whether they were wrong or right--that is not the question we discuss--that nation, among all the children of men, has believed, and believed intensely, that this life is not real. The real is God; and they must cling unto that God through thick and thin. In the midst of their degradation, religion came first. The Hindu man drinks religiously, sleeps religiously, walks religiously, marries religiously, robs religiously._x000d_ Did you ever see such a country? If you want to get up a gang of robbers, the leader will have to preach some sort of religion, then formulate some bogus metaphysics, and say that this method is the clearest and quickest way to get God. Then he finds a following, otherwise not. That shows that the vitality of the race, the mission of the race is religion; and because that has not been touched, therefore that race lives._x000d_ See Rome. Rome's mission was imperial power, expansion. And so soon as that was touched, Rome fell to pieces, passed out. The mission of Greece was intellect, as soon as that was touched, why, Greece passed out. So in modern times, Spain and all these modern countries. Each nation has a mission for the world. So long as that mission is not hurt, that nation lives, despite every difficulty. But as soon as its mission is destroyed, the nation collapses._x000d_ Now, that vitality of India has not been touched yet. They have not given up that, and it is still strong--in spite of all their superstitions. Hideous superstitions are there, most revolting some of them. Never mind. The national life-current is still there--the mission of the race._x000d_ The Indian nation never will be a powerful conquering people--never. They will never be a great political power; that is not their business, that is not the note India has to play in the great harmony of nations. But what has she to play? God, and God alone. She clings unto that like grim death. Still there is hope there._x000d_ So, then, after your analysis, you come to the conclusion that all these things, all this poverty and misery, are of no consequence--the man is living still, and therefore there is hope._x000d_ Well! You see religious activities going on all through the country. I do not recall a year that has not given birth to several new sects in India. The stronger the current, the more the whirlpools and eddies. Sects are not signs of decay, they are a sign of life. Let sects multiply, till the time comes when every one of us is a sect, each individual. We need not quarrel about that._x000d_ Now, take your country. (I do not mean any criticism). Here the social laws, the political formation--everything is made to facilitate man's journey in this life. He may live very happily so long as he is on this earth. Look at your streets--how clean! Your beautiful cities! And in how many ways a man can make money! How many channels to get enjoyment in this life! But, if a man here should say, "Now look here, I shall sit down under this tree and meditate; I do not want to work", why, he would have to go to jail. See! There would be no chance for him at all. None. A man can live in this society only if he falls in line. He has to join in this rush for the enjoyment of good in this life, or he dies._x000d_ Now let us go back to India. There, if a man says, "I shall go and sit on the top of that mountain and look at the tip of my nose all the rest of my days", everybody says, "Go, and Godspeed to you!" He need not speak a word. Somebody brings him a little cloth, and he is all right. But if a man says, "Behold, I am going to enjoy a little of this life", every door is closed to him._x000d_ I say that the ideas of both countries are unjust. I see no reason why a man here should not sit down and look at the tip of his nose if he likes. Why should everybody here do just what the majority does? I see no reason._x000d_ Nor why, in India, a man should not have the goods of this life and make money. But you see how those vast millions are forced to accept the opposite point of view by tyranny. This is the tyranny of the sages. This is the tyranny of the great, tyranny of the spiritual, tyranny of the intellectual, tyranny of the wise. And the tyranny of the wise, mind you, is much more powerful than the tyranny of the ignorant. The wise, the intellectual, when they take to forcing their opinions upon others, know a hundred thousand ways to make bonds and barriers which it is not in the power of the ignorant to break._x000d_ Now, I say that this thing has got to stop. There is no use in sacrificing millions and millions of people to produce one spiritual giant. If it is possible to make a society where the spiritual giant will be produced and all the rest of the people will be happy as well, that is good; but if the millions have to be ground down, that is unjust. Better that the one great man should suffer for the salvation of the world._x000d_ In every nation you will have to work through their methods. To every man you will have to speak in his own language. Now, in England or in America, if you want to preach religion to them, you will have to work through political methods--make organisations, societies, with voting, balloting, a president, and so on, because that is the language, the method of the Western race. On the other hand, if you want to speak of politics in India, you must speak through the language of religion. You will have to tell them something like this: "The man who cleans his house every morning will acquire such and such an amount of merit, he will go to heaven, or he comes to God." Unless you put it that way, they will not listen to you. It is a question of language. The thing done is the same. But with every race, you will have to speak their language in order to reach their hearts. And that is quite just. We need not fret about that._x000d_ In the Order to which I belong we are called Sannyasins. The word means "a man who has renounced". This is a very, very, very ancient Order. Even Buddha, who was 560 years before Christ, belonged to that Order. He was one of the reformers of his Order. That was all. So ancient! You find it mentioned away back in the Vedas, the oldest book in the world. In old India there was the regulation that every man and woman, towards the end of their lives, must get out of social life altogether and think of nothing except God and their own salvation. This was to get ready for the great event--death. So old people used to become Sannyasins in those early days. Later on, young people began to give up the world. And young people are active. They could not sit down under a tree and think all the time of their own death, so they went about preaching and starting sects, and so on. Thus, Buddha, being young, started that great reform. Had he been an old man, he would have looked at the tip of his nose and died quietly._x000d_ The Order is not a church, and the people who join the Order are not priests. There is an absolute difference between the priests and the Sannyasins. In India, priesthood, like every other business in a social life, is a hereditary profession. A priest's son will become a priest, just as a carpenter's son will be a carpenter, or a blacksmith's son a blacksmith. The priest must always be married. The Hindu does not think a man is complete unless he has a wife. An unmarried man has no right to perform religious ceremonies._x000d_ The Sannyasins do not possess property, and they do not marry. Beyond that there is no organisation. The only bond that is there is the bond between the teacher and the taught--and that is peculiar to India. The teacher is not a man who comes just to teach me, and I pay him so much, and there it ends. In India it is really like an adoption. The teacher is more than my own father, and I am truly his child, his son in every respect. I owe him obedience and reverence first, before my own father even; because, they say, the father gave me this body, but he showed me the way to salvation, he is greater than father. And we carry this love, this respect for our teacher all our lives. And that is the only organisation that exists. I adopt my disciples. Sometimes the teacher will be a young man and the disciple a very old man. But never mind, he is the son, and he calls me "Father", and I have to address him as my son, my daughter, and so on._x000d_ Now, I happened to get an old man to teach me, and he was very peculiar. He did not go much for intellectual scholarship, scarcely studied books; but when he was a boy he was seized with the tremendous idea of getting truth direct. First he tried by studying his own religion. Then he got the idea that he must get the truth of other religions; and with that idea he joined all the sects, one after another. For the time being he did exactly what they told him to do--lived with the devotees of these different sects in turn, until interpenetrated with the particular ideal of that sect. After a few years he would go to another sect. When he had gone through with all that, he came to the conclusion that they were all good. He had no criticism to offer to any one; they are all so many paths leading to the same goal. And then he said, "That is a glorious thing, that there should be so many paths, because if there were only one path, perhaps it would suit only an individual man. The more the number of paths, the more the chance for every one of us to know the truth. If I cannot be taught in one language, I will try another, and so on". Thus his benediction was for every religion._x000d_ Now, all the ideas that I preach are only an attempt to echo his ideas. Nothing is mine originally except the wicked ones, everything I say which is false and wicked. But every word that I have ever uttered which is true and good is simply an attempt to echo his voice. Read his life by Prof. Max Muller. _x000d_ Well, there at his feet I conceived these ideas--there with some other young men. I was just a boy. I went there when I was about sixteen. Some of the other boys were still younger, some a little older--about a dozen or more. And together we conceived that this ideal had to be spread. And not only spread, but made practical. That is to say, we must show the spirituality of the Hindus, the mercifulness of the Buddhists, the activity of the Christians, the brotherhood of the Mohammedans, by our practical lives. "We shall start a universal religion now and here," we said, "we will not wait"._x000d_ Our teacher was an old man who would never touch a coin with his hands. He took just the little food offered, just so many yards of cotton cloth, no more. He could never be induced to take any other gift. With all these marvellous ideas, he was strict, because that made him free. The monk in India is the friend of the prince today, dines with him; and tomorrow he is with the beggar, sleeps under a tree. He must come into contact with everyone, must always move about. As the saying is, "The rolling stone gathers no moss". The last fourteen years of my life, I have never been for three months at a time in any one place--continually rolling. So do we all._x000d_ Now, this handful of boys got hold of these ideas, and all the practical results that sprang out of these ideas. Universal religion, great sympathy for the poor, and all that are very good in theory, but one must practise._x000d_ Then came the sad day when our old teacher died. We nursed him the best we could. We had no friends. Who would listen to a few boys, with their crank notions? Nobody. At least, in India, boys are nobodies. Just think of it--a dozen boys, telling people vast, big ideas, saying they are determined to work these ideas out in life. Why, everybody laughed. From laughter it became serious; it became persecution. Why, the parents of the boys came to feel like spanking every one of us. And the more we were derided, the more determined we became._x000d_ Then came a terrible time--for me personally and for all the other boys as well. But to me came such misfortune! On the one side was my mother, my brothers. My father died at that time, and we were left poor. Oh, very poor, almost starving all the time! I was the only hope of the family, the only one who could do anything to help them. I had to stand between my two worlds. On the one hand, I would have to see my mother and brothers starve unto death; on the other, I had believed that this man's ideas were for the good of India and the world, and had to be preached and worked out. And so the fight went on in my mind for days and months. Sometimes I would pray for five or six days and nights together without stopping. Oh, the agony of those days! I was living in hell! The natural affections of my boy's heart drawing me to my family--I could not bear to see those who were the nearest and dearest to me suffering. On the other hand, nobody to sympathise with me. Who would sympathise with the imaginations of a boy--imaginations that caused so much suffering to others? Who would sympathise with me? None--except one._x000d_ That one's sympathy brought blessing and hope. She was a woman. Our teacher, this great monk, was married when he was a boy and she a mere child. When he became a young man, and all this religious zeal was upon him, she came to see him. Although they had been married for long, they had not seen very much of each other until they were grown up. Then he said to his wife, "Behold, I am your husband; you have a right to this body. But I cannot live the sex life, although I have married you. I leave it to your judgment". And she wept and said, "God speed you! The Lord bless you! Am I the woman to degrade you? If I can, I will help you. Go on in your work"._x000d_ That was the woman. The husband went on and became a monk in his own way; and from a distance the wife went on helping as much as she could. And later, when the man had become a great spiritual giant, she came--really, she was the first disciple--and she spent the rest of her life taking care of the body of this man. He never knew whether he was living or dying, or anything. Sometimes, when talking, he would get so excited that if he sat on live charcoals, he did not know it. Live charcoals! Forgetting all about his body, all the time._x000d_ Well, that lady, his wife, was the only one who sympathised with the idea of those boys. But she was powerless. She was poorer than we were. Never mind! We plunged into the breach. I believed, as I was living, that these ideas were going to rationalise India and bring better days to many lands and foreign races. With that belief, came the realisation that it is better that a few persons suffer than that such ideas should die out of the world. What if a mother or two brothers die? It is a sacrifice. Let it be done. No great thing can be done without sacrifice. The heart must be plucked out and the bleeding heart placed upon the altar. Then great things are done. Is there any other way? None have found it. I appeal to each one of you, to those who have accomplished any great thing. Oh, how much it has cost! What agony! What torture! What terrible suffering is behind every deed of success in every life! You know that, all of you._x000d_ And thus we went on, that band of boys. The only thing we got from those around us was a kick and a curse--that was all. Of course, we had to beg from door to door for our food: got hips and haws--the refuse of everything--a piece of bread here and there. We got hold of a broken-down old house, with hissing cobras living underneath; and because that was the cheapest, we went into that house and lived there._x000d_ Thus we went on for some years, in the meanwhile making excursions all over India, trying to bring about the idea gradually. Ten years were spent without a ray of light! Ten more years! A thousand times despondency came; but there was one thing always to keep us hopeful--the tremendous faithfulness to each other, the tremendous love between us. I have got a hundred men and women around me; if I become the devil himself tomorrow, they will say, "Here we are still! We will never give you up!" That is a great blessing. In happiness, in misery, in famine, in pain, in the grave, in heaven, or in hell who never gives me up is my friend. Is such friendship a joke? A man may have salvation through such friendship. That brings salvation if we can love like that. If we have that faithfulness, why, there is the essence of all concentration. You need not worship any gods in the world if you have that faith, that strength, that love. And that was there with us all throughout that hard time. That was there. That made us go from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin, from the Indus to the Brahmaputra._x000d_ This band of boys began to travel about. Gradually we began to draw attention: ninety per cent was antagonism, very little of it was helpful. For we had one fault: we were boys--in poverty and with all the roughness of boys. He who has to make his own way in life is a bit rough, he has not much time to be smooth and suave and polite--"my lady and my gentleman", and all that. You have seen that in life, always. He is a rough diamond, he has not much polish, he is a jewel in an indifferent casket._x000d_ And there we were. "No compromise!" was the watchword. "This is the ideal, and this has got to be carried out. If we meet the king, though we die, we must give him a bit of our minds; if the peasant, the same". Naturally, we met with antagonism._x000d_ But, mind you, this is life's experience; if you really want the good of others, the whole universe may stand against you and cannot hurt you. It must crumble before your power of the Lord Himself in you if you are sincere and really unselfish. And those boys were that. # _x000d_ They came as children, pure and fresh from the hands of nature. Said our Master: I want to offer at the altar of the Lord only those flowers that have not even been smelled, fruits that have not been touched with the fingers. The words of the great man sustained us all. For he saw through the future life of those boys that he collected from the streets of Calcutta, so to say. People used to laugh at him when he said, "You will see--this boy, that boy, what he becomes". His faith was unalterable: "Mother showed it to me. I may be weak, but when She says this is so--She can never make mistakes--it must be so."_x000d_ So things went on and on for ten years without any light, but with my health breaking all the time. It tells on the body in the long run: sometimes one meal at nine in the evening, another time a meal at eight in the morning, another after two days, another after three days--and always the poorest and roughest thing. Who is going to give to the beggar the good things he has? And then, they have not much in India. And most of the time walking, climbing snow peaks, sometimes ten miles of hard mountain climbing, just to get a meal. They eat unleavened bread in India, and sometimes they have it stored away for twenty or thirty days, until it is harder than bricks; and then they will give a square of that. I would have to go from house to house to collect sufficient for one meal. And then the bread was so hard, it made my mouth bleed to eat it. Literally, you can break your teeth on that bread. Then I would put it in a pot and pour over it water from the river. For months and months I existed that way--of course it was telling on the health._x000d_ Then I thought, I have tried India: it is time for me to try another country. At that time your Parliament of Religions was to be held, and someone was to be sent from India. I was just a vagabond, but I said, "If you send me, I am going. I have not much to lose, and I do not care if I lose that." It was very difficult to find the money, but after a long struggle they got together just enough to pay for my passage--and I came. Came one or two months earlier, so that I found myself drifting about in the streets here, without knowing anybody._x000d_ But finally the Parliament of Religions opened, and I met kind friends, who helped me right along. I worked a little, collected funds, started two papers, and so on. After that I went over to England and worked there. At the same time I carried on the work for India in America too._x000d_ My plan for India, as it has been developed and centralised, is this: I have told you of our lives as monks there, how we go from door to door, so that religion is brought to everybody without charge, except, perhaps, a broken piece of bread. That is why you see the lowest of the low in India holding the most exalted religious ideas. It is all through the work of these monks. But ask a man, "Who are the English?"--he does not know. He says perhaps, "They are the children of those giants they speak of in those books, are they not?" "Who governs you?" "We do not know." "What is the government?" They do not know. But they know philosophy. It is a practical want of intellectual education about life on this earth they suffer from. These millions and millions of people are ready for life beyond this world--is not that enough for them? Certainly not. They must have a better piece of bread and a better piece of rag on their bodies. The great question is: How to get that better bread and better rag for these sunken millions._x000d_ First, I must tell you, there is great hope for them, because, you see, they are the gentlest people on earth. Not that they are timid. When they want to fight, they fight like demons. The best soldiers the English have are recruited from the peasantry of India. Death is a thing of no importance to them. Their attitude is "Twenty times I have died before, and I shall die many times after this. What of that?" They never turn back. They are not given to much emotion, but they make very good fighters._x000d_ Their instinct, however, is to plough. If you rob them, murder them, tax them, do anything to them, they will be quiet and gentle, so long as you leave them free to practise their religion. They never interfere with the religion of others. "Leave us liberty to worship our gods, and take everything else!" That is their attitude. When the English touch them there, trouble starts. That was the real cause of the 1857 Mutiny--they would not bear religious repression. The great Mohammedan governments were simply blown up because they touched the Indians' religion._x000d_ But aside from that, they are very peaceful, very quiet, very gentle, and, above all, not given to vice. The absence of any strong drink, oh, it makes them infinitely superior to the mobs of any other country. You cannot compare the decency of life among the poor in India with life in the slums here. A slum means poverty, but poverty does not mean sin, indecency, and vice in India. In other countries, the opportunities are such that only the indecent and the lazy need be poor. There is no reason for poverty unless one is a fool or a blackguard--the sort who want city life and all its luxuries. They will not go into the country. They say, "We are here with all the fun, and you must give us bread". But that is not the case in India, where the poor fellows work hard from morning to sunset, and somebody else takes the bread out of their hands, and their children go hungry. Notwithstanding the millions of tons of wheat raised in India, scarcely a grain passes the mouth of a peasant. He lives upon the poorest corn, which you would not feed to your canary-birds._x000d_ Now there is no reason why they should suffer such distress--these people; oh, so pure and good! We hear so much talk about the sunken millions and the degraded women of India--but none come to our help. What do they say? They say, "You can only be helped, you can only be good by ceasing to be what you are. It is useless to help Hindus." These people do not know the history of races. There will be no more India if they change their religion and their institutions, because that is the vitality of that race. It will disappear; so, really, you will have nobody to help._x000d_ Then there is the other great point to learn: that you can never help really. What can we do for each other? You are growing in your own life, I am growing in my own. It is possible that I can give you a push in your life, knowing that, in the long run, all roads lead to Rome. It is a steady growth. No national civilisation is perfect yet. Give that civilisation a push, and it will arrive at its own goal: do not strive to change it. Take away a nation's institutions, customs, and manners, and what will be left? They hold the nation together._x000d_ But here comes the very learned foreign man, and he says, "Look here; you give up all those institutions and customs of thousands of years, and take my tomfool tinpot and be happy". This is all nonsense._x000d_ We will have to help each other, but we have to go one step farther: the first thing is to become unselfish in help. "If you do just what I tell you to do, I will help you; otherwise not." Is that help?_x000d_ And so, if the Hindus want to help you spiritually, there will be no question of limitations: perfect unselfishness. I give, and there it ends. It is gone from me. My mind, my powers, my everything that I have to give, is given: given with the idea to give, and no more. I have seen many times people who have robbed half the world, and they gave $20,000 "to convert the heathen"._x000d_ What for? For the benefit of the heathen, or for their own souls? Just think of that._x000d_ And the Nemesis of crime is working. We men try to hoodwink our own eyes. But inside the heart, He has remained, the real Self. He never forgets. We can never delude Him. His eyes will never be hoodwinked. Whenever there is any impulse of real charity, it tells, though it be at the end of a thousand years. Obstructed, it yet wakens once more to burst like a thunderbolt. And every impulse where the motive is selfish, self-seeking--though it may be launched forth with all the newspapers blazoning, all the mobs standing and cheering--it fails to reach the mark._x000d_ I am not taking pride in this. But, mark you, I have told the story of that group of boys. Today there is not a village, not a man, not a woman in India that does not know their work and bless them. There is not a famine in the land where these boys do not plunge in and try to work and rescue as many as they can. And that strikes to the heart. The people come to know it. So help whenever you can, but mind what your motive is. If it is selfish, it will neither benefit those you help, nor yourself. If it is unselfish, it will bring blessings upon them to whom it is given, and infinite blessings upon you, sure as you are living. The Lord can never be hoodwinked. The law of Karma can never be hoodwinked._x000d_ Well then, my plans are, therefore, to reach these masses of India. Suppose you start schools all over India for the poor, still you cannot educate them. How can you? The boy of four years would better go to the plough or to work, than to your school. He cannot go to your school. It is impossible. Self-preservation is the first instinct. But if the mountain does not go to Mohammed, then Mohammed can come to the mountain. Why should not education go from door to door, say I. If a ploughman's boy cannot come to education, why not meet him at the plough, at the factory, just wherever he is? Go along with him, like his shadow. But there are these hundreds and thousands of monks, educating the people on the spiritual plane; why not let these men do the same work on the intellectual plane? Why should they not talk to the masses a little about history--about many things? The ears are the best educators. The best principles in our lives were those which we heard from our mothers through our ears. Books came much later. Book-learning is nothing. Through the ears we get the best formative principles. Then, as they get more and more interested, they may come to your books too. First, let it roll on and on--that is my idea._x000d_ Well, I must tell you that I am not a very great believer in monastic systems. They have great merits, and also great defects. There should be a perfect balance between the monastics and the householders. But monasticism has absorbed all the power in India. We represent the greatest power. The monk is greater than the prince. There is no reigning sovereign in India who dares to sit down when the "yellow cloth" is there. He gives up his seat and stands. Now, that is bad, so much power, even in the hands of good men--although these monastics have been the bulwark of the people. They stand between the priestcraft and knowledge. They are the centres of knowledge and reform. They are just what the prophets were among the Jews. The prophets were always preaching against the priests, trying to throw out superstitions. So are they in India. But all the same so much power is not good there; better methods should be worked out. But you can only work in the line of least resistance. The whole national soul there is upon monasticism. You go to India and preach any religion as a householder: the Hindu people will turn back and go out. If you have given up the world, however, they say, "He is good, he has given up the world. He is a sincere man, he wants to do what he preaches." What I mean to say is this, that it represents a tremendous power. What we can do is just to transform it, give it another form. This tremendous power in the hands of the roving Sannyasins of India has got to be transformed, and it will raise the masses up._x000d_ Now, you see, we have brought the plan down nicely on paper; but I have taken it, at the same time, from the regions of idealism. So far the plan was loose and idealistic. As years went on, it became more and more condensed and accurate; I began to see by actual working its defects, and all that._x000d_ What did I discover in its working on the material plane? First, there must be centres to educate these monks in the method of education. For instance, I send one of my men, and he goes about with a camera: he has to be taught in those things himself. In India, you will find every man is quite illiterate, and that teaching requires tremendous centres. And what does all that mean? Money. From the idealistic plane you come to everyday work. Well, I have worked hard, four years in your country, and two in England. And I am very thankful that some friends came to the rescue. One

" Once again, though this time for amicable reasons, the ladies and gentlemen in the audience preferred to hear something less demanding of their attention than Vedanta philosophy. "Now, ladies and gentlemen," Swamiji is quoted as having said, "the subject for this morning was to have been the Vedanta Philosophy. That subject itself is interesting, but rather dry and very vast. Meanwhile, I have been asked by your president and some of the ladies and gentlemen here to tell them something about my work and what I have been doing. The talk that followed was unlike any other that has come down to us. As Swamiji himself said, "this will have been the first time in my life that I have spoken on [this] subject." He told of the ancient tradition of monasticism in India, of Sri Ramakrishna and his teachings, of the years of hard austerity undergone by himself and his brother disciples for the sake of spreading the message of their Master. He told of the extreme, heartbreaking, undeserved, and unnecessary poverty of the Hindu people and of his plan to transform the tremendous prestige and power of the Indian monk into a force that would educate and raise the masses. And he spoke of what he and his brothers had already accomplished along this line.

In the course of this lecture, Swamiji made a surprising statement-one which gives us some insight into how he felt his work in India, and perhaps in America also, should proceed in the future: "I must tell you," he said, "that I am not a very great believer in monastic systems. They have great merits, and also great defects. There should be a perfect balance between the monastics and the householders. But monasticism has absorbed all the power in India. We represent the greatest power [and you can only work in the line of least resistance] . . . . But all the same so much power is not good there; better methods should be worked out.

It was also in this lecture that Swamiji struck a blow at the _x000d_ # _x000d_ missionary groups, so voluble in their criticisms of his mother¬land. "We hear so much talk," he said, "about the sunken millions and the degraded women of India-but none come to our help. What do they say? They’say, `You can only be helped, you can only be good, by ceasing to be what you are. It is useless to help Hindus.’ These people do not know the history of races. . . . Take away a nation’s institutions, customs and manners, and what will be left? They hold the nation together. But here comes the very learned foreign man, and he says, `Look here; you give up all those institutions and customs of thousands of years and take my tom-fool tin pot and be happy.’ This is all nonsense.

No search has been dearer to the human heart than that which brings to us light from God. No study has taken so much of human energy, whether in times past or present, as the study of the soul, of God, and of human destiny. However immersed we are in our daily occupations, in our ambitions, in our work, in the midst of the greatest of our struggles, sometimes there will come a pause; the mind stops and wants to know something beyond this world. Sometimes it catches glimpses of a realm beyond the senses, and a struggle to get at it is the result. Thus it has been throughout the ages, in all countries. Man has wanted to look beyond, wanted to expand himself; and all that we call progress, evolution, has been always measured by that one search, the search for human destiny, the search for God._x000d_ As our social struggles are represented amongst different nations by different social organisations, so is man's spiritual struggle represented by various religions; and as different social organisations are constantly quarrelling, are constantly at war with one another, so these spiritual organisations have been constantly at war with one another, constantly quarrelling. Men belonging to a particular social organisation claim that the right to live only belongs to them; and so long as they can, they want to exercise that right at the cost of the weak. We know that just now there is a fierce struggle of that sort going on in South Africa. Similarly, each religious sect has claimed the exclusive right to live. And thus we find that though there is nothing that has brought to man more blessings than religion, yet at the same time, there is nothing that has brought more horror than religion. Nothing has made more for peace and love than religion; nothing has engendered fiercer hatred than religion. Nothing has made the brotherhood of man more tangible than religion; nothing has bred more bitter enmity between man and man than religion. Nothing has built more charitable institutions, more hospitals for men, and even for animals, than religion; nothing has deluged the world with more blood than religion. We know, at the same time, that there has always been an undercurrent of thought; there have been always parties of men, philosophers, students of comparative religion who have tried and are still trying to bring about harmony in the midst of all these jarring and discordant sects. As regards certain countries, these attempts have succeeded, but as regards the whole world, they have failed. _x000d_ There are some religions which have come down to us from the remotest antiquity, which are imbued with the idea that all sects should be allowed to live, that every sect has a meaning, a great idea, imbedded within itself, and, therefore it is necessary for the good of the world and ought to be helped. In modern times the same idea is prevailing and attempts are made from time to time to reduce it to practice. These attempts do not always come up to our expectations, up to the required efficiency. Nay, to our great disappointment, we sometimes find that we are quarrelling all the more._x000d_ Now, leaving aside dogmatic study, and taking a common-sense view of the thing, we find at the start that there is a tremendous life-power in all the great religions of the world. Some may say that they are ignorant of this, but ignorance is no excuse. If a man says "I do not know what is going on in the external world, therefore things that are going on in the external world do not exist", that man is inexcusable. Now those of you that watch the movement of religious thought all over the world are perfectly aware that not one of the great religions of the world has died; not only so, each one of them is progressive. Christians are multiplying, Mohammedans are multiplying, the Hindus are gaining ground, and the Jews also are increasing, and by their spreading all over the world and increasing rapidly, the fold of Judaism is constantly expanding._x000d_ Only one religion of the world--an ancient, great religion--has dwindled away, and that is the religion of Zoroastrianism, the religion of the ancient Persians. Under the Mohammedan conquest of Persia about a hundred thousand of these people came and took shelter in India and some remained in ancient Persia. Those that were in Persia, under the constant persecution of the Mohammedans, dwindled down till there are at most only ten thousand; in India there are about eighty thousand of them, but they do not increase. Of course, there is an initial difficulty; they do not convert others to their religion. And then, this handful of persons living in India, with the pernicious custom of cousin marriage, do not multiply. With this single exception, all the great religions are living, spreading, and increasing. We must remember that all the great religions of the world are very ancient, not one has been formed at the present time, and that every religion of the world owes its origin to the country between the Ganga and the Euphrates; not one great religion has arisen in Europe, not one in America, not one; every religion is of Asiatic origin and belongs to that part of the world. If what the modern scientists say is true, that the survival of the fittest is the test, these religions prove by their still living that they are yet fit for some people. There is a reason why they should live, they bring good to many. Look at the Mohammedans, how they are spreading in some places in Southern Asia, and spreading like fire in Africa. The Buddhists are spreading all over Central Asia, all the time. The Hindus, like the Jews, do not convert others; still gradually, other races are coming within Hinduism and adopting the manners and customs of the Hindus and falling into line with them. Christianity, you all know, is spreading--though I am not sure that the results are equal to the energy put forth. The Christians' attempt at propaganda has one tremendous defect--and that is the defect of all Western institutions: the machine consumes ninety per cent of the energy, there is too much machinery. Preaching has always been the business of the Asiatics. The Western people are grand in organisation, social institutions, armies, governments, etc.; but when it comes to preaching religion, they cannot come near the Asiatic, whose business it has been all the time, and he knows it, and he does not use too much machinery. _x000d_ This then is a fact in the present history of the human race, that all these great religions exist and are spreading and multiplying. Now, there is a meaning, certainly, to this; and had it been the will of an All-wise and All-merciful Creator that one of these religions should exist and the rest should die, it would have become a fact long, long ago. If it were a fact that only one of these religions is true and all the rest are false, by this time it would have covered the whole ground. But this is not so; not one has gained all the ground. All religions sometimes advance--sometimes decline. Now, just think of this: in your own country there are more than sixty millions of people, and only twenty-one millions professing religions of all sorts. So it is not always progress. In every country, probably, if the statistics are taken, you would find that religions are sometimes progressing and sometimes going back. Sects are multiplying all the time. If the claims of a religion that it has all the truth and God has given it all this truth in a certain book were true, why are there so many sects? Fifty years do not pass before there are twenty sects founded upon the same book. If God has put all the truth in certain books, He does not give us those books in order that we may quarrel over texts. That seems to be the fact. Why is it? Even if a book were given by God which contained all the truth about religion, it would not serve the purpose because nobody could understand the book. Take the Bible, for instance, and all the sects that exist amongst Christians; each one puts its own interpretation upon the same text, and each says that it alone understands that text and all the rest are wrong. So with every religion. There are many sects among the Mohammedans and among the Buddhists, and hundreds among the Hindus. Now, I bring these facts before you in order to show you that any attempt to bring all humanity to one method of thinking in spiritual things has been a failure and always will be a failure. Every man that starts a theory, even at the present day, finds that if he goes twenty miles away from his followers, they will make twenty sects. You see that happening all the time. You cannot make all conform to the same ideas: that is a fact, and I thank God that it is so. I am not against any sect. I am glad that sects exist, and I only wish they may go on multiplying more and more. Why? Simply because of this: If you and I and all who are present here were to think exactly the same thoughts, there would be no thoughts for us to think. We know that two or more forces must come into collision in order to produce motion. It is the clash of thought, the differentiation of thought, that awakes thought. Now, if we all thought alike, we would be like Egyptian mummies in a museum looking vacantly at one another's faces--no more than that! Whirls and eddies occur only in a rushing, living stream. There are no whirlpools in stagnant, dead water. When religions are dead, there will be no more sects; it will be the perfect peace and harmony of the grave. But so long as mankind thinks, there will be sects. Variation is the sign of life, and it must be there. I pray that they may multiply so that at last there will be as many sects as human beings, and each one will have his own method, his individual method of thought in religion. _x000d_ But this thing exists already. Each one of us is thinking in his own way, but his natural course has been obstructed all the time and is still being obstructed. If the sword is not used directly, other means will be used. Just hear what one of the best preachers in New York says: he preaches that the Filipinos should be conquered because that is the only way to teach Christianity to them! They are already Catholics; but he wants to make them Presbyterians, and for this, he is ready to lay all this terrible sin of bloodshed upon his race. How terrible! And this man is one of the greatest preachers of this country, one of the best informed men. Think of the state of the world when a man like that is not ashamed to stand up and utter such arrant nonsense; and think of the state of the world when an audience cheers him! Is this civilisation? It is the old blood-thirstiness of the tiger, the cannibal, the savage, coming out once more under new names, new circumstances. What else can it be? If the state of things is such now, think of the horrors through which the world passed in olden times, when every sect was trying by every means in its power to tear to pieces the other sects. History shows that. The tiger in us is only asleep; it is not dead. When opportunities come, it jumps up and, as of old, uses its claws and fangs. Apart from the sword, apart from material weapons, there are weapons still more terrible--contempt, social hatred, and social ostracism. Now, these are the most terrible of all inflictions that are hurled against persons who do not think exactly in the same way as we do. And why should everybody think just as we do? I do not see any reason. If I am a rational man, I should be glad they do not think just as I do. I do not want to live in a grave-like land; I want to be a man in a world of men. Thinking beings must differ; difference is the first sign of thought. If I am a thoughtful man, certainly I ought to like to live amongst thoughtful persons where there are differences of opinion._x000d_ Then arises the question: How can all these varieties be true? If one thing is true, its negation is false. How can contradictory opinions be true at the same time? This is the question which I intend to answer. But I will first ask you: Are all the religions of the world really contradictory? I do not mean the external forms in which great thoughts are clad. I do not mean the different buildings, languages, rituals, books, etc. employed in various religions, but I mean the internal soul of every religion. Every religion has a soul behind it, and that soul may differ from the soul of another religion; but are they contradictory? Do they contradict or supplement each other? --that is the question. I took up the question when I was quite a boy, and have been studying it all my life. Thinking that my conclusion may be of some help to you, I place it before you. I believe that they are not contradictory; they are supplementary. Each religion, as it were, takes up one part of the great universal truth, and spends its whole force in embodying and typifying that part of the great truth. It is, therefore, addition, not exclusion. That is the idea. System after system arises, each one embodying a great idea, and ideals must be added to ideals. And this is the march of humanity. Man never progresses from error to truth, but from truth to truth, from lesser truth to higher truth--but it is never from error to truth. The child may develop more than the father, but was the father inane? The child is the father plus something else. If your present state of knowledge is much greater than it was when you were a child, would you look down upon that stage now? Will you look back and call it inanity? Why, your present stage is the knowledge of the child plus something more. _x000d_ Then, again, we also know that there may be almost contradictory points of view of the same thing, but they will all indicate the same thing. Suppose a man is journeying towards the sun, and as he advances he takes a photograph of the sun at every stage. When he comes back, he has many photographs of the sun, which he places before us. We see that not two are alike, and yet, who will deny that all these are photographs of the same sun, from different standpoints? Take four photographs of this church from different corners: how different they would look, and yet they would all represent this church. In the same way, we are all looking at truth from different standpoints, which vary according to our birth, education, surroundings, and so on. We are viewing truth, getting as much of it as these circumstances will permit, colouring the truth with our own heart, understanding it with our own intellect, and grasping it with our own mind. We can only know as much of truth as is related to us, as much of it as we are able to receive. This makes the difference between man and man, and occasions sometimes even contradictory ideas; yet we all belong to the same great universal truth._x000d_ My idea, therefore, is that all these religions are different forces in the economy of God, working for the good of mankind; and that not one can become dead, not one can be killed. Just as you cannot kill any force in nature, so you cannot kill any one of these spiritual forces. You have seen that each religion is living. From time to time it may retrograde or go forward. At one time, it may be shorn of a good many of its trappings; at another time it may be covered with all sorts of trappings; but all the same, the soul is ever there, it can never be lost. The ideal which every religion represents is never lost, and so every religion is intelligently on the march._x000d_ And that universal religion about which philosophers and others have dreamed in every country already exists. It is here. As the universal brotherhood of man is already existing, so also is universal religion. Which of you, that have travelled far and wide, have not found brothers and sisters in every nation? I have found them all over the world. Brotherhood already exists; only there are numbers of persons who fail to see this and only upset it by crying for new brotherhoods. Universal religion, too, is already existing. If the priests and other people that have taken upon themselves the task of preaching different religions simply cease preaching for a few moments, we shall see it is there. They are disturbing it all the time, because it is to their interest. You see that priests in every country are very conservative. Why is it so? There are very few priests who lead the people; most of them are led by the people and are their slaves and servants. If you say it is dry, they say it is so; if you say it is black, they say it is black. If the people advance, the priests must advance. They cannot lag behind. So, before blaming the priests--it is the fashion to blame the priest--you ought to blame yourselves. You only get what you deserve. What would be the fate of a priest who wants to give you new and advanced ideas and lead you forward? His children would probably starve, and he would be clad in rags. He is governed by the same worldly law as you are. "If you go on," he says, "let us march." Of course, there are exceptional souls, not cowed down by public opinion. They see the truth and truth alone they value. Truth has got hold of them, has got possession of them, as it were, and they cannot but march ahead. They never look backward, and for them there are no people. God alone exists for them, He is the Light before them, and they are following that Light. _x000d_ I met a Mormon gentleman in this country, who tried to persuade me to his faith. I said, "I have great respect for your opinions, but in certain points we do not agree--I belong to a monastic order, and you believe in marrying many wives. But why don't you go to India to preach?" Then he was astonished. He said, "Why, you don't believe in any marriage at all, and we believe in polygamy, and yet you ask me to go to your country!" I said, "Yes; my countrymen will hear every religious thought wherever it may come from. I wish you would go to India, first, because I am a great believer in sects. Secondly, there are many men in India who are not at all satisfied with any of the existing sects, and on account of this dissatisfaction, they will not have anything to do with religion, and possibly, you might get some of them." The greater the number of sects, the more chance of people getting religion. In the hotel, where there are all sorts of food, everyone has a chance to get his appetite satisfied. So I want sects to multiply in every country, that more people may have a chance to be spiritual. Do not think that people do not like religion. I do not believe that. The preachers cannot give them what they need. The same man that may have been branded as an atheist, as a materialist, or what not, may meet a man who gives him the truth needed by him, and he may turn out the most spiritual man in the community. We can eat only in our own way. For instance, we Hindus eat with our fingers. Our fingers are suppler than yours, you cannot use your fingers the same way. Not only the food should be supplied, but it should be taken in your own particular way. Not only must you have the spiritual ideas, but they must come to you according to your own method. They must speak your own language, the language of your soul, and then alone they will satisfy you. When the man comes who speaks my language and gives truth in my language, I at once understand it and receive it for ever. This is a great fact._x000d_ Now from this we see that there are various grades and types of human minds and what a task religions take upon them! A man brings forth two or three doctrines and claims that his religion ought to satisfy all humanity. He goes out into the world, God's menagerie, with a little cage in hand, and says, "God and the elephant and everybody has to go into this. Even if we have to cut the elephant into pieces, he must go in." Again, there may be a sect with a few good ideas. Its followers say, "All men must come in!" "But there is no room for them." "Never mind! Cut them to pieces; get them in anyhow; if they don't get in, why, they will be damned." No preacher, no sect, have I ever met that pauses and asks, "Why is it that people do not listen to us?" Instead, they curse the people and say, "The people are wicked." They never ask, "How is it that people do not listen to my words? Why cannot I make them see the truth? Why cannot I speak in their language? Why cannot I open their eyes?" Surely, they ought to know better, and when they find people do not listen to them, if they curse anybody, it should be themselves. But it is always the people's fault! They never try to make their sect large enough to embrace every one._x000d_ Therefore we at once see why there has been so much narrow-mindedness, the part always claiming to be the whole; the little, finite unit always laying claim to the infinite. Think of little sects, born within a few hundred years out of fallible human brains, making this arrogant claim of knowledge of the whole of God's infinite truth! Think of the arrogance of it! If it shows anything, it is this, how vain human beings are. And it is no wonder that such claims have always failed, and, by the mercy of the Lord, are always destined to fail. In this line the Mohammedans were the best off; every step forward was made with the sword--the Koran in the one hand and the sword in the other: "Take the Koran, or you must die; there is no alternative!" You know from history how phenomenal was their success; for six hundred years nothing could resist them, and then there came a time when they had to cry halt. So will it be with other religions if they follow the same methods. We are such babes! We always forget human nature. When we begin life, we think that our fate will be something extraordinary, and nothing can make us disbelieve that. But when we grow old, we think differently. So with religions. In their early stages, when they spread a little, they get the idea that they can change the minds of the whole human race in a few years, and go on killing and massacring to make converts by force; then they fail, and begin to understand better. We see that these sects did not succeed in what they started out to do, which was a great blessing. Just think if one of those fanatical sects had succeeded all over the world, where would man be today? Now, the Lord be blessed that they did not succeed! Yet, each one represents a great truth; each religion represents a particular excellence--something which is its soul. There is an old story which comes to my mind: There were some ogresses who used to kill people and do all sorts of mischief; but they themselves could not be killed, until someone found out that their souls were in certain birds, and so long as the birds were safe nothing could destroy the ogresses. So, each one of us has, as it were, such a bird, where our soul is; has an ideal, a mission to perform in life. Every human being is an embodiment of such an ideal, such a mission. Whatever else you may lose, so long as that ideal is not lost, and that mission is not hurt, nothing can kill you. Wealth may come and go, misfortunes may pile mountains high, but if you have kept the ideal entire, nothing can kill you. You may have grown old, even a hundred years old, but if that mission is fresh and young in your heart, what can kill you? But when that ideal is lost and that mission is hurt, nothing can save you. All the wealth, all the power of the world will not save you. And what are nations but multiplied individuals? So, each nation has a mission of its own to perform in this harmony of races; and so long as that nation keeps to that ideal, that nation nothing can kill; but if that nation gives up its mission in life and goes after something else, its life becomes short, and it vanishes. _x000d_ And so with religions. The fact that all these old religions are living today proves that they must have kept that mission intact; in spite of all their mistakes, in spite of all difficulties, in spite of all quarrels, in spite of all the incrustation of forms and figures, the heart of every one of them is sound--it is a throbbing, beating, living heart. They have not lost, any one of them, the great mission they came for. And it is splendid to study that mission. Take Mohammedanism, for instance. Christian people hate no religion in the world so much as Mohammedanism. They think it is the very worst form of religion that ever existed. As soon as a man becomes a Mohammedan, the whole of Islam receives him as a brother with open arms, without making any distinction, which no other religion does. If one of your American Indians becomes a Mohammedan, the Sultan of Turkey would have no objection to dine with him. If he has brains, no position is barred to him. In this country, I have never yet seen a church where the white man and the negro can kneel side by side to pray. Just think of that: Islam makes its followers all equal--so, that, you see, is the peculiar excellence of Mohammedanism. In many places in the Koran you find very sensual ideas of life. Never mind. What Mohammedanism comes to preach to the world is this practical brotherhood of all belonging to their faith. That is the essential part of the Mohammedan religion; and all the other ideas about heaven and of life etc. are not Mohammedanism. They are accretions._x000d_ With the Hindus you will find one national idea--spirituality. In no other religion, in no other sacred books of the world, will you find so much energy spent in defining the idea of God. They tried to define the ideal of soul so that no earthly touch might mar it. The spirit must be divine; and spirit understood as spirit must not be made into a man. The same idea of unity, of the realisation of God, the omnipresent, is preached throughout. They think it is all nonsense to say that He lives in heaven, and all that. It is a mere human, anthropomorphic idea. All the heaven that ever existed is now and here. One moment in infinite time is quite as good as any other moment. If you believe in a God, you can see Him even now. We think religion begins when you have realised something. It is not believing in doctrines, nor giving intellectual assent, nor making declarations. If there is a God, have you seen Him? If you say "no", then what right have you to believe in Him? If you are in doubt whether there is a God, why do you not struggle to see Him? Why do you not renounce the world and spend the whole of your life for this one object? Renunciation and spirituality are the two great ideas of India, and it is because India clings to these ideas that all her mistakes count for so little._x000d_ With the Christians, the central idea that has been preached by them is the same: "Watch and pray, for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand"--which means, purify your minds and be ready! And that spirit never dies. You recollect that the Christians are, even in the darkest days, even in the most superstitious Christian countries, always trying to prepare themselves for the coming of the Lord, by trying to help others, building hospitals and so on. So long as the Christians keep to that ideal, their religion lives. Now an ideal presents itself to my mind. It may be only a dream. I do not know whether it will ever be realised in this world, but sometimes it is better to dream a dream, than die on hard facts. Great truths, even in a dream are good, better than bad facts. So, let us dream a dream._x000d_ You know that there are various grades of mind. You may be a matter-of-fact, common-sense rationalist: you do not care for forms and ceremonies; you want intellectual, hard, ringing facts, and they alone will satisfy you. Then there are the Puritans, the Mohammedans, who will not allow a picture or a statue in their place of worship. Very well! But there is another man who is more artistic. He wants a great deal of art--beauty of lines and curves, the colours, flowers, forms; he wants candles, lights, and all the insignia and paraphernalia of ritual, that he may see God. His mind takes God in those forms, as yours takes Him through the intellect. Then, there is the devotional man, whose soul is crying for God: he has no other idea but to worship God, and to praise Him. Then again, there is the philosopher, standing outside all these, mocking at them. He thinks, "What nonsense they are! What ideas about God!"_x000d_ They may laugh at one another, but each one has a place in this world. All these various minds, all these various types are necessary. If there ever is going to be an ideal religion, it must be broad and large enough to supply food for all these minds. It must supply the strength of philosophy to the philosopher, the devotee's heart to the worshipper; to the ritualist, it will give all that the most marvellous symbolism can convey; to the poet, it will give as much of heart as he can take in, and other things besides. To make such a broad religion, we shall have to go back to the time when religions began and take them all in._x000d_ Our watchword, then, will be acceptance, and not exclusion. Not only toleration, for so-called toleration is often blasphemy, and I do not believe in it. I believe in acceptance. Why should I tolerate? Toleration means that I think that you are wrong and I am just allowing you to live. Is it not a blasphemy to think that you and I are allowing others to live? I accept all religions that were in the past, and worship with them all; I worship God with every one of them, in whatever form they worship Him. I shall go to the mosque of the Mohammedan; I shall enter the Christian's church and kneel before the crucifix; I shall enter the Buddhistic temple, where I shall take refuge in Buddha and in his Law. I shall go into the forest and sit down in meditation with the Hindu, who is trying to see the Light which enlightens the heart of every one._x000d_ Not only shall I do all these, but I shall keep my heart open for all that may come in the future. Is God's book finished? Or is it still a continuous revelation going on? It is a marvellous book--these spiritual revelations of the world. The Bible, the Vedas, the Koran, and all other sacred books are but so many pages, and an infinite number of pages remain yet to be unfolded. I would leave it open for all of them. We stand in the present, but open ourselves to the infinite future. We take in all that has been in the past, enjoy the light of the present, and open every window of the heart for all that will come in the future. Salutation to all the prophets of the past, to all the great ones of the present, and to all that are to come in the future!

"Our watchword," he said in conclusion, "will be acceptance, and not exclusion. Not only toleration, for so-called toleration is often blasphemy, and I do not believe in it. . . . Toleration means that I think that you are wrong and I am just allowing you to live. Is it not a blasphemy to think that you and I are allowing others to live? . . . We [must] take in all that has been in the past, enjoy the light of the present, and open every window of the heart for all that will come in the future.

There are two great epics in the Sanskrit language, which are very ancient. Of course, there are hundreds of other epic poems. The Sanskrit language and literature have been continued down to the present day, although, for more than two thousand years, it has ceased to be a spoken language. I am now going to speak to you of the two most ancient epics, called the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. They embody the manners and customs, the state of society, civilisation, etc., of the ancient Indians. The oldest of these epics is called Ramayana, "The Life of Rama". There was some poetical literature before this--most of the Vedas, the sacred books of the Hindus, are written in a sort of metre--but this book is held by common consent in India as the very beginning of poetry._x000d_ The name of the poet or sage was Valmiki. Later on, a great many poetical stories were fastened upon that ancient poet; and subsequently, it became a very general practice to attribute to his authorship very many verses that were not his. Notwithstanding all these interpolations, it comes down to us as a very beautiful arrangement, without equal in the literatures of the world._x000d_ There was a young man that could not in any way support his family. He was strong and vigorous and, finally, became a highway robber; he attacked persons in the street and robbed them, and with that money he supported his father, mother, wife, and children. This went on continually, until one day a great saint called Narada was passing by, and the robber attacked him. _x000d_ The sage asked the robber, "Why are you going to rob me? It is a great sin to rob human beings and kill them. What do you incur all this sin for?" The robber said, "Why, I want to support my family with this money." "Now", said the sage, "do you think that they take a share of your sin also?" "Certainly they do," replied the robber. "Very good," said the sage, "make me safe by tying me up here, while you go home and ask your people whether they will share your sin in the same way as they share the money you make." The man accordingly went to his father, and asked, "Father, do you know how I support you?" He answered, "No, I do not." "I am a robber, and I kill persons and rob them." "What! You do that, my son? Get away! You outcast!" He then went to his mother and asked her, "Mother, do you know how I support you?" "No," she replied. "Through robbery and murder." "How horrible it is!" cried the mother. "But, do you partake in my sin?" said the son. "Why should I? I never committed a robbery," answered the mother. Then, he went to his wife and questioned her, "Do you know how I maintain you all?" "No," she responded. "Why, I am a highwayman," he rejoined, "and for years have been robbing people; that is how I support and maintain you all. And what I now want to know is, whether you are ready to share in my sin." "By no means. You are my husband, and it is your duty to support me."_x000d_ The eyes of the robber were opened. "That is the way of the world--even my nearest relatives, for whom I have been robbing, will not share in my destiny." He came back to the place where he had bound the sage, unfastened his bonds, fell at his feet, recounted everything and said, "Save me! What can I do?" The sage said, "Give up your present course of life. You see that none of your family really loves you, so give up all these delusions. They will share your prosperity; but the moment you have nothing, they will desert you. There is none who will share in your evil, but they will all share in your good. Therefore worship Him who alone stands by us whether we are doing good or evil. He never leaves us, for love never drags down, knows no barter, no selfishness."_x000d_ Then the sage taught him how to worship. And this man left everything and went into a forest. There he went on praying and meditating until he forgot himself so entirely that the ants came and built ant-hills around him, and he was quite unconscious of it. After many years had passed, a voice came saying, "Arise, O sage!" Thus aroused he exclaimed, "Sage? I am a robber!" "No more 'robber'," answered the voice, "a purified sage art thou. Thine old name is gone. But now, since thy meditation was so deep and great that thou didst not remark even the ant-hills which surrounded thee, henceforth, thy name shall be Valmiki--'he that was born in the ant-hill'." So, he became a sage._x000d_ And this is how he became a poet. One day as this sage, Valmiki, was going to bathe in the holy river Ganga, he saw a pair of doves wheeling round and round, and kissing each other. The sage looked up and was pleased at the sight, but in a second an arrow whisked past him and killed the male dove. As the dove fell down on the ground, the female dove went on whirling round and round the dead body of its companion in grief. In a moment the poet became miserable, and looking round, he saw the hunter. "Thou art a wretch," he cried, "without the smallest mercy! Thy slaying hand would not even stop for love!" "What is this? What am I saying?" the poet thought to himself, "I have never spoken in this sort of way before." And then a voice came: "Be not afraid. This is poetry that is coming out of your mouth. Write the life of Rama in poetic language for the benefit of the world." And that is how the poem first began. The first verse sprang out of pity from the mouth of Valmiki, the first poet. And it was after that, that he wrote the beautiful Ramayana, "The Life of Rama"._x000d_ There was an ancient Indian town called Ayodhya--and it exists even in modern times. The province in which it is still located is called Oudh, and most of you may have noticed it in the map of India. That was the ancient Ayodhya. There, in ancient times, reigned a king called Dasharatha. He had three queens, but the king had not any children by them. And like good Hindus, the king and the queens, all went on pilgrimages fasting and praying, that they might have children and, in good time, four sons were born. The eldest of them was Rama._x000d_ Now, as it should be, these four brothers were thoroughly educated in all branches of learning. To avoid future quarrels there was in ancient India a custom for the king in his own lifetime to nominate his eldest son as his successor, the Yuvaraja, young king, as he is called._x000d_ Now, there was another king, called Janaka, and this king had a beautiful daughter named Sita. Sita was found in a field; she was a daughter of the Earth, and was born without parents. The word "Sita" in ancient Sanskrit means the furrow made by a plough. In the ancient mythology of India you will find persons born of one parent only, or persons born without parents, born of sacrificial fire, born in the field, and so on--dropped from the clouds as it were. All those sorts of miraculous birth were common in the mythological lore of India._x000d_ Sita, being the daughter of the Earth, was pure and immaculate. She was brought up by King Janaka. When she was of a marriageable age, the king wanted to find a suitable husband for her._x000d_ There was an ancient Indian custom called Svayamvara, by which the princesses used to choose husbands. A number of princes from different parts of the country were invited, and the princess in splendid array, with a garland in her hand, and accompanied by a crier who enumerated the distinctive claims of each of the royal suitors, would pass in the midst of those assembled before her, and select the prince she liked for her husband by throwing the garland of flowers round his neck. They would then be married with much pomp and grandeur._x000d_ There were numbers of princes who aspired for the hand of Sita; the test demanded on this occasion was the breaking of a huge bow, called Haradhanu. All the princes put forth all their strength to accomplish this feat, but failed. Finally, Rama took the mighty bow in his hands and with easy grace broke it in twain. Thus Sita selected Rama, the son of King Dasharatha for her husband, and they were wedded with great rejoicings. Then, Rama took his bride to his home, and his old father thought that the time was now come for him to retire and appoint Rama as Yuvaraja. Everything was accordingly made ready for the ceremony, and the whole country was jubilant over the affair, when the younger queen Kaikeyi was reminded by one of her maidservants of two promises made to her by the king long ago. At one time she had pleased the king very much, and he offered to grant her two boons: "Ask any two things in my power and I will grant them to you," said he, but she made no request then. She had forgotten all about it; but the evil-minded maidservant in her employ began to work upon her jealousy with regard to Rama being installed on the throne, and insinuated to her how nice it would be for her if her own son had succeeded the king, until the queen was almost mad with jealousy. Then the servant suggested to her to ask from the king the two promised boons: one would be that her own son Bharata should be placed on the throne, and the other, that Rama should be sent to the forest and be exiled for fourteen years._x000d_ Now, Rama was the life and the soul of the old king and when this wicked request was made to him, he as a king felt he could not go back on his word. So he did not know what to do. But Rama came to the rescue and willingly offered to give up the throne and go into exile, so that his father might not be guilty of falsehood. So Rama went into exile for fourteen years, accompanied by his loving wife Sita and his devoted brother Lakshmana, who would on no account be parted from him._x000d_ The Aryans did not know who were the inhabitants of these wild forests. In those days the forest tribes they called "monkeys", and some of the so-called "monkeys", if unusually strong and powerful, were called demons._x000d_ So, into the forest, inhabited by demons and monkeys, Rama, Lakshmana, and Sita went. When Sita had offered to accompany Rama, he exclaimed, "How can you, a princess, face hardships and accompany me into a forest full of unknown dangers!" But Sita replied, "Wherever Rama goes, there goes Sita. How can you talk of `princess' and `royal birth' to me? I go before you!" So, Sita went. And the younger brother, he also went with them. They penetrated far into the forest, until they reached the river Godavari. On the banks of the river they built little cottages, and Rama and Lakshmana used to hunt deer and collect fruits. After they had lived thus for some time, one day there came a demon giantess. She was the sister of the giant king of Lanka (Ceylon). Roaming through the forest at will, she came across Rama, and seeing that he was a very handsome man, she fell in love with him at once. But Rama was the purest of men, and also he was a married man; so of course he could not return her love. In revenge, she went to her brother, the giant king, and told him all about the beautiful Sita, the wife of Rama._x000d_ Rama was the most powerful of mortals; there were no giants or demons or anybody else strong enough to conquer him. So, the giant king had to resort to subterfuge. He got hold of another giant who was a magician and changed him into a beautiful golden deer; and the deer went prancing round about the place where Rama lived, until Sita was fascinated by its beauty and asked Rama to go and capture the deer for her. Rama went into the forest to catch the deer, leaving his brother in charge of Sita. Then Lakshmana laid a circle of fire round the cottage, and he said to Sita, "Today I see something may befall you; and, therefore, I tell you not to go outside of this magic circle. Some danger may befall you if you do." In the meanwhile, Rama had pierced the magic deer with his arrow, and immediately the deer, changed into the form of a man, died._x000d_ Immediately, at the cottage was heard the voice of Rama, crying, "Oh, Lakshmana, come to my help!" and Sita said, "Lakshmana, go at once into the forest to help Rama!" "That is not Rama's voice," protested Lakshmana. But at the entreaties of Sita, Lakshmana had to go in search of Rama. As soon as he went away, the giant king, who had taken the form of a mendicant monk, stood at the gate and asked for alms. "Wait awhile," said Sita, "until my husband comes back and I will give you plentiful alms." "I cannot wait, good lady," said he, "I am very hungry, give me anything you have." At this, Sita, who had a few fruits in the cottage, brought them out. But the mendicant monk after many persuasions prevailed upon her to bring the alms to him, assuring her that she need have no fear as he was a holy person. So Sita came out of the magic circle, and immediately the seeming monk assumed his giant body, and grasping Sita in his arms he called his magic chariot, and putting her therein, he fled with the weeping Sita. Poor Sita! She was utterly helpless, nobody was there to come to her aid. As the giant was carrying her away, she took off a few of the ornaments from her arms and at intervals dropped them to the ground._x000d_ She was taken by Ravana to his kingdom, Lanka, the island of Ceylon. He made proposals to her to become his queen, and tempted her in many ways to accede to his request. But Sita was chastity itself, would not even speak to the giant; and he to punish her, made her live under a tree, day and night, until she should consent to be his wife._x000d_ When Rama and Lakshmana returned to the cottage and found that Sita was not there, their grief knew no bounds. They could not imagine what had become of her. The two brothers went on, seeking, seeking everywhere for Sita, but could find no trace of her. After long searching, they came across a group of "monkeys", and in the midst of them was Hanuman, the "divine monkey". Hanuman, the best of monkeys, became the most faithful servant of Rama and helped him in rescuing Sita, as we shall see later on. His devotion to Rama was so great that he is worshipped by the Hindus as the ideal of a true servant of the Lord. You see, by the "monkeys" and "demons" are meant the aborigines of South India._x000d_ So, Rama, at last, fell in with these monkeys. They told him that they had seen flying through the sky a chariot, in which was seated a demon who was carrying away a most beautiful lady, and that she was weeping bitterly, and as the chariot passed over their heads she dropped one of her ornaments to attract their attention. Then they showed Rama the ornament. Lakshmana took up the ornament, and said, "I do not know whose ornament this is." Rama took it from him and recognised it at once, saying "Yes, it is Sita's." Lakshmana could not recognise the ornament, because in India the wife of the elder brother was held in so much reverence that he had never looked upon the arms and the neck of Sita. So you see, as it was a necklace, he did not know whose it was. There is in this episode a touch of the old Indian custom. Then, the monkeys told Rama who this demon king was, and where he lived, and then they all went to seek for him._x000d_ Now, the monkey-king Vali and his younger brother Sugriva were then fighting amongst themselves for the kingdom. The younger brother was helped by Rama, and he regained the kingdom for Vali, who had driven him away; and he, in return, promised to help Rama. They searched the country all round, but could not find Sita. At last Hanuman leaped by one bound from the coast of India to the island of Ceylon, and there went looking all over Lanka for Sita, but nowhere could he find her._x000d_ You see, this giant king had conquered the gods, the men, in fact the whole world; and he had collected all the beautiful women and made them his concubines. So, Hanuman thought to himself, "Sita cannot be with them in the palace. She would rather die than be in such a place." So Hanuman went to seek for her elsewhere. At last, he found Sita under a tree, pale and thin, like the new moon that lies low in the horizon. Now Hanuman took the form of a little monkey and settled on the tree, and there he witnessed how giantesses sent by Ravana came and tried to frighten Sita into submission, but she would not even listen to the name of the giant king._x000d_ Then, Hanuman came nearer to Sita and told her how he became the messenger of Rama, who had sent him to find out where Sita was; and Hanuman showed to Sita the signet ring which Rama had given as a token for establishing his identity. He also informed her that as soon as Rama would know her whereabouts, he would come with an army and conquer the giant and recover her. However, he suggested to Sita that if she wished it, he would take her on his shoulders and could with one leap clear the ocean and get back to Rama. But Sita could not bear the idea, as she was chastity itself, and could not touch the body of any man except her husband. So, Sita remained where she was. But she gave him a jewel from her hair to carry to Rama; and with that Hanuman returned._x000d_ Learning everything about Sita from Hanuman, Rama collected an army, and with it marched towards the southernmost point of India. There Rama's monkeys built a huge bridge, called Setu-Bandha, connecting India with Ceylon. In very low water even now it is possible to cross from India to Ceylon over the sand-banks there._x000d_ Now Rama was God incarnate, otherwise, how could he have done all these things? He was an Incarnation of God, according to the Hindus. They in India believe him to be the seventh Incarnation of God._x000d_ The monkeys removed whole hills, placed them in the sea and covered them with stones and trees, thus making a huge embankment. A little squirrel, so it is said, was there rolling himself in the sand and running backwards and forwards on to the bridge and shaking himself. Thus in his small way he was working for the bridge of Rama by putting in sand. The monkeys laughed, for they were bringing whole mountains, whole forests, huge loads of sand for the bridge--so they laughed at the little squirrel rolling in the sand and then shaking himself. But Rama saw it and remarked: "Blessed be the little squirrel; he is doing his work to the best of his ability, and he is therefore quite as great as the greatest of you." Then he gently stroked the squirrel on the bank, and the marks of Rama's fingers, running lengthways, are seen on the squirrel's back to this day._x000d_ Now, when the bridge was finished, the whole army of monkeys, led by Rama and his brother entered Ceylon. For several months afterwards tremendous war and bloodshed followed. At last, this demon king, Ravana, was conquered and killed; and his capital, with all the palaces and everything, which were entirely of solid gold, was taken. In far-away villages in the interior of India, when I tell them that I have been in Ceylon, the simple folk say, "There, as our books tell, the houses are built of gold." So, all these golden cities fell into the hands of Rama, who gave them over to Vibhishana, the younger brother of Ravana, and seated him on the throne in the place of his brother, as a return for the valuable services rendered by him to Rama during the war._x000d_ Then Rama and Sita and his followers left Lanka. But there ran a murmur among his followers. "The test! The test!" they cried, "Sita has not given the test that she was perfectly pure in Ravana's household." "Pure! She is chastity itself!" exclaimed Rama. "Never mind! We want the test," persisted the people. Subsequently, a huge sacrificial fire was made ready, into which Sita had to plunge herself. Rama was in agony, thinking that Sita was lost; but in a moment, the God of fire himself appeared with a throne upon his head, and upon the throne was Sita. Then, there was universal rejoicing, and everybody was satisfied._x000d_ Early during the period of exile, Bharata, the younger brother had come and informed Rama, of the death of the old king and vehemently insisted on his occupying the throne. During Rama's exile Bharata would on no account ascend the throne and out of respect placed a pair of Rama's wooden shoes on it as a substitute for his brother. Then Rama returned to his capital, and by the common consent of his people, he became the king of Ayodhya._x000d_ After Rama regained his kingdom, he took the necessary vows which in olden times the king had to take for the benefit of his people. The king was the slave of his people, he had to bow to public opinion, as we shall see later on. Rama passed a few years in happiness with Sita, when the people again began to murmur that Sita had been stolen by a demon and carried across the ocean. They were not satisfied with the former test and clamoured for another test, otherwise she must be banished._x000d_ In order to satisfy the demands of the people, Sita was banished, and left to live in the forest, where was the hermitage of the sage and poet Valmiki. The sage found poor Sita weeping and forlorn, and hearing her sad story, sheltered her in his Ashrama. Sita was expecting soon to become a mother, and she gave birth to twin boys. The poet never told the children who they were. He brought them up together in the Brahmacharin life. He then composed the poem known as Ramayana, set it to music, and dramatised it._x000d_ The drama, in India, was a very holy thing. Drama and music are themselves held to be religion. Any song--whether it be a love-song or otherwise--if one's whole soul is in that song, one attains salvation, one has nothing else to do. They say it leads to the same goal as meditation._x000d_ So, Valmiki dramatised "The Life of Rama", and taught Rama's two children how to recite and sing it._x000d_ There came a time when Rama was going to perform a huge sacrifice, or Yajna, such as the old kings used to celebrate. But no ceremony in India can be performed by a married man without his wife: he must have the wife with him, the Sahadharmini, the "co-religionist"--that is the expression for the wife. The Hindu householder has to perform hundreds of ceremonies, but not one can be duly performed according to the Shastras, if he has not a wife to complement it with her part in it._x000d_ Now Rama's wife was not with him then, as she had been banished. So, the people asked him to marry again. But at this request Rama for the first time in his life stood against the people. He said, "This cannot be. My life is Sita's." So, as substitute, a golden statue of Sita was made, in order that the ceremony could be accomplished. They arranged even a dramatic entertainment, to enhance the religious feeling of this great festival. Valmiki, the great sage-poet, came with his pupils, Lava and Kusha, the unknown sons of Rama. A stage had been erected and everything was ready for the performance. Rama and his brothers attended with all his nobles and his people--a vast audience. Under the direction of Valmiki, the life of Rama was sung by Lava and Kusha, who fascinated the whole assembly by their charming voice and appearance. Poor Rama was nearly maddened, and when in the drama, the scene of Sita's exile came about, he did not know what to do. Then the sage said to him, "Do not be grieved, for I will show you Sita." Then Sita was brought upon the stage and Rama delighted to see his wife. All of a sudden, the old murmur arose: "The test! The test!" Poor Sita was so terribly overcome by the repeated cruel slight on her reputation that it was more than she could bear. She appealed to the gods to testify to her innocence, when the Earth opened and Sita exclaimed, "Here is the test", and vanished into the bosom of the Earth. The people were taken aback at this tragic end. And Rama was overwhelmed with grief._x000d_ A few days after Sita's disappearance, a messenger came to Rama from the gods, who intimated to him that his mission on earth was finished and he was to return to heaven. These tidings brought to him the recognition of his own real Self. He plunged into the waters of the Sarayu, the mighty river that laved his capital, and joined Sita in the other world._x000d_ This is the great, ancient epic of India. Rama and Sita are the ideal of the Indian nation. All children, especially girls, worship Sita. The height of a woman's ambition is to be like Sita, the pure, the devoted, the all-suffering! When you study these characters, you can at once find out how different is the ideal in India from that of the West. For the race, Sita stands as the ideal of suffering. The West says, 'Do! Show your power by doing." India says, "Show your power by suffering." The West has solved the problem of how much a man can have: India has solved the problem of how little a man can have. The two extremes, you see. Sita is typical of India--the idealised India. The question is not whether she ever lived, whether the story is history or not, we know that the ideal is there. There is no other Pauranika story that has so permeated the whole nation, so entered into its very life, and has so tingled in every drop of blood of the race, as this ideal of Sita. Sita is the name in India for everything that is good, pure and holy--everything that in woman we call womanly. If a priest has to bless a woman he says, "Be Sita!" If he blesses a child, he says "Be Sita!" They are all children of Sita, and are struggling to be Sita, the patient, the all-suffering, the ever-faithful, the ever-pure wife. Through all this suffering she experiences, there is not one harsh word against Rama. She takes it as her own duty, and performs her own part in it. Think of the terrible injustice of her being exiled to the forest! But Sita knows no bitterness. That is, again, the Indian ideal. Says the ancient Buddha, "When a man hurts you, and you turn back to hurt him, that would not cure the first injury; it would only create in the world one more wickedness." Sita was a true Indian by nature; she never returned injury._x000d_ Who knows which is the truer ideal? The apparent power and strength, as held in the West, or the fortitude in suffering, of the East?_x000d_ The West says, "We minimise evil by conquering it." India says, "We destroy evil by suffering, until evil is nothing to us, it becomes positive enjoyment." Well, both are great ideals. Who knows which will survive in the long run? Who knows which attitude will really most benefit humanity? Who knows which will disarm and conquer animality? Will it be suffering, or doing?_x000d_ In the meantime, let us not try to destroy each other's ideals. We are both intent upon the same work, which is the annihilation of evil. You take up your method; let us take up our method. Let us not destroy the ideal. I do not say to the West, "Take up our method." Certainly not. The goal is the same, but the methods can never be the same. And so, after hearing about the ideals of India, I hope that you will say in the same breath to India , "We know, the goal, the ideal, is all right for us both. You follow your own ideal. You follow your method in your own way, and Godspeed to you!" My message in life is to ask the East and West not to quarrel over different ideals, but to show them that the goal is the same in both cases, however opposite it may appear. As we wend our way through this mazy vale of life, let us bid each other Godspeed.

To Sister Nivedita_x000d_ Los Angeles_x000d_ [Early February 1900]_x000d_ Dear Margo [Margot],_x000d_ You have the Gopâla. Add the Sâvitri story to that. I send you four more herewith. They ought to make a nice volume. Work on them a bit, will you. If you get a publisher in Chicago, all right; if not, Mr. Leggett promised to publish them sometime ago._x000d_ Yours,_x000d_ Vivekananda_x000d_ P.S. The preliminary parts should be struck off.

Perhaps one of the factors that make a field great for the receipt of spiritual thought is repose of mind, and this the people of southern California had to a marked degree. Although they were up and doing, thinking of ways and means to improve both themselves and their young cities, they were not under pressure. The land stretched wide and bountiful around them; they could see far and breathe deep. They were not, on the whole, particularly beset with or concerned by the social and economic ferments that boiled and frothed in the eastern cities; nor, as individuals, were they caught up in a round of compulsive activities. The middle classes felt no inordinate, consuming desire to make money; the newly rich were not obsessed by a longing to break into an established, ironclad Society; the poor were not compelled to struggle for life itself, and few people of any class seemed driven to feed endlessly on ideas for sustenance or to attend, for this purpose, one lecture after another on any and every subject. There were, in fact, relatively few lectures to attend. But if southern California was lacking in the intellectual stimulus of, say, New York, it was rich in serenity. The slow tempo, the undemanding climate, the unfrenzied but unsluggish mood, the absence of the conflicts, tensions, and convoluted energies of a big city and the absence, also, of a small town’s chronic self satisfaction and xenophobia--contributed to freeing the people’s minds and hearts: they could feel and dream, and they could discover, or at least suspect, that life had a dimension in depth. Many were receptive to spiritual ideals, and some had the will to pursue them. This auspicious milieu, so favorable to expansion of soul, was perhaps responsible, at least in part, for Swamiji’s assertion that California was "a great field."

He sowed it well. Some years after he had passed away, a Mrs. Annie Smith, whom he had known since the days of the Parliament of Religions, spent four years in Los Angeles and Pasadena and no doubt visited other sections of California as well. As is told in the Life, she later wrote that she had "found the spiritual seed of the Swami’s planting springing up all over the Pacific coast, for he vitalized American religions and sects, as well as Hinduism.

For many years the growth of Swamiji’s thought in southern California had no particular center of its own; it spread from mind to mind, from heart to heart, as disorganized as the spring season. This is not to say, however, that no attempt at organization had been made. As it happened, a Vedanta Society had been formed in Pasadena during Swamiji’s stay there. "It was in the rooms of the Shakespeare Club," Mrs. Hansbrough related, "that the Pasadena Society was formed. [She did not remember the date.] I had suggested it, but Swamiji had no interest in organizing. `It won’t last,’ he said. Nevertheless, we went ahead with the project. He was present at the organization meeting, but, as I say, he was not interested in the proceedings." Those proceedings, however, had their interesting moments. "I had drawn up a set of by-laws," Mrs. Hansbrough recalled, "which included a proposal that each member pledge to contribute to the Society for a period of ten years. Mrs. Bowler objected to this on the grounds that a member might die during the ten years. I said that that would be all right: the deceased member would then be excused from further contributions. Swamiji was greatly amused.

In his lectures and classes during this period the Swami laid great emphasis on practical Vedanta and yoga. He wanted to make available to all men and women the means of gaining complete control over their minds and thereby to be free. Indeed, one of his key teachings during this period was "Get hold of yourself!" Consistently, for he wanted to preach a "man-making" religion, he did not baby his listeners. When he felt that some home truths would do his audience good, he never hesitated to speak them out with the tremendous force of his personality, irrespective of the effect his frankness might have on his audience. Shri Ramakrishna had long before described him as an unsheathed sword. He had never become sheathed. Indeed, there were not a few occasions during his Pasadena lectures when he would aim sharp thrusts at unjust and ill-informed critics of tested Indian institutions and traditions, or when he would scold the West for its shallow and self-destructive arrogance. "One evening as we were going home after a lecture he asked me how I liked it," Mrs. Hansbrough reminisced. "He had been very outspoken that evening in criticism of the West, and I said that I had enjoyed the lecture, but feared that he sometimes antagonized his audiences. He smiled as if that meant nothing to him. 'Madam,' he said, 'I have cleared whole halls in New York.'" _x000d_ There is no known record of anyone having stalked out indignantly from the Swami's lectures in Los Angeles or Pasadena. But inevitably he made enemies who, even as in his first visit in America, took recourse to scandal-mongering, though not to the same virulent degree. He was not disturbed. One morning at the Mead's house a rumour of scandal about him was being discussed by a few of his devoted followers. He was walking slowly up and down the room; finally he said, "Well, what I am, is written on my brow. If you can read it, you are blessed. If you cannot, the loss is yours, not mine."

Just when the Los Angeles and Pasadena Vedanta societies died out is not certain; they seem, however, not to have lasted beyond 1918, if, indeed, they reached that year. But, as said above, the seeds of Vedanta that Swamiji had sown went on germinating, and eventually, when the time was ripe, a strong and permanent Vedanta Society, founded in 1930 by Swami Prabhavananda, a monk of the Ramakrishna Order, grew up in southern California and is today not only flourishing, but through the publication of a magazine, Vedanta and the West (at present suspended), as well as of many Vedantic books, has been circulating a knowledge of Vedanta throughout the United States.

There is evidence that a Vedanta Society was also formed in Los Angeles, and while Swamiji may have been equally lacking in enthusiasm in this regard, we can be sure that neither the society in Los Angeles nor that in Pasadena was formed without his consent. Further, although he judged that the Pasadena organization, at least, would not last, he knew that organization as such was essential to the furtherance of his Western work. "If you want to preach religion [in England or America]," he said in "My Life and Mission," "you will have to work through political methods-make organizations, societies, with voting, balloting, a president and so on, because that is the language, the method of the Western race. Nor was Swamiji altogether without hope for these Vedanta Societies, and, as always, his primary hope in this connection was for the establishment of a two-way current of aid between India and America: spiritual help flowing from East to West, financial help from West to East. From New York he wrote on July 25, 1900, to his brother monk Swami Turiyananda, who had just spent two weeks in southern California before going on to San Francisco, "Revive the clubs a bit and ask Mrs. Hansbrough to collect the dues as they fall and send them to India: And again from Paris he wrote, "Don’t be indifferent to the question of sending money to the Math. See that money goes certainly every month from Los Angeles and San Francisco. (Swamiji’s use of the plural "clubs" in the first quotation indicates that a Vedanta Society had indeed been formed in Los Angeles as well as in Pasadena. The word Los Angeles in his second letter, however, did not necessarily refer to the city of Los Angeles. Then as now, the name was often used to designate a general area.)

For a number of years the "clubs" survived, and, as we learn from a short letter Swamiji was to write from India in June of 1901, the members made at least one contribution to the Math. Swamiji’s letter,_x000d_ written from Math, India on 3rd June, 1901.(mentioned in" Towards the End" (May 1901- July 1902) 'Durga puja at Math')

No doubt if we possessed transcripts of all Swamiji’s talks in southern California, the distinguishing mark of his work there would at once be obvious. Unfortunately, however, we have relatively few published lectures, and while several of these take their place among his most inspired and most valuable, and while some contain ideas not to be found elsewhere in the Complete Works, they do not by themselves enable us to come to a conclusion regarding the special nature of his work. To arrive at such a conclusion, we must take into account not only Swamiji’s published lectures and classes but the titles (or the presumed subject matter) of those whose texts are lost to us. Thanks to the old Los Angeles newspapers, we are in a position to do this.

During his eight weeks of work in Las Angeles and Pasadena (December 8 to February 3) Swamiji gave, or intended to give, at least thirty-eight lectures and class talks. This number does’ not include his talk at Mrs. Severance’s reception or his lecture on Persian art at the Shakespeare Club; nor does it include private talks in the homes of his friends, such as that mentioned by Mrs. Leggett in her letter of January 12 to her husband, or the picnic-classes on the hill in South Pasadena; nor does it, of course, include possible public lectures and classes of which we have no record at all. It does, however, include the two canceled lectures in his second series of "Applied Psychol¬ogy," for we are interested here in Swamiji’s intent, the trend of his thought, rather than in the incidents of his life.

Of these thirty-eight talks we know the titles, or at least the intended subject matter, of thirty-two; and of these thirty-two we have fourteen published transcripts and three fairly long newspaper reports (given earlier in full). While this informa¬tion is admittedly not complete, it is not scanty, and it should, I think, provide us with a representative view of Swamiji’s teachings during this period.

Breaking down our thirty-two titles according to subject, we find that he gave six lectures on the history, customs, and religion of India; five on religious legends (including "Jada Bharata" and "Prahlada"); three on the world’s great Teachers (including two on Christ) ; two on the ideal of a universal religion; one on Vedantic cosmology; one entitled "My Life and Mission"; one on "Reincarnation"; and an intended thirteen on practical spirituality, one of which was devoted to karma yoga ("What Brings Success"), one to jnana yoga ("We Ourselves"), one to bhakti yoga, and ten (two of which were canceled) to raja yoga.

It is interesting to note-although this does not relate to our major theme-that Swamiji gave six lectures on India (three in Los Angeles and three in Pasadena). Long had it been since he had dealt specifically with this subject in the West; indeed, roughly speaking, he had not done so since his mid¬western and eastern lecture tours, which had ended at the beginning of 1895. In those days, as we have mentioned before, Swamiji’s purpose had been to destroy, root and branch, the misconceptions and misinterpretations of Hindu customs and religion then growing wild in America. This purpose had been served. Yet, one cannot forget that the people of southern California were, for the most part, children of the Midwest, over which religious prejudice hung like a heavy fog. Some had come trailing clouds of it, and the old fascination with heathen "idolatry" and the supposed ill-treatment of Hindu women was still upon them. In Pasadena, for instance, a missionary had returned from a reconnaissance trip to India full of gossip. Why, women had been seen prostrated before idols praying for the birth of a child! she was informing aghast church groups. Swamiji may have felt that a little correct information-in regard to Indian customs and religion would not be out of place in southern California. One also finds him (in his lecture "Hints on Practical Spirituality") stressing the _x000d_ need for broadness and fairness of mind in the judgment of others. He was not talking, we can be sure, without purpose. On the other hand, there is no reason not to think that at least some of his lectures on India were given in response to a friendly interest in his country. Particularly would this seem true of "The Aryan Race" and "Buddhistic India," both delivered at the Shakespeare Club.

Yet, there was perhaps another and more important reason for these talks than the interest of his listeners. As any careful reader of the Life will have noticed, Swamiji’s thought came back again and again-whatever his other concerns and occupations to that object of his love, India. He was a profound student of his country; not only had he read extensively about its history, he had wandered after the death of his Master over the vast subcontinent, from north to south, east to west. Nor had his been a superficial wandering: he had observed deeply, analyzed, pondered; he had studied his country thoroughly-its past, its present, its possible future. Although in various memoirs and letters of that period one finds some expressions of his views, one cannot say definitely what thoughts about India he had formed in those early days. It is from the long letters he wrote to his brother monks and friends during his first visit to the West that we learn the conclusions he arrived at. There he gave not only his conception of the problems of his country, but also his ideas of how she could solve those problems and rise to a glory more lustrous, more world illumining than any she had known.

After Swamiji returned to India at the beginning of 1897, he set about putting his ideas into effect, organizing, as we have seen, the Ramakrishna Monastery on a firm basis and founding the Ramakrishna Mission-agencies through which his thought was to bear tangible and enduring fruit. But he had not yet finished studying India. Again he wandered here and there, giving lectures, visiting holy places, observing, pondering. He told many of his ideas of this period to Sister Nivedita, and it is through her books that one can learn his findings. There seems to have been scarcely a topic important to his country’s welfare that he did not dwell upon; indeed, by the time Swamiji was ready to leave his motherland in 1899 he appears to have once again studied her current problems thoroughly, both in breadth and in depth, and to have given his final conclusions.

One would not, I think, be wrong in saying that as he sailed west he now fondly turned his mind to the past, to various periods of India’s ancient history. To judge again from Nivedita’s writings, he seems to have revolved the religious, cultural, and social problems of early times around and around in his thoughts, as though to shine his insight on all aspects of them, bringing their significance for the past, the present, and the future into full view. Thus one cannot think that it was simply for the pleasure and edification of the people of Pasadena that Swamiji spoke on Aryan India, on Buddhistic India, and on the India of the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, and the Puranas. Rather, one cannot but believe that he chose these subjects (and, later on in San Francisco, the India of the Bhagavad Gita) because they were clamoring in his mind for formal expression-for resolution. As I mentioned earlier, the transcripts of his lectures "The Ramayana" and "The Mahabharata" were among those that were heavily edited by Mrs. Sevier-written over in red ink in her hand. The results are smooth-flowing, charmingly told tales; but it was all but impossible, as students of Swamiji’s lectures and conversations well know, for him to dwell on the ancient, heroic legends of his country without giving them a turn and significance of his own. One suspects that much flavour and many "digressions" in which lay a wealth of thought have been deleted from the published versions of these talks. But however that may be, Swamiji’s available and relatively un-edited lectures on India’s history (notably "Buddhistic India" and "The Gita-I") suffice to show how strong and persistent was the historical trend of his thought in California. Later on, he seems to have dwelt no longer on India’s past. It was as though he had given voice to all that had stirred in his mind and heart in connection with his adored motherland and was then satisfied, at peace.

But to return to the main stream of Swamiji’s thought in southern California, one thing that is strikingly clear in the above classification of his lectures is that he devoted almost none to philosophy as such. He did not give, as he had on the East Coast and in London, any detailed, closely reasoned, and well-organized philosophical discourses on Vedanta; he did not discuss at any length the three aspects, or stages, of Vedantic thought; he did not devote a lecture to a philosophical exposition of Advaita; he did not expound the theory of Maya; he did not attempt to reconcile science and religion; he did not discuss Sankhya psychology in any detail, nor did he dwell on Vedantic cosmology. (It is true that he gave one lecture on this last subject-his second lecture in Los Angeles, "The Cosmos," or "Kosmos." But this was delivered under the auspices of the Academy of Sciences and was the natural subject to choose for that assembly. As far as we know, he did not lecture on it again or mention it at any length.) In short, one finds that whatever Swamiji’s purpose in southern California may have been, it was not to present Vedanta as the rational solution to the sociological, psychological, moral, and theological dilemmas of the modern world. In 1895 and 1896 he had given in detail his exegesis of Vedanta. There was no need to repeat it. Nor, one thinks, was he in a mood to repeat it, for another theme was dominant in his mind.

When his ship, the Golconda, had left Calcutta he had exclaimed to Sister Nivedita as we have seen, "Yes! the older, I grow, the more everything seems to me to lie in manliness. This is my new gospel. Do even evil like a man! Be wicked, if you must, on a great scale! This "gospel," this conviction that in manliness lay the key to all achievement, spiritual and secular alike, was actually not new with Swamiji. Often he had voiced it during his first visit to the West. Yet his experience in India, his heartbroken witnessing of the failure of the Hindu people, sunk in the "virtuousness of death," to bestir themselves, had no doubt brought this particular aspect of his thought to a sharp, compelling focus.

It did not fade in prominence or vigor as he reached America. As Miss MacLeod wrote to Mrs. Bull from Ridgely Manor: "Swamiji is blessed and has his new message ready that all there is in life is character, that Buddhas and Christs do more harm than good-for mankind is trying to imitate them¬ instead of developing its own character! And to Nivedita from Loss Angeles, "Swami said today that he is beginning to see the needs of humanity in quite a different light-that he is already sure of the principle that is to help but is spending hours every day in trying to solve the methods. That what he had known hitherto is for men living in a cave-alone ¬undisturbed-but now he will give Humanity something that will make for strength in the stress of daily life. In these quotations from Sister Nivedita and Josphine MacLeod lies the clue, if one needs a clue, to the central theme running through Swamiji’s .mission in California. But his lectures, in fact, speak for themselves.

In Los Angeles, Swamiji held, or intended to hold, two series of three classes each on "Applied Psychology," which was, of course, raja yoga, or some aspects of it. Another series, "The Mind and Its Powers," included at least three classes on raja yoga: "Theory of Concentration," "Practice of Concentration," and "Spiritual Breathing." In addition, he held a class in Pasadena entitled "The Science of Yoga." In short, as we have noted before, he intended to devote ten talks to raja yoga-many more than to any other subject and many more proportionately than during his first visit to the West. One is inclined to think that in laying so much stress on the theory and practice of yoga Swamiji had a definite purpose in mind and that this purpose was, in a word, "man-making." In consonance with his "new gospel" he wanted to make man his own master, to teach him to be in full control of his body and mind, to give him self-confidence, to show him how to draw forth from within himself, by himself, all powers of earth and heaven and, step by step, to realize ultimately his identity with the infinite Spirit-Brahman. That this was the import of Swamiji’s emphasis on raja yoga can be gathered from the two transcripts available to us: "Hints on Practical Spirituality" ("Spiritual Breathing"?) and "The Powers of the Mind." In both these classes his purpose is clearly stated; in fact, they serve as keys to the message uppermost in his mind.

In "The Powers of the Mind," the last class that Swamiji held in the city of Los Angeles, he stated his purpose in teaching the science of yoga even more clearly: "What you call the personal magnetism of the man, that is what goes out and impresses you. . . . It is the real man, the personality of the man, that .runs through us. Our actions are but effects. Actions must come when the man is there; the effect is bound to follow the cause. The ideal of all education, all training, should be this man-making. . . . The end and aim of all training is to make the man grow. The man who influences, who throws his magic, as it were, upon his fellow-beings, is a dynamo of power, and when that man is ready, he can do anything and everything he likes; that personality put upon anything will make it work. . . . The science of Yoga claims that it has discovered the laws which develop this personality, and by proper attention to those laws and methods, each one can grow and strengthen his personality."The utility of this science," he continued in a key passage, "is to bring out the perfect man, and not let him wait and wait for ages, just a plaything in the hands of the physical world, like a log of drift-wood carried from wave to wave and tossing about in the ocean. This science wants you to be strong, to take the work in your own hand, instead of leaving it in the hands of nature, and get beyond this little life. That is the great idea.

To do justice to Swamiji’s theme in his two published classes on yoga, one would have to quote both almost in their entirety. But it is perhaps clear from the above that the development, or, rather, the drawing forth, of the perfect man was the goal he set before his listeners; and the development of self control, self confidence, and self mastery was the basic means to that goal. From start to finish-from simple breathing exercises, to deep meditation, to the attainment of superconsciousness -man, where he stood at any given time, was the means, and man, infinite and eternal, was the end.

In Pasadena Swamiji held, as far as we know, only one class on the science of yoga, and of this we have no transcript. However, from its brief mention in the Los Angeles Herald (given in the previous section) it is clear that he again dealt with the mind and its powers, again laid emphasis on man’s potential sovereignty: "The mind," he said, "is the supreme power, the motor of the world."

While Swamiji seems clearly to have felt that the science of yoga was the quickest and surest way to the making of a man, he did not confine his "new message" to his raja yoga classes, Inevitably, it pervaded almost all his work in southern California. As far as we know, he gave one class each on karma yoga and jnana yoga-though he did not so label them. While these classes-"What Brings Success" and "We Ourselves" (entitled, respectively, in the Complete Works "Work and Its Secret" and "The Open Secret")--cannot, strictly speaking, be classified under the science of man-making, man-making was their pervasive theme. In "What Brings Success" Swamiji’s emphasis lay on the means to perfection: on self effort, self reliance, self mastery, on the power of attachment and the power of detachment, and, above all, on selflessness. In short, his stress was on the strengthening of moral character. "Let us perfect the means," he cried at the close; "the end will take care of itself. For the world can be good and pure, only if our lives are good and pure. It is an effect, and we are the means. Therefore, let us purify ourselves. Let us make ourselves perfect.

Again, the path was not an easy one. "I know the difficul¬ties," he said. "Tremendous they are, . . . we require super-divine power. Super-human power is not strong enough. Super-divine strength is the only way, the one way out." But super-divine strength was not beyond man’s capacity. "It is very difficult," Swamiji continued, "but we can over-come the difficulty by constant practice. We must learn that nothing can happen to us, unless we make ourselves susceptible to it. . . . This is the first lesson to learn: be determined not to curse anything outside, not to lay the blame upon any one outside, but be a man, stand up, lay the blame on yourself. You will find that is always true. Get hold of yourself.

Here lay the crux of his message, and it rang out like an anthem. If the cause of man’s failures lies within himself and nowhere else, hope and victory lie there too-and nowhere else. "The Infinite Being is also the same finite soul. The Infinite is caught, as it were, in the meshes of the intellect and apparently manifests as finite beings, but the reality remains unchanged. This is, therefore, true knowledge: that the Soul of our souls, the Reality that is within us, is That which is unchangeable, eternal, ever¬blessed, ever-free. . . . Therefore, there is hope for all. None can die; none can be degraded forever. Life is but a play¬ground, however gross the play may be. However we may receive blows, and however knocked about we may be, the Soul is there and is never injured. We are that Infinite. . . . Be not afraid. Think not how many times you fail. Never mind. Time is infinite. Go forward: assert yourself again and again, and light must come.. . . Get hold of the Self, then. Stand up. Don’t be afraid. In the midst of all miseries and all weakness, let the Self come out, faint and imperceptible though it be at first. You will gain courage, and at last like a lion you will roar out, `I am He! I am He!

"Get hold of yourself!" Swamiji urged in "What Brings Success." In "We Ourselves" he cried, "Get hold of the Self!" These two exhortations, interlocked, constituted in essence his religion of man-making.

(We have no transcript or report of Swamiji’s only known lecture in southern California on "Bhakti Yoga, or the Religion of Love," whiel he gave at the Hotel Green. This is regrettable, as a talk on the path of devotion might seem to be an anomaly in the midst of so much emphasis on self reliance and Self-discovery. Actually, however, there was no incompatibility between Swamiji’s teaching of bhakti yoga and his call for self mastery. His effort, in fact, had always been to cleanse the path of love, or devotion, of all weakness, fatuity, and beggarliness. Weakness in any form or guise was his despair. In India, probably shortly before he left for the West, he had said in sorrow to a narrow-hearted devotee, "Can anyone, my dear friend, have faith or resignation in the Lord, unless he himself is a hero?")

(By "lectures" I mean all the talks that do not fall within the’ category of classes on spiritual practice-even though some of these "lectures" may actually have been class talks.) As the reader will’ have noticed, a number of Swamiji’s lectures (in the sense explained) were not new in subject matter or treatment. With the exception, in fact, of his two talks on Christ, all of his known lectures in Los Angeles were, as far as can be judged from newspaper reports, similar to lectures he had given elsewhere. The opposite was true in Pasadena. There, with the exception of his two talks on the ideal of a universal religion, each of his known lectures was unique in one way or another: one finds nothing quite like them elsewhere in the Complete Works.

Swamiji’s selection of subjects in Pasadena may have been guided, to some extent, by the likes and dislikes of the members of the Shakespeare Club, who seem on the whole to have preferred stories to philosophy. But if his subjects and language were tuned to the ear of his listeners, the thought he conveyed was, of course, entirely a matter of his own choice. Indeed, he may have welcomed fresh and plastic forms upon which his "new message" could imprint itself more readily than upon forms conceived and developed to carry a different theme. In any event, it is in his new and unusual lectures that one finds the imprint of his man-making religion most sharply defined.

This question Swamiji answered by his very choice of words: he did not call them "Saviors"; he called them "Teachers" or "Messengers." He could also have used the word "Exemplars," for they stand as the ideal, as he had said in "The Powers of the Mind," "towards which the whole [human race] is moving. "We can grasp an idea only when it comes to us through a materialized ideal person," he now said in "The Great Teachers of the World." "We can understand the precept only through the example. Would to god that all of us were so developed that we would not require any example, would not require any person. But that we are not; and, naturally, the vast majority of mankind have put their souls at the feet of these extraordinary personalities, the Prophets, the Incarnations of God-Incarnations worshipped by the Christians, by the Buddhists, and by the Hindus. Again, it is only through such Incarnations that man can form some conception of God. " `No man hath seen God at any time, but through the Son.’ And that is true," Swamiji said in "Christ, the Messenger." "And where shall we see God but in the Son? It is true that you and I and the poorest of us, the meanest even, embody that God, even reflect that God. The vibration of light is everywhere, omnipresent; but we have to strike the light of the lamp before we can see the light. The Omnipresent God of the universe cannot be seen until He is reflected by these giant lamps of the earth--the Prophets, the man-Gods; the Incarnations, the embodiments of God.

Every Prophet and Incarnation the world has known was to be worshiped and loved as the highest ideal, "higher than all our conceptions of God"; but he was not to be abjectly followed, not superficially and mechanically imitated; for thereby the ideal, the great, shining life, was itself betrayed. Again one hears, through Miss MacLeod, his words at Ridgely Manor, "Buddhas and Christs do more harm than good for mankind is trying to imitate them instead of developing its own character." "Think something!" he now cried in "The Great Teachers." "There is a tendency in us to revert to old ideas in religion. Let us think something new, even if it be wrong. It is better to do that. Why should you not try to hit the mark? . . . The cow never tells a lie, but she remains a cow, all the time. Do something! Think some thought; it doesn’t matter whether you are right or wrong. But think something! Because my forefathers did not think this way, shall I sit down quietly and gradually lose my sense of feeling and my own thinking faculties? I may as well be dead! . . . So think something! Struggle Godward! . . . Light must come.

In the midst of his lecture on "Buddhistic India" he became suddenly caught up in the magnificence of the man-he who had personified manliness at its highest. "Those last dying words of his always thrilled through my heart," he said. And telling of Buddha’s last hours, he paraphrased his last message: " `Weep not for me. Think not for me. I am gone. Work out diligently your own salvation. Each one of you is just what I am. I am nothing but one of you. What I am today is what I made myself. Do you struggle and make yourselves what I am. . . . Believe not because an old book is produced as an authority. Believe not because your fathers said [you should] believe the same. Believe not because other people like you believe it. Test everything, try everything, and then believe it, and if you find it for the good of many, give it to all.’ "_x000d_ "See the sanity of the man," Swamiji continued. "No gods, no angels, no demons-nobody. Nothing of the kind. Stern, sane, every brain-cell perfect and complete, even at the moment of death. No delusion. I do not agree with many of his doctrines. You may not. But in my opinion-oh, if I had only one drop of that strength! The sanest philosopher the world ever saw. Its best and sanest teacher. . . . Have no God [Buddha said]; have no soul; stand on your feet and do good for good’s sake-¬neither for fear of punishment nor for [the sake of] going any¬where. Stand sane and motiveless. The motive is: I want to do good, it is good to do good. Tremendous! Tremendous!

There stood the ideal-except that to Swamiji the source and ground of such manliness, and its goal as well, lay in the very thing Buddha denied: the permanent Self, "the real man, the infinite, the beginningless, the endless, the ever-blessed, the ever-free.

But though Swamiji differed in philosophy from Buddha, he was as realistic and bold a thinker as Buddha ever was, and like Buddha, he was intensely practical, directing more attention to the means than to the end. This aspect of his teaching was indeed part and parcel of "man-making." In "What Brings Success," one hears him say with Bhddha-like sanity, "Our great defect in life is that we are so much drawn to the ideal, the goal is so much more enchanting, so much more alluring, so much bigger in our mental horizon, that we lose sight of the details altogether. . . . We forget that it is the cause that produces the effect; the effect cannot come by itself; and unless the causes are exact, proper, and powerful, the effect will not be produced. Once the ideal is chosen and the means determined, we may almost let go the ideal, because we are sure it will be there when the means are perfected. Swamiji never played with ideals, nor allowed anyone else to do so. "Why should I pay so much attention to my body?" Mrs. Hansbrough once asked him in Los Angeles, objecting, perhaps, to the early steps of spiritual practice. "It is only an old coat" "All right," he replied, "let me see you throw it off like an old coat. Then I will listen to you. You do not know what you are talking about.

"The Great Teachers of the World" was Swamiji’s last known lecture in southern California, and his closing words of that lecture were resounding ones, containing the very heart of his message: "Each one of these Teachers has been great; each one has left something for us; they have been our Gods. We salute them, we are their servants; and, all the same, we salute ourselves; for if they have been Prophets and children of God, we also are the same. They reached their perfection, and we are going to attain ours now. Remember the words of Jesus: `The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!’ This very moment let every one of us make a staunch resolution: `I will become a Prophet, I will become a messenger of Light, I will become a child of God, nay, I will become a God!’

With those stirring words, behind which lay who can guess what power, Swamiji said good-bye to the people of southern California. At least, as far as we know, those were the last words he spoke from the platforms of that land.

His teachings there were not brand new; nor was he some other person. He was still teaching the basic unity of religions and the need for a variety of sects; he was still teaching that God incarnates Himself on earth many times; he was still teaching that religion is the realization of God, nothing less, and that man is divine Spirit, nothing less. And certainly his teaching of self reliance was not new; it had sounded from many a platform during his first visit to the West. The newness of Swamiji’s message in southern California lay in his selection of certain ideas and ideals and in his concentrated emphasis upon them. His energies had gathered, as it were, behind those ideas, giving them the spearhead quality and immediacy of a "new gospel."

But as was mentioned at the outset, a full and clear picture of Swamiji’s work in California cannot be gained without taking into account his teachings in northern California. It was not until he began lecturing in San Francisco and the Bay Area that the line of thought we have been trying to trace grew in power and substance and that his last message to the West sounded forth with unmistakable clarity. But this is a subject belonging to a later chapter.

Just as Swamiji’s work in southern California marked the beginning of a new, and final, phase in his teaching mission, so his stay there marked a turning point, or rather the beginning of a transitional period, in his life.

He began during those weeks to move from active leadership in the organizational aspect of his work toward retirement, from an intense, often impatient, and always powerful, expenditure of energy toward the profound serenity that was to characterize his last two years on earth. It is not that Swamiji was to change in any basic way. However active he may have been at any given time, the larger part of his mind had always been steeped in the consciousness of God. Indeed, throughout his life Swamiji was actually more contemplative than active. "Narendra is a great soul," Sri Ramakrishna had said of him not long after their first meeting, "perfect in meditation. And how often was not Swamiji lost in samadhi! Reading of how much he accomplished in so short a time, one sometimes thinks of him as the "cyclonic" monk, forgetting that he worked with his mind always in a state bordering on profound meditation. His was the power to act with hurricane intensity from a level of intense stillness power (and an agony, as well) given only to World Teachers and World Movers. And such he was. But the hurri¬cane was now over. One can perhaps liken Swamiji to a vast ocean, ever serene in its depths, yet lashed on its surface from time to time into towering waves. The force of his compassion had driven him to inundate the world with spirituality, and never had the waves of his mission been higher, more massive than during his two years of work in India-and never had their thunderous breaking against the cliffs of the world been more painful, physically and mentally, to Swamiji himself. He had accomplished his task. And now in Los Angeles, and particularly it would seem in Pasadena, the waters, to speak still in metaphor, were beginning to subside to their natural state of calm, leveling out into the expanse of a horizonless sea. As his health improved, as he earned money for the relief of the Math, as he found peace in teaching, and, above all, as he knew with an inner certainty that the main part of his work was done, his mind gravitated toward retirement; and retire¬ment for Swamiji-what could it mean but a return to that absolute, unconditioned freedom whence he had come? In the months that were to follow, he was to move further and further toward that peace, "the eternal Silence." But even at the end of his stay in southern California the wounds, for they were indeed wounds, sustained during his mission were healing.

THE MAHABHARATA_x000d_ (Delivered at the Shakespeare Club, Pasadena, California, February 1,1900)_x000d_ _x000d_ The other epic about which I am going to speak to you this evening, is called the Mahabharata. It contains the story of a race descended from King Bharata, who was the son of Dushyanta and Shakuntala. Maha means great, and Bharata means the descendants of Bharata, from whom India has derived its name, Bharata. Mahabharata means Great India, or the story of the great descendants of Bharata. The scene of this epic is the ancient kingdom of the Kurus, and the story is based on the great war which took place between the Kurus and the Panchalas. So the region of the quarrel is not very big. This epic is the most popular one in India; and it exercises the same authority in India as Homer's poems did over the Greeks. As ages went on, more and more matter was added to it, until it has become a huge book of about a hundred thousand couplets. All sorts of tales, legends and myths, philosophical treatises, scraps of history, and various discussion have been added to it from time to time, until it is a vast, gigantic mass of literature; and through it all runs the old, original story. The central story of the Mahabharata is of a war between two families of cousins, one family, called the Kauravas, the other the Pandavas--for the empire of India._x000d_ The Aryans came into India in small companies. Gradually, these tribes began to extend, until, at last, they became the undisputed rulers of India, and then arose this fight to gain the mastery, between two branches of the same family. Those of you who have studied the Gita know how the book opens with a description of the battle-field, with two armies arrayed one against the other. That is the war of the Mahabharata._x000d_ There were two brothers, sons of the emperor. The elder one was called Dhritarashtra, and the other was called Pandu. Dhritarashtra, the elder one, was born blind. According to Indian law, no blind, halt, maimed, consumptive, or any other constitutionally diseased person, can inherit. He can only get a maintenance. So, Dhritarashtra could not ascend the throne, though he was the elder son, and Pandu became the emperor._x000d_ Dhritarashtra had a hundred sons, and Pandu only had five. After the death of Pandu at an early age, Dhritarashtra became king of the Kurus and brought up the sons of Pandu along with his own children. When they grew up, they were placed under the tutorship of the great priest-warrior, Drona, and were well trained in the various material arts and sciences befitting princes. The education of the princes being finished, Dhritarashtra put Yudhishthira, the eldest of the sons of Pandu, on the throne of his father. The sterling virtues of Yudhishthira and the valour and devotion of his other brothers aroused jealousies in the hearts of the sons of the blind king, and at the instigation of Duryodhana, the eldest of them, the five Pandava brothers were prevailed upon to visit Vâranâvata, on the plea of a religious festival that was being held there. There they were accommodated in a palace made under Duryodhana's instructions, of hemp, resin, and lac, and other inflammable materials, which were subsequently set fire to secretly. But the good Vidura, the step-brother of Dhritarashtra, having become cognisant of the evil intentions of Duryodhana and his party, had warned the Pandavas of the plot, and they managed to escape without anyone's knowledge. When the Kurus saw the house was reduced to ashes, they heaved a sigh of relief and thought all obstacles were now removed out of their path. Then the children of Dhritarashtra got hold of the kingdom. The five Pandava brothers had fled to the forest with their mother, Kunti. They lived there by begging, and went about in disguise giving themselves out as Brahmana students. Many were the hardships and adventures they encountered in the wild forests, but their fortitude of mind, and strength, and valour made them conquer all dangers. So things went on until they came to hear of the approaching marriage of the princess of a neighbouring country._x000d_ I told you last night of the peculiar form of the ancient Indian marriage. It was called Svayamvara, that is, the choosing of the husband by the princess. A great gathering of princes and nobles assembled, amongst whom the princess would chose her husband. Preceded by her trumpeters and heralds she would approach, carrying a garland of flowers in her hand. At the throne of each candidate for her hand, the praises of that prince and all his great deeds in battle would be declared by the heralds. And when the princess decided which prince she desired to have for a husband, she would signify the fact by throwing the marriage-garland round his neck. Then the ceremony would turn into a wedding. King Drupada was a great king, king of the Panchalas, and his daughter, Draupadi, famed far and wide for her beauty and accomplishments, was going to choose a hero._x000d_ At a Svayamvara there was always a great feat of arms or something of the kind. On this occasion, a mark in the form of a fish was set up high in the sky; under that fish was a wheel with a hole in the centre, continually turning round, and beneath was a tub of water. A man looking at the reflection of the fish in the tub of water was asked to send an arrow and hit the eye of the fish through the Chakra or wheel, and he who succeeded would be married to the princess. Now, there came kings and princes from different parts of India, all anxious to win the hand of the princess, and one after another they tried their skill, and every one of them failed to hit the mark._x000d_ You know, there are four castes in India: the highest caste is that of the hereditary priest, the Brahmana; next is the caste of the Kshatriya, composed of kings and fighters; next, the Vaishyas, the traders or businessmen, and then Shudras, the servants. Now, this princess was, of course, a Kshatriya, one of the second caste._x000d_ When all those princes failed in hitting the mark, then the son of King Drupada rose up in the midst of the court and said: "The Kshatriya, the king caste has failed; now the contest is open to the other castes. Let a Brahmana, even a Shudra, take part in it; whosoever hits the mark, marries Draupadi."_x000d_ Among the Brahmanas were seated the five Pandava brothers. Arjuna, the third brother, was the hero of the bow. He arose and stepped forward. Now, Brahmanas as a caste are very quiet and rather timid people. According to the law, they must not touch a warlike weapon, they must not wield a sword, they must not go into any enterprise that is dangerous. Their life is one of contemplation, study, and control of the inner nature. Judge, therefore, how quiet and peaceable a people they are. When the Brahmanas saw this man get up, they thought this man was going to bring the wrath of the Kshatriyas upon them, and that they would all be killed. So they tried to dissuade him, but Arjuna did not listen to them, because he was a soldier. He lifted the bow in his hand, strung it without any effort, and drawing it, sent the arrow right through the wheel and hit the eye of the fish._x000d_ Then there was great jubilation. Draupadi, the princess, approached Arjuna and threw the beautiful garland of flowers over his head. But there arose a great cry among the princes, who could not bear the idea that this beautiful princess who was a Kshatriya should be won by a poor Brahmana, from among this huge assembly of kings and princes. So, they wanted to fight Arjuna and snatch her from him by force. The brothers had a tremendous fight with the warriors, but held their own, and carried off the bride in triumph._x000d_ The five brothers now returned home to Kunti with the princess. Brahmanas have to live by begging. So they, who lived as Brahmanas, used to go out, and what they got by begging they brought home and the mother divided it among them. Thus the five brothers, with the princess, came to the cottage where the mother lived. They shouted out to her jocosely, "Mother, we have brought home a most wonderful alms today." The mother replied, "Enjoy it in common, all of you, my children." Then the mother seeing the princess, exclaimed, "Oh! what have I said! It is a girl!" But what could be done! The mother's word was spoken once for all. It must not be disregarded. The mother's words must be fulfilled. She could not be made to utter an untruth, as she never had done so. So Draupadi became the common wife of all the five brothers._x000d_ Now, you know, in every society there are stages of development. Behind this epic there is a wonderful glimpse of the ancient historic times. The author of the poem mentions the fact of the five brothers marrying the same woman, but he tries to gloss it over, to find an excuse and a cause for such an act; it was the mother's command, the mother sanctioned this strange betrothal, and so on. You know, in every nation there has been a certain stage in society that allowed polyandry--all the brothers of a family would marry one wife in common. Now, this was evidently a glimpse of the past polyandrous stage._x000d_ In the meantime, the brother of the princess was perplexed in his mind and thought: "Who are these people? Who is this man whom my sister is going to marry? They have not any chariots, horses, or anything. Why, they go on foot!" So he had followed them at a distance, and at night overheard their conversation and became fully convinced that they were really Kshatriyas. Then King Drupada came to know who they were and was greatly delighted._x000d_ Though at first much objection was raised, it was declared by Vyasa that such a marriage was allowable for these princes, and it was permitted. So the king Drupada had to yield to this polyandrous marriage, and the princess was married to the five sons of Pandu._x000d_ Then the Pandavas lived in peace and prosperity and became more powerful every day. Though Duryodhana and his party conceived of fresh plots to destroy them, King Dhritarashtra was prevailed upon by the wise counsels of the elders to make peace with the Pandavas; and so he invited them home amidst the rejoicings of the people and gave them half of the kingdom. Then, the five brothers built for themselves a beautiful city, called Indraprastha, and extended their dominions, laying all the people under tribute to them. Then the eldest, Yudhishthira, in order to declare himself emperor over all the kings of ancient India, decided to perform a Rajasuya Yajna, or Imperial Sacrifice, in which the conquered kings would have to come with tribute and swear allegiance, and help the performance of the sacrifice by personal services. Shri Krishna, who had become their friend and a relative, came to them and approved of the idea. But there was one obstacle to its performance. A king, Jarasandha by name, who intended to offer a sacrifice of a hundred kings, had eighty-six of them kept as captives with him. Shri Krishna counselled an attack on Jarasandha. So he, Bhima, and Arjuna challenged the king, who accepted the challenge and was finally conquered by Bhima after fourteen days' continuous wrestling. The captive kings were then set free.

Then the four younger brothers went out with armies on a conquering expedition, each in a different direction, and brought all the kings under subjection to Yudhishthira. Returning, they laid all the vast wealth they secured at the feet of the eldest brother to meet the expenses of the great sacrifice._x000d_ So, to this Rajasuya sacrifice all the liberated kings came, along with those conquered by the brothers, and rendered homage to Yudhishthira. King Dhritarashtra and his sons were also invited to come and take a share in the performance of the sacrifice. At the conclusion of the sacrifice, Yudhishthira was crowned emperor, and declared as lord paramount. This was the sowing of the future feud. Duryodhana came back from the sacrifice filled with jealousy against Yudhishthira, as their sovereignty and vast splendour and wealth were more than he could bear; and so he devised plans to effect their fall by guile, as he knew that to overcome them by force was beyond his power. This king, Yudhishthira, had the love of gambling, and he was challenged at an evil hour to play dice with Shakuni, the crafty gambler and the evil genius of Duryodhana. In ancient India, if a man of the military caste was challenged to fight, he must at any price accept the challenge to uphold his honour. And if he was challenged to play dice, it was a point of honour to play, and dishonourable to decline the challenge. King Yudhishthira, says the Epic, was the incarnation of all virtues. Even he, the great sage-king, had to accept the challenge. Shakuni and his party had made false dice. So Yudhishthira lost game after game, and stung with his losses, he went on with the fatal game, staking everything he had, and losing all, until all his possessions, his kingdom and everything, were lost. The last stage came when, under further challenge, he had no other resources left but to stake his brothers, and then himself, and last of all, the fair Draupadi, and lost all. Now they were completely at the mercy of the Kauravas, who cast all sorts of insults upon them, and subjected Draupadi to the most inhuman treatment. At last through the intervention of the blind king, they got their liberty, and were asked to return home and rule their kingdom. But Duryodhana saw the danger and forced his father to allow one more throw of the dice in which the party which would lose, should retire to the forests for twelve years, and then live unrecognised in a city for one year; but if they were found out, the same term of exile should have to be undergone once again and then only the kingdom was to be restored to the exiled. This last game also Yudhishthira lost, and the five Pandava brothers retired to the forests with Draupadi, as homeless exiles. They lived in the forests and mountains for twelve years. There they performed many deeds of virtue and valour, and would go out now and then on a long round of pilgrimages, visiting many holy places. That part of the poem is very interesting and instructive, and various are the incidents, tales, and legends with which this part of the book is replete. There are in it beautiful and sublime stories of ancient India, religious and philosophical. Great sages came to see the brothers in their exile and narrated to them many telling stories of ancient India, so as to make them bear lightly the burden of their exile. One only I will relate to you here._x000d_ There was a king called Ashvapati. The king had a daughter, who was so good and beautiful that she was called Savitri, which is the name of a sacred prayer of the Hindus. When Savitri grew old enough, her father asked her to choose a husband for herself. These ancient Indian princesses were very independent, you see, and chose their own princely suitors._x000d_ Savitri consented and travelled in distant regions, mounted in a golden chariot, with her guards and aged courtiers to whom her father entrusted her, stopping at different courts, and seeing different princes, but not one of them could win the heart of Savitri. They came at last to a holy hermitage in one of those forests that in ancient India were reserved for animals, and where no animals were allowed to be killed. The animals lost the fear of man--even the fish in the lakes came and took food out of the hand. For thousands of years no one had killed anything therein. The sages and the aged went there to live among the deer and the birds. Even criminals were safe there. When a man got tired of life, he would go to the forest; and in the company of sages, talking of religion and meditating thereon, he passed the remainder of his life._x000d_ Now it happened that there was a king, Dyumatsena, who was defeated by his enemies and was deprived of his kingdom when he was struck with age and had lost his sight. This poor, old, blind king, with his queen and his son, took refuge in the forest and passed his life in rigid penance. The boy's name was Satyavan._x000d_ It came to pass that after having visited all the different royal courts, Savitri at last came to this hermitage, or holy place. Not even the greatest king could pass by the hermitages, or Ashramas as they were called, without going to pay homage to the sages, for such honour and respect was felt for these holy men. The greatest emperor of India would be only too glad to trace his descent to some sage who lived in a forest, subsisting on roots and fruits, and clad in rags. We are all children of sages. That is the respect that is paid to religion. So, even kings, when they pass by the hermitages, feel honoured to go in and pay their respects to the sages. If they approach on horseback, they descend and walk as they advance towards them. If they arrive in a chariot, chariot and armour must be left outside when they enter. No fighting man can enter unless he comes in the manner of a religious man, quiet and gentle._x000d_ So Savitri came to this hermitage and saw there Satyavan, the hermit's son, and her heart was conquered. She had escaped all the princes of the palaces and the courts, but here in the forest-refuge of the King Dyumatsena, his son, Satyavan, stole her heart._x000d_ When Savitri returned to her father's house, he asked her, "Savitri, dear daughter, speak. Did you see anybody whom you would like to marry?" Then softly with blushes, said Savitri, "Yes, father." "What is the name of the prince?" "He is no prince, but the son of King Dyumatsena who has lost his kingdom--a prince without a patrimony, who lives a monastic life, the life of a Sannyasin in a forest, collecting roots and herbs, helping and feeding his old father and mother, who live in a cottage."_x000d_ On hearing this the father consulted the Sage Narada, who happened to be then present there, and he declared it was the most ill-omened choice that was ever made. The king then asked him to explain why it was so. And Narada said, "Within twelve months from this time the young man will die." Then the king started with terror, and spoke, "Savitri, this young man is going to die in twelve months, and you will become a widow: think of that! Desist from your choice, my child, you shall never be married to a short-lived and fated bridegroom." "Never mind, father; do not ask me to marry another person and sacrifice the chastity of mind, for I love and have accepted in my mind that good and brave Satyavan only as my husband. A maiden chooses only once, and she never departs from her troth." When the king found that Savitri was resolute in mind and heart, he complied. Then Savitri married prince Satyavan, and she quietly went from the palace of her father into the forest, to live with her chosen husband and help her husband's parents. Now, though Savitri knew the exact date when Satyavan was to die, she kept it hidden from him. Daily he went into the depths of the forests, collected fruits and flowers, gathered faggots, and then came back to the cottage, and she cooked the meals and helped the old people. Thus their lives went on until the fatal day came near, and three short days remained only. She took a severe vow of three nights' penance and holy fasts, and kept her hard vigils. Savitri spent sorrowful and sleepless nights with fervent prayers and unseen tears, till the dreaded morning dawned. That day Savitri could not bear him out of her sight, even for a moment. She begged permission from his parents to accompany her husband, when he went to gather the usual herbs and fuel, and gaining their consent she went. Suddenly, in faltering accents, he complained to his wife of feeling faint, "My head is dizzy, and my senses reel, dear Savitri, I feel sleep stealing over me; let me rest beside thee for a while." In fear and trembling she replied, "Come, lay your head upon my lap, my dearest lord." And he laid his burning head in the lap of his wife, and ere long sighed and expired. Clasping him to her, her eyes flowing with tears, there she sat in the lonesome forest, until the emissaries of Death approached to take away the soul of Satyavan. But they could not come near to the place where Savitri sat with the dead body of her husband, his head resting in her lap. There was a zone of fire surrounding her, and not one of the emissaries of Death could come within it. They all fled back from it, returned to King Yama, the God of Death, and told him why they could not obtain the soul of this man.

Then came Yama, the God of Death, the Judge of the dead. He was the first man that died--the first man that died on earth--and he had become the presiding deity over all those that die. He judges whether, after a man has died, he is to be punished or rewarded. So he came himself. Of course, he could go inside that charmed circle, as he was a god. When he came to Savitri, he said, "Daughter, give up this dead body, for know, death is the fate of mortals, and I am the first of mortals who died. Since then, everyone has had to die. Death is the fate of man." Thus told, Savitri walked off, and Yama drew the soul out. Yama having possessed himself of the soul of the young man proceeded on his way. Before he had gone far, he heard footfalls upon the dry leaves. He turned back. "Savitri, daughter, why are you following me? This is the fate of all mortals." "I am not following thee, Father," replied Savitri, "but this is, also, the fate of woman, she follows where her love takes her, and the Eternal Law separates not loving man and faithful wife." Then said the God of Death, "Ask for any boon, except the life of your husband." "If thou art pleased to grant a boon, O Lord of Death, I ask that my father-in-law may be cured of his blindness and made happy." "Let thy pious wish be granted, duteous daughter." And then the King of Death travelled on with the soul of Satyavan. Again the same footfall was heard from behind. He looked round. "Savitri, my daughter, you are still following me?" "Yes, my Father; I cannot help doing so; I am trying all the time to go back, but the mind goes after my husband and the body follows. The soul has already gone, for in that soul is also mine; and when you take the soul, the body follows, does it not?" "Pleased am I with your words, fair Savitri. Ask yet another boon of me, but it must not be the life of your husband." "Let my father-in-law regain his lost wealth and kingdom, Father, if thou art pleased to grant another supplication." "Loving daughter," Yama answered, "this boon I now bestow; but return home, for living mortal cannot go with King Yama." And then Yama pursued his way. But Savitri, meek and faithful, still followed her departed husband. Yama again turned back. "Noble Savitri, follow not in hopeless woe." "I cannot choose but follow where thou takest my beloved one." "Then suppose, Savitri, that your husband was a sinner and has to go to hell. In that case goes Savitri with the one she loves?" "Glad am I to follow where he goes, be it life or death, heaven or hell," said the loving wife. "Blessed are your words, my child, pleased am I with you, ask yet another boon, but the dead come not to life again." "Since you so permit me, then, let the imperial line of my father-in-law be not destroyed; let his kingdom descend to Satyavan's sons." And then the God of Death smiled. "My daughter, thou shalt have thy desire now: here is the soul of thy husband, he shall live again. He shall live to be a father and thy children also shall reign in due course. Return home. Love has conquered Death! Woman never loved like thee, and thou art the proof that even I, the God of Death, am powerless against the power of the true love that abideth!"_x000d_ This is the story of Savitri, and every girl in India must aspire to be like Savitri, whose love could not be conquered by death, and who through this tremendous love snatched back from even Yama, the soul of her husband._x000d_ The book is full of hundreds of beautiful episodes like this. I began by telling you that the Mahabharata is one of the greatest books in the world and consists of about a hundred thousand verses in eighteen Parvans, or volumes._x000d_ To return to our main story. We left the Pandava brothers in exile. Even there they were not allowed to remained unmolested from the evil plots of Duryodhana; but all of them were futile._x000d_ A story of their forest life, I shall tell you here. One day the brothers became thirsty in the forest. Yudhishthira bade his brother, Nakula, go and fetch water. He quickly proceeded towards the place where there was water and soon came to a crystal lake, and was about to drink of it, when he heard a voice utter these words: "Stop, O child. First answer my questions and then drink of this water." But Nakula, who was exceedingly thirsty, disregarded these words, drank of the water, and having drunk of it, dropped down dead. As Nakula did not return, King Yudhishthira told Sahadeva to seek his brother and bring back water with him. So Sahadeva proceeded to the lake and beheld his brother lying dead. Afflicted at the death of his brother and suffering severely from thirst, he went towards the water, when the same words were heard by him: "O child, first answer my questions and then drink of the water." He also disregarded these words, and having satisfied his thirst, dropped down dead. Subsequently Arjuna and Bhima were sent, one after the other, on a similar quest; but neither returned, having drunk of the lake and dropped down dead. Then Yudhishthira rose up to go in search of his brothers. At length, he came to the beautiful lake and saw his brothers lying dead. His heart was full of grief at the sight, and he began to lament. Suddenly he heard the same voice saying, "Do not, O child, act rashly. I am a Yaksha living as a crane on tiny fish. It is by me that thy younger brothers have been brought under the sway of the Lord of departed spirits. If thou, O Prince, answer not the questions put by me, even thou shalt number the fifth corpse. Having answered my questions first, do thou, O Kunti's son, drink and carry away as much as thou requirest." Yudhishthira replied, "I shall answer thy questions according to my intelligence. Do thou ask me!" The Yaksha then asked him several questions, all of which Yudhishthira answered satisfactorily. One of the questions was: "What is the most wonderful fact in this world?" "We see our fellow-beings every moment falling off around us; but those that are left behind think that they will never die. This is the most curious fact: in face of death, none believes he will die!" Another question was: "What is the path of knowing the secret of religion?" And Yudhishthira answered, "By argument nothing can be settled; doctrines there are many; various are the scriptures, one part contradicting the other. There are not two sages who do not differ in their opinions. The secret of religion is buried deep, as it were, in dark caves. So the path to be followed is that which the great ones have trodden." Then the Yaksha said, "I am pleased. I am Dharma, the God of Justice in the form of a crane. I came to test you. Now, your brothers, see, not one of them is dead. It is all my magic. Since abstention from injury is regarded by thee as higher than both profit and pleasure, therefore, let all thy brothers live, O bull of the Bharata race." And at these words of the Yaksha, the Pandavas rose up._x000d_ Here is a glimpse of the nature of King Yudhishthira. We find by his answers that he was more of a philosopher, more of a Yogi, than a king._x000d_ Now, as the thirteenth year of the exile was drawing nigh, the Yaksha bade them go to Virata's kingdom and live there in such disguises as they would think best._x000d_ So, after the term of the twelve years' exile had expired, they went to the kingdom of Virata in different disguises to spend the remaining one year in concealment, and entered into menial service in the king's household. Thus Yudhishthira became a Brahmana courtier of the king, as one skilled in dice; Bhima was appointed a cook; Arjuna, dressed as a eunuch, was made a teacher of dancing and music to Uttara, the princess, and remained in the inner apartments of the king; Nakula became the keeper of the king's horses; and Sahadeva got the charge of the cows; and Draupadi, disguised as a waiting-woman was also admitted into the queen's household. Thus concealing their identity the Pandava brothers safely spent a year, and the search of Duryodhana to find them out was of no avail. They were only discovered just when the year was out.

Then Yudhishthira sent an ambassador to Dhritarashtra and demanded that half of the kingdom should, as their share, be restored to them. But Duryodhana hated his cousins and would not consent to their legitimate demands. They were even willing to accept a single province, nay, even five villages. But the headstrong Duryodhana declared that he would not yield without fight even as much land as a needle's point would hold. Dhritarashtra pleaded again and again for peace, but all in vain. Krishna also went and tried to avert the impending war and death of kinsmen, so did the wise elders of the royal court; but all negotiations for a peaceful partition of the kingdom were futile. So, at last, preparations were made on both sides for war, and all the warlike nations took part in it._x000d_ The old Indian customs of the Kshatriyas were observed in it. Duryodhana took one side, Yudhishthira, the other. From Yudhishthira messengers were at once sent to all the surrounding kings, entreating their alliance, since honourable men would grant the request that first reached them. So, warriors from all parts assembled to espouse the cause of either the Pandavas or the Kurus according to the precedence of their requests; and thus one brother joined this side, and the other that side, the father on one side, and the son on the other. The most curious thing was the code of war of those days; as soon as the battle for the day ceased and evening came, the opposing parties were good friends, even going to each other's tents; however, when the morning came, again they proceeded to fight each other. That was the strange trait that the Hindus carried down to the time of the Mohammedan invasion. Then again, a man on horseback must not strike one on foot; must not poison the weapon; must not vanquish the enemy in any unequal fight, or by dishonesty; and must never take undue advantage of the other, and so on. If any deviated from these rules he would be covered with dishonour and shunned. The Kshatriyas were trained in that way. And when the foreign invasion came from Central Asia, the Hindus treated the invaders in the selfsame way. They defeated them several times, and on as many occasions sent them back to their homes with presents, etc. The code laid down was that they must not usurp anybody's country; and when a man was beaten he must be sent back to his country with due regard to his position. The Mohammedan conquerors treated the Hindu kings differently, and when they got them once, they destroyed them without remorse._x000d_ Mind you, in those days--in the times of our story, the poem says--the science of arms was not the mere use of bows and arrows at all; it was magic archery in which the use of Mantras, concentration, etc., played a prominent part. One man could fight millions of men and burn them at will. He could send one arrow, and it would rain thousands of arrows and thunder; he could make anything burn, and so on--it was all divine magic. One fact is curious in both these poems--the Ramayana and the Mahabharata--along with these magic arrows and all these things going on, you see the cannon already in use. The cannon is an old, old thing, used by the Chinese and the Hindus. Upon the walls of the cities were hundreds of curious weapons made of hollow iron tubes, which filled with powder and ball would kill hundreds of men. The people believed that the Chinese, by magic, put the devil inside a hollow iron tube, and when they applied a little fire to a hole, the devil came out with a terrific noise and killed many people._x000d_ So in those old days, they used to fight with magic arrows. One man would be able to fight millions of others. They had their military arrangements and tactics: there were the foot soldiers, termed the Pada; then the cavalry, Turaga; and two other divisions which the moderns have lost and given up--there was the elephant corps--hundreds and hundreds of elephants, with men on their backs, formed into regiments and protected with huge sheets of iron mail; and these elephants would bear down upon a mass of the enemy--then, there were the chariots, of course (you have all seen pictures of those old chariots, they were used in every country). These were the four divisions of the army in those old days._x000d_ Now, both parties alike wished to secure the alliance of Krishna. But he declined to take an active part and fight in the war, but offered himself as charioteer to Arjuna, and as the friend and counsellor of the Pandavas, while to Duryodhana he gave his army of mighty solders._x000d_ Then was fought on the vast plain of Kurukshetra the great battle in which Bhisma, Drona, Karna, and the brothers of Duryodhana with the kinsmen on both sides and thousands of other heroes fell. The war lasted eighteen days. Indeed, out of the eighteen Akshauhinis of soldiers very few men were left. The death of Duryodhana ended the war in favour of the Pandavas. It was followed by the lament of Gandhari, the queen, and the widowed women, and the funerals of the deceased warriors._x000d_ The greatest incident of the war was the marvellous and immortal poem of the Gita, the Song Celestial. It is the popular scripture of India and the loftiest of all teachings. It consists of a dialogue held by Arjuna with Krishna, just before the commencement of the fight on the battle-field of Kurukshetra. I would advise those of you who have not read that book to read it. If you only knew how much it has influenced your own country even! If you want to know the source of Emerson's inspiration, it is this book, the Gita. He went to see Carlyle, and Carlyle made him a present of the Gita; and that little book is responsible for the Concord Movement. All the broad movements in America, in one way or other, are indebted to the Concord party._x000d_ The central figure of the Gita is Krishna. As you worship Jesus of Nazareth as God come down as man, so the Hindus worship many Incarnations of God. They believe in not one or two only, but in many, who have come down from time to time, according to the needs of the world, for the preservation of Dharma and destruction of wickedness. Each sect has one, and Krishna is one of them. Krishna, perhaps, has a larger number of followers in India than any other Incarnation of God. His followers hold that he was the most perfect of those Incarnations. Why? "Because," they say, "look at Buddha and other Incarnations; they were only monks, and they had no sympathy for married people. How could they have? But look at Krishna; he was great as a son, as a king, as a father, and all through his life he practised the marvellous teachings which he preached." "He who in the midst of the greatest activity finds the sweetest peace, and in the midst of the greatest calmness is most active, he has known the secret of life." Krishna shows the way how to do this--by being non-attached: do everything but do not get identified with anything. You are the soul, the pure, the free, all the time; you are the Witness. Our misery comes, not from work, but by our getting attached to something. Take for instance, money: money is a great thing to have, earn it, says Krishna; struggle hard to get money, but don't get attached to it. So with children, with wife, husband, relatives, fame, everything; you have no need to shun them, only don't get attached. There is only one attachment and that belongs to the Lord, and to none other. Work for them, love them, do good to them, sacrifice a hundred lives, if need be, for them, but never be attached. His own life was the exact exemplification of that._x000d_ Remember that the book which delineates the life of Krishna is several thousand years old, and some parts of his life are very similar to those of Jesus of Nazareth. Krishna was of royal birth; there was a tyrant king, called Kamsa, and there was a prophecy that one would be born of such and such a family, who would be king. So Kamsa ordered all the male children to be massacred. The father and mother of Krishna were cast by King Kamsa into prison, where the child was born. A light suddenly shone in the prison and the child spoke saying, "I am the Light of the world, born for the good of the world." You find Krishna again symbolically represented with cows--"The Great Cowherd" as he is called. Sages affirmed that God Himself was born, and they went to pay him homage. In other parts of the story, the similarity between the two does not continue._x000d_ Shri Krishna conquered this tyrant Kamsa, but he never thought of accepting or occupying the throne himself. He had nothing to do with that. He had done his duty and there it ended._x000d_ After the conclusion of the Kurukshetra War, the great warrior and venerable grandsire, Bhishma, who fought ten days out of the eighteen days' battle, still lay on his deathbed and gave instructions to Yudhishthira on various subjects, such as the duties of the king, the duties of the four castes, the four stages of life, the laws of marriage, the bestowing of gifts, etc., basing them on the teachings of the ancient sages. He explained Sankhya philosophy and Yoga philosophy and narrated numerous tales and traditions about saints and gods and kings. These teachings occupy nearly one-fourth of the entire work and form an invaluable storehouse of Hindus laws and moral codes. Yudhishthira had in the meantime been crowned king. But the awful bloodshed and extinction of superiors and relatives weighed heavily on his mind; and then, under the advice of Vyasa, he performed the Ashvamedha sacrifice._x000d_ After the war, for fifteen years Dhritarashtra dwelt in peace and honour, obeyed by Yudhishthira and his brothers. Then the aged monarch leaving Yudhishthira on the throne, retired to the forest with his devoted wife and Kunti, the mother of the Pandava brothers, to pass his last days in asceticism._x000d_ Thirty-six years had now passed since Yudhishthira regained his empire. Then came to him the news that Krishna had left his mortal body. Krishna, the sage, his friend, his prophet, his counsellor, had departed. Arjuna hastened to Dwaraka and came back only to confirm the sad news that Krishna and the Yadavas were all dead. Then the king and the other brothers, overcome with sorrow, declared that the time for them to go, too, had arrived. So they cast off the burden of royalty, placed Parikshit, the grandson of Arjuna, on the throne, and retired to the Himalayas, on the Great Journey, the Mahaprasthana. This was a peculiar form of Sannyasa. It was a custom for old kings to become Sannyasins. In ancient India, when men became very old, they would give up everything. So did the kings. When a man did not want to live any more, then he went towards the Himalayas, without eating or drinking and walked on and on till the body failed. All the time thinking of God, he just marched on till the body gave way._x000d_ Then came the gods, the sages, and they told King Yudhishthira that he should go and reach heaven. To go to heaven one has to cross the highest peaks of the Himalayas. Beyond the Himalayas is Mount Meru. On the top of Mount Meru is heaven. None ever went there in this body. There the gods reside. And Yudhishthira was called upon by the gods to go there._x000d_ So the five brothers and their wife clad themselves in robes of bark, and set out on their journey. On the way, they were followed by a dog. On and on they went, and they turned their weary feet northward to where the Himalayas lifts his lofty peaks, and they saw the mighty Mount Meru in front of them. Silently they walked on in the snow, until suddenly the queen fell, to rise no more. To Yudhishthira who was leading the way, Bhima, one of the brothers said, "Behold, O King, the queen has fallen." The king shed tears, but he did not look back. "We are going to meet Krishna," he says. "No time to look back. March on." After a while, again Bhima said, "Behold, our brother, Sahadeva has fallen." The king shed tears; but paused not. "March on," he cried. _x000d_ One after the other, in the cold and snow, all the four brothers dropped down, but unshaken, though alone, the king advanced onward. Looking behind, he saw the faithful dog was still following him. And so the king and the dog went on, through snow and ice, over hill and dale, climbing higher and higher, till they reached Mount Meru; and there they began to hear the chimes of heaven, and celestial flowers were showered upon the virtuous king by the gods. Then descended the chariot of the gods, and Indra prayed him, "Ascend in this chariot, greatest of mortals: thou that alone art given to enter heaven without changing the mortal body." But no, that Yudhishthira would not do without his devoted brothers and his queen; then Indra explained to him that the brothers had already gone thither before him._x000d_ And Yudhishthira looked around and said to his dog, "Get into the chariot, child." The god stood aghast. "What! The dog?" he cried. "Do thou cast off this dog! The dog goeth not to heaven! Great King, what dost thou mean? Art thou mad? Thou, the most virtuous of the human race, thou only canst go to heaven in thy body." "But he has been my devoted companion through the snow and ice. When all my brothers were dead, my queen dead, he alone never left me. How can I leave him now?" "There is no place in heaven for men with dogs. He has to be left behind. There is nothing unrighteous in this." "I do not go to heaven," replied the king, "without this dog. I shall never give up such a one who has taken refuge with me, until my own life is at an end. I shall never swerve from righteousness, nay, not even for the joys of heaven or the urging of a god." "Then," said Indra, "on one condition the dog goes to heaven. You have been the most virtuous of mortals and he has been a dog, killing and eating animals; he is sinful, hunting, and taking other lives. You can exchange heaven with him." "Agreed," says the king. "Let the dog go to heaven." _x000d_ At once, the scene changed. Hearing these noble words of Yudhishthira, the dog revealed himself as Dharma; the dog was no other than Yama, the Lord of Death and Justice. And Dharma exclaimed, "Behold, O King, no man was ever so unselfish as thou, willing to exchange heaven with a little dog, and for his sake disclaiming all his virtues and ready to go to hell even for him. Thou art well born, O King of kings. Thou hast compassion for all creatures, O Bharata, of which this is a bright example. Hence, regions of undying felicity are thine! Thou has won them, O King, and thine is a celestial and high goal."_x000d_ Then Yudhishthira, with Indra, Dharma, and other gods, proceeds to heaven in a celestial car. He undergoes some trials, bathes in the celestial Ganga, and assumes a celestial body. He meets his brothers who are now immortals, and all at last is bliss._x000d_ Thus ends the story of the Mahabharata, setting forth in a sublime poem the triumph of virtue and the defeat of vice._x000d_ In speaking of the Mahabharata to you, it is simply impossible for me to present the unending array of the grand and majestic characters of the mighty heroes depicted by the genius and master-mind of Vyasa. The internal conflicts between righteousness and filial affection in the mind of the god-fearing, yet feeble, old, blind King Dhritarashtra; the majestic character of the grandsire Bhishma; the noble and virtuous character of the royal Yudhishthira, and of the other four brothers, as mighty in valour as in devotion and loyalty; the peerless character of Krishna, unsurpassed in human wisdom; and not less brilliant, the characters of the women--the stately queen Gandhari, the loving mother Kunti, the ever-devoted and all-suffering Draupadi--these and hundreds of other characters of this Epic and those of the Ramayana have been the cherished heritage of the whole Hindu world for the last several thousands of years and form the basis of their thoughts and of their moral and ethical ideas. In fact, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata are the two encyclopaedias of the ancient Aryan life and wisdom, portraying an ideal civilisation which humanity has yet to aspire after.

Buddhistic India is our subject tonight. Almost all of you, perhaps, have read Edwin Arnold's poem on the life of Buddha, and some of you, perhaps, have gone into the subject with more scholarly interest, as in English, French and German, there is quite a lot of Buddhistic literature. Buddhism itself is the most interesting of subjects, for it is the first historical outburst of a world religion. There have been great religions before Buddhism arose, in India and elsewhere, but, more or less, they are confined within their own races. The ancient Hindus or ancient Jews or ancient Persians, every one of them had a great religion, but these religions were more or less racial. With Buddhism first begins that peculiar phenomenon of religion boldly starting out to conquer the world. Apart from its doctrines and the truths it taught and the message it had to give, we stand face to face with one of the tremendous cataclysms of the world. Within a few centuries of its birth, the barefooted, shaven-headed missionaries of Buddha had spread over all the then known civilised world, and they penetrated even further--from Lapland on the one side to the Philippine Islands on the other. They had spread widely within a few centuries of the Buddha's birth; and in India itself, the religion of Buddha had at one time nearly swallowed up two-thirds of the population._x000d_ The whole of India was never Buddhistic. It stood outside. Buddhism had the same fate as Christianity had with the Jews; the majority of the Jews stood aloof. So the old Indian religion lived on. But the comparison stops here. Christianity, though it could not get within its fold all the Jewish race, itself took the country. Where the old religion existed--the religion of the Jews--that was conquered by Christianity in a very short time and the old religion was dispersed, and so the religion of the Jews lives a sporadic life in different parts of the world. But in India this gigantic child was absorbed, in the long run, by the mother that gave it birth, and today the very name of Buddha is almost unknown all over India. You know more about Buddhism than ninety-nine per cent of the Indians. At best, they of India only know the name--"Oh, he was a great prophet, a great Incarnation of God"--and there it ends. The island of Ceylon remains to Buddha, and in some parts of the Himalayan country, there are some Buddhists yet. Beyond that there are none. But [Buddhism] has spread over all the rest of Asia._x000d_ Still, it has the largest number of followers of any religion, and it has indirectly modified the teachings of all the other religions. A good deal of Buddhism entered into Asia Minor. It was a constant fight at one time whether the Buddhists would prevail or the later sects of Christians. The [Gnostics] and the other sects of early Christians were more or less Buddhistic in their tendencies, and all these got fused up in that wonderful city of Alexandria, and out of the fusion under Roman law came Christianity. Buddhism in its political and social aspect is even more interesting than its [doctrines] and dogmas; and as the first outburst of the tremendous world-conquering power of religion, it is very interesting also._x000d_ I am mostly interested in this lecture in India as it has been affected by Buddhism; and to understand Buddhism and its rise a bit, we have to get a few ideas about India as it existed when this great prophet was born._x000d_ There was already in India a vast religion with an organised scripture--the Vedas; and these Vedas existed as a mass of literature and not a book--just as you find the Old Testament, the Bible. Now, the Bible is a mass of literature of different ages; different persons are the writers, and so on. It is a collection. Now, the Vedas are a vast collection. I do not know whether, if the texts were all found--nobody has found all the texts, nobody even in India has seen all the books--if all the books were known, this room would contain them. It is a huge mass of literature, carried down from generation to generation from God, who gave the scriptures. And the idea about the scriptures in India became tremendously orthodox. You complain of your orthodoxies in book-worship. If you get the Hindus' idea, where will you be? The Hindus think the Vedas are the direct knowledge of God, that God has created the whole universe in and through the Vedas, and that the whole universe exists because it is in the Vedas. The cow exists outside because the word "cow" is in the Vedas; man exists outside because of the word in the Vedas. Here you see the beginning of that theory which later on Christians developed and expressed in the text: "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God." It is the old, ancient theory of India. Upon that is based the whole idea of the scriptures. And mind, every word is the power of God. The word is only the external manifestation on the material plane. So, all this manifestation is just the manifestation on the material plane; and the Word is the Vedas, and Sanskrit is the language of God. God spoke once. He spoke in Sanskrit, and that is the divine language. Every other language, they consider, is no more than the braying of animals; and to denote that they call every other nation that does not speak Sanskrit [Mlechchhas], the same word as the barbarians of the Greeks. They are braying, not talking, and Sanskrit is the divine language._x000d_ Now, the Vedas were not written by anybody; they were eternally coexistent with God. God is infinite. So is knowledge, and through this knowledge is created the world. Their idea of ethics is [that a thing is good] because the law says so. Everything is bounded by that book --nothing [can go] beyond that, because the knowledge of God--you cannot get beyond that. That is Indian orthodoxy._x000d_ In the latter part of the Vedas, you see the highest, the spiritual. In the early portions, there is the crude part. You quote a passage from the Vedas--"That is not good," you say. "Why?" "There is a positive evil injunction"--the same as you see in the Old Testament. There are numbers of things in all old books, curious ideas, which we would not like in our present day. You say: "This doctrine is not at all good; why, it shocks my ethics!" How did you get your idea? [Merely] by your own thought? Get out! If it is ordained by God, what right have you to question? When the Vedas say, "Do not do this; this is immoral," and so on, no more have you the right to question at all. And that is the difficulty. If you tell a Hindu, "But our Bible does not say so," [he will reply] "Oh, your Bible! It is a babe of history. What other Bible could there be except the Vedas? What other book could there be? All knowledge is in God. Do you mean to say that He teaches by two or more Bibles? His knowledge came out in the Vedas. Do you mean to say that He committed a mistake, then? Afterwards, He wanted to do something better and taught another Bible to another nation? You cannot bring another book that is as old as Vedas. Everything else--it was all copied after that." They would not listen to you. And the Christian brings the Bible. They say: "That is fraud. God only speaks once, because He never makes mistakes."_x000d_ Now, just think of that. That orthodoxy is terrible. And if you ask a Hindu that he is to reform his society and do this and that, he says: "Is it in the books? If it is not, I do not care to change. You wait. In five [hundred] years more you will find this is good." If you say to him, "This social institution that you have is not right," he says, "How do you know that?" Then he says, "Our social institutions in this matter are the better. Wait five [hundred] years and your institutions will die. The test is the survival of the fittest. You live, but there is not one community in the world which lives five hundred years together. Look here! We have been standing all the time." That is what they would say. Terrible orthodoxy! And thank God I have crossed that ocean._x000d_ This was the orthodoxy of India. What else was there? Everything was divided, the whole society, as it is today, though in a much more rigorous form then--divided into castes. There is another thing to learn. There is a tendency to make castes just [now] going on here in the West. And I myself--I am a renegade. I have broken everything. I do not believe in caste, individually. It has very good things in it. For myself, Lord help me! I would not have any caste, if He helps me. You understand what I mean by caste, and you are all trying to make it very fast. It is a hereditary trade [for] the Hindu. The Hindu said in olden times that life must be made easier and smoother. And what makes everything alive? Competition. Hereditary trade kills. You are a carpenter? Very good, your son can be only a carpenter. What are you? A blacksmith? Blacksmithing becomes a caste; your children will become blacksmiths. We do not allow anybody else to come into that trade, so you will be quiet and remain there. You are a military man, a fighter? Make a caste. You are a priest? Make a caste. The priesthood is hereditary. And so on. Rigid, high power! That has a great side, and that side is [that] it really rejects competition. It is that which has made the nation live while other nations have died--that caste. But there is a great evil: it checks individuality. I will have to be a carpenter because I am born a carpenter; but I do not like it. That is in the book, and that was before Buddha was born. I am talking to you of India as it was before Buddha. And you are trying today what you call socialism! Good things will come; but in the long run you will be a [blight] upon the race. Freedom is the watchword. Be free! A free body, a free mind, and a free soul! That is what I have felt all my life; I would rather be doing evil freely than good under bondage._x000d_ Well, these things that they are crying for now in the West, they have done ages before there. Land has been nationalised . . . By thousands all these things. There is blame upon this hide-bound caste. The Indian people are intensely socialistic. But, beyond that, there is a wealth of individualism. They are as tremendously individualistic--that is to say, after laying down all these minute regulations. They have regulated how you should eat, drink, sleep, die! Everything is regulated there; from early morning to when you go to bed and sleep, you are following regulations and law. Law, law. Do you wonder that a nation should [live] under that? Law is death. The more of the law in a country, the worse for that country. [But to be an individual] we go to the mountains, where there is no law, no government. The more of law you make, the more of police and socialism, the more of blackguards there are. Now this tremendous regulation of law [is] there. As soon as a child is born, he knows that he is born a slave: slave to his caste, first; slave to his nation, next. Slave, slave, slave. Every action--his drinking and his eating. He must eat under a regular method; this prayer with the first morsel, this prayer with the second, that prayer with the third, and that prayer when he drinks water. Just think of that! Thus, from day to day, it goes on and on._x000d_ But they were thinkers. They knew that this would not lead to real greatness. So they left a way out for them all. After all, they found out that all these regulations are only for the world and the life of the world. As soon as you do not want money [and] you do not want children--no business for this world--you can go out entirely free. Those that go out thus were called Sannyasins--people who have given up. They never organised themselves, nor do they now; they are a free order of men and women who refuse to marry, who refuse to possess property, and they have no law--not even the Vedas bind them. They stand on [the] top of the Vedas. They are [at] the other pole [from] our social institutions. They are beyond caste. They have grown beyond. They are too big to be bound by these little regulations and things. Only two things [are] necessary for them: they must not possess property and they must not marry. If you marry, settle down, or possess property, immediately the regulations will be upon you; but if you do not do either of these two, you are free. They were the living gods of the race, and ninety-nine per cent of our great men and women were to be found among them._x000d_ In every country, real greatness of the soul means extraordinary individuality, and that individuality you cannot get in society. It frets and fumes and wants to burst society. If society wants to keep it down, that soul wants to burst society into pieces. And they made an easy channel. They say: "Well, once you get out of society, then you may preach and teach everything that you like. We only worship you from a distance. So there were the tremendous, individualistic men and women, and they are the highest persons in all society. If one of those yellow-clad shaven-heads comes, the prince even dare not remain seated in his presence; he must stand. The next half hour, one of these Sannyasins might be at the door of one of the cottages of the poorest subjects, glad to get only a piece of bread. And he has to mix with all grades; now he sleeps with a poor man in his cottage; tomorrow [he] sleeps on the beautiful bed of a king. One day he dines on gold plates in kings' palaces; the next day, he has not any food and sleeps under a tree. Society looks upon these men with great respect; and some of them, just to show their individuality, will try to shock the public ideas. But the people are never shocked so long as they keep to these principles: perfect purity and no property._x000d_ These men, being very individualistic, they are always trying new theories and plans--visiting in every country. They must think something new; they cannot run in the old groove. Others are all trying to make us run in the old groove, forcing us all to think alike. But human nature is greater than any human foolishness. Our greatness is greater than our weakness; the good things are stronger than the evil things. Supposing they succeeded in making us all think in the same groove, there we would be--no more thought to think; we would die._x000d_ Here was a society which had almost no vitality, its members pressed down by iron chains of law. They were forced to help each other. There, one was under regulations [that were] tremendous: regulations even how to breathe; how to wash face and hands; how to bathe; how to brush the teeth; and so on, to the moment of death. And beyond these regulations was the wonderful individualism of the Sannyasin. There he was. And every day a new sect was rising amongst these strong, individualistic men and women. The ancient Sanskrit books tell about their standing out--of one woman who was a very quaint, queer old thing; sometimes [she was] criticised, but always people were afraid of her, obeying her quietly. So, there were those great men and women of olden times._x000d_ And within this society so oppressed by regulations, the power was in the hands of the priests. In the social scale, the highest caste is [that of] the priest, and that being a business--I do not know any other word, that is why I use the word "priest." It is not in the same sense as in this country, because our priest is not a man who teaches religion or philosophy. The business of a priest is to perform all these minute details of regulations which have been laid down. The priest is the man who helps in these regulations. He marries you; to your funeral he comes to pray. So at all the ceremonies performed upon a man or a woman, the priest must be there. In society the ideal is marriage. [Everyone] must marry. It is the rule. Without marriage, man is not able to perform any religious ceremony; he is only half a man; [he] is not competent to officiate--even the priest himself cannot officiate as priest, except he marries. Half a man is unfit within society._x000d_ Now, the power of the priests increased tremendously. . . . The general policy of our national law-givers was to give the priests this honour. They also had the same socialistic plan [you are] just ready to [try] that checked them from getting money. What [was] the motive? Social honour. Mind you, the priest in all countries is the highest in the social scale, so much so in India that the poorest Brahmin is greater than the greatest king in the country, by birth. He is the nobleman in India. But the law does not allow him ever to become rich. The law grinds him down to poverty--only, it gives him this honour. He cannot do a thousand things; and the higher is the caste in the social scale, the more restricted are its enjoyments. The higher the caste, the less the number of kinds of food that man can eat, the less the amount of food that man may eat, the less the number of occupations [he may] engage in. To you, his life would be only a perpetual train of hardships--nothing more than that. It is a perpetual discipline in eating, drinking, and everything; and all [penalties] which are required from the lower caste are required from the higher ten times more. The lowest man tells a lie; his fine is one dollar. A Brahmin, he must pay, say, a hundred dollars--[for] he knows better._x000d_ But this was a grand organisation to start with. Later on, the time came when they, these priests, began to get all the power in their hands; and at last they forgot the secret of their power: poverty. They were men whom society fed and clad so that they might simply learn and teach and think. Instead of that, they began to spread out their hands to clutch at the riches of society. They became "money-grabbers"--to use your word--and forgot all these things._x000d_ Then there was the second caste, the kingly caste, the military. Actual power was in their hands. Not only so--they have produced all of our great thinkers, and not the Brahmins. It is curious. All our great prophets, almost without exception, belong to the kingly caste. The great man Krishna was also of that caste; Rama, he also, and all our great philosophers, almost all [sat] on the throne; thence came all the great philosophers of renunciation. From the throne came the voice that always cried, "Renounce." These military people were the kings; and they [also] were the philosophers; they were the speakers in the Upanishads. In their brains and in their thought, they were greater than the priests, they were more powerful, they were the kings--and yet the priests got all the power and tried to tyrannise over them. And so that was going on: political competition between the two castes, the priests and the kings._x000d_ Another phenomenon is there. Those of you that have been to hear the first lecture already know that in India there are two great races: one is called the Aryan; the other, the non-Aryan. It is the Aryan race that has the three castes; but the whole of the rest are dubbed with one name, Shudras--no caste. They are not Aryans at all. (Many people came from outside of India, and they found the Shudras [there], the aborigines of the country). However it may be, these vast masses of non-Aryan people and the mixed people among them, they gradually became civilised and they began to scheme for the same rights as the Aryans. They wanted to enter their schools and their colleges; they wanted to take the sacred thread of the Aryans; they wanted to perform the same ceremonies as the Aryans, and wanted to have equal rights in religion and politics like the Aryans. And the Brahmin priest, he was the great antagonist of such claims. You see, it is the nature of priests in every country--they are the most conservative people, naturally. So long as it is a trade, it must be; it is to their interest to be conservative. So this tide of murmur outside the Aryan pale, the priests were trying to check with all their might. Within the Aryan pale, there was also a tremendous religious ferment, and [it was] mostly led by this military caste._x000d_ There was already the sect of Jains [who are a] conservative [force] in India [even] today. It is a very ancient sect. They declared against the validity of the scriptures of the Hindus, the Vedas. They wrote some books themselves, and they said: "Our books are the only original books, the only original Vedas, and the Vedas that now are going on under that name have been written by the Brahmins to dupe the people." And they also laid the same plan. You see, it is difficult for you to meet the arguments of the Hindus about the scriptures. They also claimed [that] the world has been created through those books. And they were written in the popular language. The Sanskrit, even then, had ceased to be a spoken language--[it had] just the same relation [to the spoken language] as Latin has to modern Italian. Now, they wrote all their books in Pali; and when a Brahmin said, "Why, your books are in Pali!" they said, "Sanskrit is a language of the dead."_x000d_ In their methods and manners they were different. For, you see, these Hindu scriptures, the Vedas, are a vast mass of accumulation--some of them crude--until you come to where religion is taught, only the spiritual. Now, that was the portion of the Vedas which these sects all claimed to preach. Then, there are three steps in the ancient Vedas: first, work; second, worship; third, knowledge. When a man purifies himself by work and worship, then God is within that man. He has realised He is already there. He only can have seen Him because the mind has become pure. Now, the man can become purified by work and worship. That is all. Salvation is already there. We don't know it. Therefore, work, worship, and knowledge are the three steps. By work, they mean doing good to others. That has, of course, something in it, but mostly, as to the Brahmins, work means to perform these elaborate ceremonials: killing of cows and killing of bulls, killing of goats and all sorts of animals, that are taken fresh and thrown into the fire, and so on. "Now" declared the Jains, "that is no work at all, because injuring others can never be any good work"; and they said, "This is the proof that your Vedas are false Vedas, manufactured by the priests, because you do not mean to say that any good book will order us [to be] killing animals and doing these things. You do not believe it. So all this killing of animals and other things that you see in the Vedas, they have been written by the Brahmins, because they alone are benefited. It is the priest only [who] pockets the money and goes home. So, therefore, it is all priestcraft."_x000d_ It was one of their doctrines that there cannot be any God: "The priests have invented God, that the people may believe in God and pay them money. All nonsense! There is no God. There is nature and there are souls, and that is all. Souls have got entangled into this life and got round them the clothing of man you call a body. Now, do good work." But from that naturally came the doctrine that everything that is matter is vile. They are the first teachers of asceticism. If the body is the result of impurity, why, therefore the body is vile. If a man stands on one leg for some time--"All right, it is a punishment." If the head comes up bump against a wall--"Rejoice, it is a very good punishment." Some of the great founders of the [Franciscan Order]--one of them St. Francis--were going to a certain place to meet somebody; and St. Francis had one of his companions with him, and he began to talk as to whether [the person] would receive them or not, and this man suggested that possibly he would reject them. Said St. Francis: "That is not enough, brother, but if, when we go and knock at the door, the man comes and drives us away, that is not enough. But if he orders us to be bound and gives us a thorough whipping, even that is not enough. And then, if he binds us hand and foot and whips us until we bleed at every pore and throws us outside in the snow, that would be enough."_x000d_ These [same] ascetic ideas prevailed at that time. These Jains were the first great ascetics; but they did some great work. "Don't injure any and do good to all that you can, and that is all the morality and ethics, and that is all the work there is, and the rest is all nonsense--the Brahmins created that. Throw it all away." And then they went to work and elaborated this one principle all through, and it is a most wonderful ideal: how all that we call ethics they simply bring out from that one great principle of non-injury and doing good._x000d_ This sect was at least five hundred years before Buddha, and he was five hundred and fifty years before Christ. Now the whole of the animal creation they divide into five sections: the lowest have only one organ, that of touch; the next one, touch and taste; the next, touch, taste and hearing; the next, touch, taste, hearing and sight. And the next, the five organs. The first two, the one-organ and the two-organ, are invisible to the naked eye, and they are everywhere in the water. A terrible thing, killing these [low forms of life]. This bacteriology has come into existence in the modern world only in the last twenty years and theretofore nobody knew anything about it. They said, the lowest organs are only one-organ, touch; nothing else. The next greater [were] also invisible. And they all knew that if you boiled water these animals were all killed. So these monks, if they died of thirst, they would never kill these animals by drinking water. But if [a monk] stands at your door and you give him a little boiled water, the sin is on you of killing the animals--and he will get the benefit. They carry these ideas to ludicrous extremes. For instance, in rubbing the body--if he bathes--he will have to kill numbers of animalcules; so he never bathes. He gets killed himself; he says that is all right. Life has no care for him; he will get killed and save life._x000d_ These Jains were there. There were various other sects of ascetics; and while this was going on, on the one hand, there was the political jealousy between the priests and the kings. And then these different dissatisfied sects [were] springing up everywhere. And there was the greater problem: the vast multitudes of people wanting the same rights as the Aryans, dying of thirst while the perennial stream of nature went flowing by them, and no right to drink a drop of water._x000d_ And that man was born--the great man Buddha. Most of you know about him, his life. And in spite of all the miracles and stories that generally get fastened upon any great man, in the first place, he is one of the most historical prophets of the world. Two are very historical: one, the most ancient, Buddha, and the other, Mohammed, because both friends and foes are agreed about them. So we are perfectly sure that there were such persons. As for the other persons, we have only to take for granted what the disciples say--nothing more. Our Krishna--you know, the Hindu prophet--he is very mythological. A good deal of his life, and everything about him, is written only by his disciples; and then there seem to be, sometimes, three or four men, who all loom into one. We do not know so clearly about many of the prophets; but as to this man, because both friends and foes write of him, we are sure that there was such a historical personage. And if we analyse through all the fables and reports of miracles and stories that generally are heaped upon a great man in this world, we find an inside core; and all through the account of that man, he never did a thing for himself--never! How do you know that? Because, you see, when fables are fastened upon a man, the fables must be tinged with that man's general character. Not one fable tried to impute any vice or any immorality to the man. Even his enemies have favourable accounts._x000d_ When Buddha was born, he was so pure that whosoever looked at his face from a distance immediately gave up the ceremonial religion and became a monk and became saved. So the gods held a meeting. They said, "We are undone." Because most of the gods live upon the ceremonials. These sacrifices go to the gods and these sacrifices were all gone. The gods were dying of hunger and [the reason for] it was that their power was gone. So the gods said: "We must, anyhow, put this man down. He is too pure for our life". And then the gods came and said: "Sir, we come to ask you something. We want to make a great sacrifice and we mean to make a huge fire, and we have been seeking all over the world for a pure spot to light the fire on and could not find it, and now we have found it. If you will lie down, on your breast we will make the huge fire." "Granted," he says, "go on." And the gods built the fire high upon the breast of Buddha, and they thought he was dead, and he was not. And then they went about and said, "We are undone." And all the gods began to strike him. No good. They could not kill him. From underneath the voice comes: "Why [are you] making all these vain attempts?" "Whoever looks upon you becomes purified and is saved, and nobody is going to worship us." "Then, your attempt is vain, because purity can never be killed." This fable was written by his enemies, and yet throughout the fable the only blame that attaches to Buddha is that he was so great a teacher of purity._x000d_ About his doctrines, some of you know a little. It is his doctrines that appeal to many modern thinkers whom you call agnostics. He was a great preacher of the brotherhood of mankind: "Aryan or non-Aryan, caste or no caste, and sects or no sects, every one has a same right to God and to religion and to freedom. Come in all of you." But as to other things, he was very agnostic. "Be practical." There came to him one day five young men, Brahmin born, quarrelling about a question. They came to him to ask him the way to truth. And one said: "My people teach this, and this is the way to truth." The other said: "I have been taught this, and this is the only way to truth." "Which is the right way, sir?" "Well, you say your people taught this is truth and is the way to God?" "Yes." "But did you see God?" "No, sir." "Your father?" "No, sir." "Your grandfather?" "No, sir." "None of them saw God?" "No." "Well, and your teachers--neither [any] of them saw God?" "No." And he asked the same to the others. They all declared that none had seen God. "Well," said Buddha, "in a certain village came a young man weeping and howling and crying: 'Oh, I love her so! Oh my, I love her so!' And then the villagers came; and the only thing he said was he loved her so. 'Who is she that you love?' 'I do not know.' 'Where does she live?' 'I do not know'--but he loved her so. 'How does she look?' 'That I do not know; but oh, I love her so.'" Then asked Buddha: "Young man, what would you call this young man?" "Why, sir, he was a fool!" And they all declared: "Why, sir, that young man was certainly a fool, to be crying and all that about a woman, to say he loved her so much and he never saw her or knew that she existed or anything?" "Are you not the same? You say that this God your father or your grandfather never saw, and now you are quarrelling upon a thing which neither you nor your ancestors ever knew, and you are trying to cut each other's throats about it." Then the young men asked: "What are we to do?" "Now, tell me: did your father ever teach that God is ever angry?" "No, sir." "Did your father ever teach that God is evil?" "No, sir; He is always pure." "Well, now, if you are pure and good and all that, do you not think that you will have more chance to come near to that God than by discussing all this and trying to cut each other's throats? Therefore, say I: be pure and be good; be pure and love everyone." And that was [all]._x000d_ You see that non-killing of animals and charity towards animals was an already existing doctrine when he was born; but it was new with him--the breaking down of caste, that tremendous movement. And the other thing that was new: he took forty of his disciples and sent them all over the world, saying, "Go ye; mix with all races and nations and preach the excellent gospel for the good of all, for the benefit of all." And of course, he was not molested by the Hindus. He died at a ripe old age. All his life he was a most stern man: he never yielded to weakness. I do not believe many of his doctrines; of course, I do not. I believe that the Vedantism of the old Hindus is much more thoughtful, is a grander philosophy of life. I like his method of work, but what I like [most] in that man is that, among all the prophets of mankind, here was a man who never had any cobwebs in his brain, and [who was] sane and strong. When kingdoms were at his feet, h

As far as we know, Swamiji’s platform work in southern California came to an end with the close of his third week of lecturing in Pasadena. We now lose almost all knowledge of his activities for a period of nearly three weeks, at the end of which we find him (on February 22) in San Francisco. What he did during those weeks may some day come to light, but at present we can only guess. Did he remain at the Meads’ house? Did he continue his classes on the hill? Did he lecture in other small towns in southern California, making side trips here and there? His letters written during this period give us very little exact information; nor are Mrs. Hansbrough’s "Reminiscences" of much help in this respect. As for the memoirs of Josephine MacLeod, they are equally unsatisfactory, and understandably so; for on the evening of Friday, February 2, she had left Los Angeles for a short visit in San Francisco and thence, joined by Mrs. Leggett, had gone on to New York. We are, in fact, afforded only one glimpse of Swamiji’s life between February 3 and 22:

As far as is known, the Swami's lecturing work in southern California came to a close with "The Great Teachers of the World", which he gave on February 3 at the Pasadena Shakespeare Club. He had given now, from December 8 to February 3, at least thirty-eight formal lectures and class talks, to say nothing of his private talks in the homes of his friends and his picnic-classes on a hilltop in South Pasadena. During this Period Vedanta Societies Pasadena were formed in Los Angeles and Pasadena by groups of his ardent followers, the inaugural meeting of the Pasadena Society taking place in the Shakespeare Club. The Swami hoped that the establishment of such Vedanta societies might start a two-way current of aid between India and America. Spiritual help flowing from East to West, financial help from West to East.

The universe, according to the theory of the Hindus, is moving in cycles of wave forms. It rises, reaches its zenith, then falls and remains in the hollow, as it were, for some time, once more to rise, and so on, in wave after wave and fall after fall. What is true of the universe is true of every part of it. The march of human affairs is like that. The history of nations is like that: they rise and they fall; after the rise comes a fall, again out of the fall comes a rise, with greater power. This motion is always going on. In the religious world the same movement exists. In every nation's spiritual life, there is a fall as well as a rise. The nation goes down, and everything seems to go to pieces. Then, again, it gains strength, rises; a huge wave comes, sometimes a tidal wave--and always on the topmost crest of the wave is a shining soul, the Messenger. Creator and created by turns, he is the impetus that makes the wave rise, the nation rise: at the same time, he is created by the same forces which make the wave, acting and interacting by turns. He puts forth his tremendous power upon society; and society makes him what he is. These are the great world-thinkers. These are the Prophets of the world, the Messengers of life, the Incarnations of God._x000d_ Man has an idea that there can be only one religion, that there can be only one Prophet, and that there can be only one Incarnation; but that idea is not true. By studying the lives of all these great Messengers, we find that each, as it were, was destined to play a part, and a part only; that the harmony consists in the sum total and not in one note. As in the life of races--no race is born to alone enjoy the world. None dare say no. Each race has a part of play in this divine harmony of nations. Each race has its mission to perform, its duty to fulfil. The sum total is the great harmony. _x000d_ So, not any one of these Prophets is born to rule the world for ever. None has yet succeeded and none is going to be the ruler for ever. Each only contributes a part; and, as to that part, it is true that in the long run every Prophet will govern the world and its destinies._x000d_ Most of us are born believers in a personal religion. We talk of principles, we think of theories, and that is all right; but every thought and every movement, every one of our actions, shows that we can only understand the principle when it comes to us through a person. We can grasp an idea only when it comes to us through a materialised ideal person. We can understand the precept only through the example. Would to God that all of us were so developed that we would not require any example, would not require any person. But that we are not; and, naturally, the vast majority of mankind have put their souls at the feet of these extraordinary personalities, the Prophets, the Incarnations of God--Incarnations worshipped by the Christians, by the Buddhists, and by the Hindus. The Mohammedans from the beginning stood against any such worship. They would have nothing to do with worshipping the Prophets or the Messengers, or paying any homage to them; but, practically, instead of one Prophet, thousands upon thousands of saints are being worshipped. We cannot go against facts! We are bound to worship personalities, and it is good. Remember that word from your great Prophet to the query: "Lord, show us the Father", "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." Which of us can imagine anything except that He is a man? We can only see Him in and through humanity. The vibration of light is everything in this room: why cannot we see it everywhere? You have to see it only in that lamp. God is an Omnipresent Principle--everywhere: but we are so constituted at present that we can see Him, feel Him, only in and through a human God. And when these great Lights come, then man realises God. And they come in a different way from what we come. We come as beggars; they come as Emperors. We come here like orphans, as people who have lost their way and do not know it. What are we to do? We do not know what is the meaning of our lives. We cannot realise it. Today we are doing one thing, tomorrow another. We are like little bits of straw rocking to and fro in water, like feathers blown about in a hurricane._x000d_ But, in the history of mankind, you will find that there come these Messengers, and that from their very birth their mission is found and formed. The whole plan is there, laid down; and you see them swerving not one inch from that. Because they come with a mission, they come with a message, they do not want to reason. Did you ever hear or read of these great Teachers, or Prophets, reasoning out what they taught? No, not one of them did so. They speak direct. Why should they reason? They see the Truth. And not only do they see it but they show it! If you ask me, "Is there any God?" and I say "Yes", you immediately ask my grounds for saying so, and poor me has to exercise all his powers to provide you with some reason. If you had come to Christ and said, "Is there any God?" he would have said, "Yes"; and if you had asked, "Is there any proof?" he would have replied, "Behold the Lord!" And thus, you see, it is a direct perception, and not at all the ratiocination of reason. There is no groping in the dark, but there is the strength of direct vision. I see this table; no amount of reason can take that faith from me. It is a direct perception. Such is their faith--faith in their ideals, faith in their mission, faith in themselves, above all else. The great shining Ones believe in themselves as nobody else ever does. The people say, "Do you believe in God? Do you believe in a future life? Do you believe in this doctrine or that dogma?" But here the base is wanting: this belief in oneself. Ay, the man who cannot believe in himself, how can they expect him to believe in anything else? I am not sure of my own existence. One moment I think that I am existing and nothing can destroy me; the next moment I am quaking in fear of death. One minute I think I am immortal; the next minute, a spook appears, and then I don't know what I am, nor where I am. I don't know whether I am living or dead. One moment I think that I am spiritual, that I am moral; and the next moment, a blow comes, and I am thrown flat on my back. And why?--I have lost faith in myself, my moral backbone is broken._x000d_ But in these great Teachers you will always find this sign: that they have intense faith in themselves. Such intense faith is unique, and we cannot understand it. That is why we try to explain away in various ways what these Teachers speak of themselves; and people invent twenty thousand theories to explain what they say about their realisation. We do not think of ourselves in the same way, and, naturally, we cannot understand them._x000d_ Then again, when they speak, the world is bound to listen. When they speak, each word is direct; it bursts like a bomb-shell. What is in the word, unless it has the Power behind? What matters it what language you speak, and how you arrange your language? What matters it whether you speak correct grammar or with fine rhetoric? What matters it whether your language is ornamental or not? The question is whether or not you have anything to give. It is a question of giving and taking, and not listening. Have you anything to give?--that is the first question. If you have, then give. Words but convey the gift: it is but one of the many modes. Sometimes we do not speak at all. There is an old Sanskrit verse which says, "I saw the Teacher sitting under a tree. He was a young man of sixteen, and the disciple was an old man of eighty. The preaching of the Teacher was silence, and the doubts of the disciple departed."_x000d_ Sometimes they do not speak at all, but yet they convey the Truth from mind to mind. They come to give. They command, they are the Messengers; you have to receive the Command. Do you not remember in your own scriptures the authority with which Jesus speaks? "Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations . . . Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you." It runs through all his utterances, that tremendous faith in his own message. That you find in the life of all these great giants whom the world worships as its Prophets._x000d_ These great Teachers are the living Gods on this earth. Whom else should we worship? I try to get an idea of God in my mind, and I find what a false little thing I conceive; it would be a sin to worship that God. I open my eyes and look at the actual life of these great ones of the earth. They are higher than any conception of God that I could ever form. For, what conception of mercy could a man like me form who would go after a man if he steals anything from me and send him to jail? And what can be my highest idea of forgiveness? Nothing beyond myself. Which of you can jump out of your own bodies? Which of you can jump out of your own minds? Not one of you. What idea of divine love can you form except what you actually live? What we have never experienced we can form no idea of. So, all my best attempts at forming an idea of God would fail in every case. And here are plain facts, and not idealism--actual facts of love, of mercy, of purity, of which I can have no conception even. What wonder that I should fall at the feet of these men and worship them as God? And what else can anyone do? I should like to see the man who can do anything else, however much he may talk. Talking is not actuality. Talking about God and the Impersonal, and this and that, is all very good; but these man-Gods are the real Gods of all nations and all races. These divine men have been worshipped and will be worshipped so long as man is man. Therein is our faith, therein is our hope, of a reality. Of what avail is a mere mystical principle!_x000d_ The purpose and intent of what I have to say to you is this, that I have found it possible in my life to worship all of them, and to be ready for all that are yet to come. A mother recognises her son in any dress in which he may appear before her; and if one does not do so, I am sure she is not the mother of that man. Now, as regards those of you that think that you understand Truth and Divinity and God in only one Prophet in the world, and not in any other, naturally, the conclusion which I draw is that you do not understand Divinity in anybody; you have simply swallowed words and identified yourself with one sect, just as you would in party politics, as a matter of opinion; but that is no religion at all. There are some fools in this world who use brackish water although there is excellent sweet water near by, because, they say, the brackish-water well was dug by their father. Now, in my little experience I have collected this knowledge--that for all the devilry that religion is blamed with, religion is not at all in fault: no religion ever persecuted men, no religion ever burnt witches, no religion ever did any of these things. What then incited people to do these things? Politics, but never religion; and if such politics takes the name of religion whose fault is that?_x000d_ So, when each man stands and says "My Prophet is the only true Prophet," he is not correct--he knows not the alpha of religion. Religion is neither talk, nor theory, nor intellectual consent. It is realisation in the heart of our hearts; it is touching God; it is feeling, realising that I am a spirit in relation with the Universal Spirit and all Its great manifestations. If you have really entered the house of the Father, how can you have seen His children and not known them? And if you do not recognise them, you have not entered the house of the Father. The mother recognises her child in any dress and knows him however disguised. Recognise all the great, spiritual men and women in every age and country, and see that they are not really at variance with one another. Wherever there has been actual religion--this touch of the Divine, the soul coming in direct sense-contact with the Divine--there has always been a broadening of the mind which enables it to see the light everywhere. Now, some Mohammedans are the crudest in this respect, and the most sectarian. Their watchword is: "There is one God, and Mohammed is His Prophet." Everything beyond that not only is bad, but must be destroyed forthwith; at a moment's notice, every man or woman who does not exactly believe in that must be killed; everything that does not belong to this worship must be immediately broken; every book that teaches anything else must be burnt. From the Pacific to the Atlantic for five hundred years blood ran all over the world. That is Mohammedanism! Nevertheless, among these Mohammedans, wherever there was a philosophic man, he was sure to protest against these cruelties. In that he showed the touch of the Divine and realised a fragment of the truth; he was not playing with his religion; for it was not his father's religion he was talking, but spoke the truth direct like a man._x000d_ Side by side with the modern theory of evolution there is another thing: atavism. There is a tendency in us to revert to old ideas in religion. Let us think something new, even if it be wrong. It is better to do that. Why should you not try to hit the mark? We come wiser through failures. Time is infinite. Look at the wall. Did the wall ever tell a lie? It is always the wall. Man tells a lie--and becomes a god too. It is better to do something; never mind even if it proves to be wrong; it is better than doing nothing. The cow never tells a lie, but she remains a cow, all the time. Do something! Think some thought; it doesn't matter whether you are right or wrong. But think something! Because my forefathers did not think this way, shall I sit down quietly and gradually lose my sense of feeling and my own thinking faculties? I may as well be dead! And what is life worth if we have no living ideas, no convictions of our own about religion? There is some hope for the atheists, because though they differ from others, they think for themselves. The people who never think anything for themselves are not yet born into the world of religion; they have a mere jelly-fish existence. They will not think; they do not care for religion. But the disbeliever, the atheist, cares, and he is struggling. So think something! Struggle Godward! Never mind if you fail, never mind if you get hold of a queer theory. If you are afraid to be called queer, keep it in your own mind--you need not go and preach it to others. But do something! Struggle Godward! Light must come. If a man feeds me every day of my life, in the long run I shall lose the use of my hands. Spiritual death is the result of following each other like a flock of sheep. Death is the result of inaction. Be active; and wherever there is activity, there must be difference. Difference is the sauce of life; it is the beauty, it is the art of everything. Difference makes all beautiful here. It is variety that is the source of life, the sign of life. Why should we be afraid of it?_x000d_ Now, we are coming into a position to understand about the Prophets. Now, we see that the historical evidence is--apart from the jelly-fish existence in religion--that where there has been any real thinking, any real love for God, the soul has grown Godwards and has got as it were, a glimpse now and then, has come into direct perception, even for a second, even once in its life. Immediately, "All doubts vanish for ever, and all the crookedness of the heart is made straight, and all bondages vanish, and the results of action and Karma fly when He is seen who is the nearest of the near and the farthest of the far." That is religion, that is all of religion; the rest is mere theory, dogma, so many ways of going to that state of direct perception. Now we are fighting over the basket and the fruits have fallen into the ditch._x000d_ If two men quarrel about religion, just ask them the question: "Have you seen God? Have you seen these things?" One man says that Christ is the only Prophet: well, has he seen Christ? "Has your father seen Him?" "No, Sir." "Has your grandfather seen Him?" "No, Sir." "Have you seen Him?" "No, Sir." "Then what are you quarrelling for? The fruits have fallen into the ditch, and you are quarrelling over the basket!" Sensible men and woman should be ashamed to go on quarrelling in that way!_x000d_ These great Messengers and Prophets are great and true. Why? Because, each one has come to preach a great idea. Take the Prophets of India, for instance. They are the oldest of the founders of religion. We take, first, Krishna. You who have read the Gita see all through the book that the one idea is non-attachment. Remain unattached. The heart's love is due to only One. To whom? To Him who never changeth. Who is that One? It is God. Do not make the mistake of giving the heart to anything that is changing, because that is misery. You may give it to a man; but if he dies, misery is the result. You may give it to a friend, but he may tomorrow become your enemy. If you give it to your husband, he may one day quarrel with you. You may give it to your wife, and she may die the day after tomorrow. Now, this is the way the world is going on. So says Krishna in the Gita: The Lord is the only One who never changes. His love never fails. Wherever we are and whatever we do, He is ever and ever the same merciful, the same loving heart. He never changes, He is never angry, whatever we do. How can God be angry with us? Your babe does many mischievous things: are you angry with that babe? Does not God know what we are going to be? He knows we are all going to be perfect, sooner or later. He has patience, infinite patience. We must love Him, and everyone that lives--only in and through Him. This is the keynote. You must love the wife, but not for the wife's sake. "Never, O Beloved, is the husband loved on account of the husband, but because the Lord is in the husband." The Vedanta philosophy says that even in the love of the husband and wife, although the wife is thinking that she is loving the husband, the real attraction is the Lord, who is present there. He is the only attraction, there is no other; but the wife in most cases does not know that it is so, but ignorantly she is doing the right thing, which is, loving the Lord. Only, when one does it ignorantly, it may bring pain. If one does it knowingly, that is salvation. This is what our scriptures say. Wherever there is love, wherever there is a spark of joy, know that to be a spark of His presence because He is joy, blessedness, and love itself. Without that there cannot be any love._x000d_ This is the trend of Krishna's instruction all the time. He has implanted that upon his race, so that when a Hindu does anything, even if he drinks water, he says, "If there is any virtue in it, let it go to the Lord." The Buddhist says, if he does any good deed, "Let the merit of the good deed belong to the world; if there is any virtue in what I do, let it go to the world, and let the evils of the world come to me." The Hindu says he is a great believer in God; the Hindu says that God is omnipotent and that He is the Soul of every soul everywhere; the Hindu says, "If I give all my virtues unto Him, that is the greatest sacrifice, and they will go to the whole universe."_x000d_ Now, this is one phase; and what is the other message of Krishna? "Whosoever lives in the midst of the world, and works, and gives up all the fruit of his action unto the Lord, he is never touched with the evils of the world. Just as the lotus, born under the water, rises up and blossoms above the water, even so is the man who is engaged in the activities of the world, giving up all the fruit of his activities unto the Lord." (Gita, V. 10)._x000d_ Krishna strikes another note as a teacher of intense activity. Work, work, work day and night, says the Gita. You may ask, "Then, where is peace? If all through life I am to work like a cart-horse and die in harness, what am I here for?" Krishna says, "Yes, you will find peace. Flying from work is never the way to find peace." Throw off your duties if you can, and go to the top of a mountain; even there the mind is going--whirling, whirling, whirling. Someone asked a Sannyasin, "Sir, have you found a nice place? How many years have you been travelling in the Himalayas?" "For forty years," replied the Sannyasin. "There are so many beautiful spots to select from, and to settle down in: why did you not do so?" "Because for these forty years my mind would not allow me to do so." We all say, "Let us find peace"; but the mind will not allow us to do so._x000d_ You know the story of the man who caught a Tartar. A soldier was outside the town, and he cried out when he came near the barracks, "I have caught a Tartar." A voice called out, "Bring him in." "He won't come in, sir." "Then you come in." "He won't let me come in, sir." So, in this mind of ours, we have "caught a Tartar": neither can we tone it down, nor will it let us be toned down. We have all "caught Tartars". We all say, be quiet, and peaceful, and so forth. But every baby can say that and thinks he can do it. However, that is very difficult. I have tried. I threw overboard all my duties and fled to the tops of mountains; I lived in caves and deep forests--but all the same, I "caught a Tartar", because I had my world with me all the time. The "Tartar" is what I have in my own mind, so we must not blame poor people outside. "These circumstances are good, and these are bad," so we say, while the "Tartar" is here, within; if we can quiet him down, we shall be all right._x000d_ Therefore Krishna teaches us not to shirk our duties, but to take them up manfully, and not think of the result. The servant has no right to question. The soldier has no right to reason. Go forward, and do not pay too much attention to the nature of the work you have to do. Ask your mind if you are unselfish. If you are, never mind anything, nothing can resist you! Plunge in! Do the duty at hand. And when you have done this, by degrees you will realise the Truth: "Whosoever in the midst of intense activity finds intense peace, whosoever in the midst of the greatest peace finds the greatest activity, he is a Yogi, he is a great soul, he has arrived at perfection."_x000d_ Now, you see that the result of this teaching is that all the duties of the world are sanctified. There is no duty in this world which we have any right to call menial: and each man's work is quite as good as that of the emperor on his throne._x000d_ Listen to Buddha's message--a tremendous message. It has a place in our heart. Says Buddha, "Root out selfishness, and everything that makes you selfish. Have neither wife, child, nor family. Be not of the world; become perfectly unselfish." A worldly man thinks he will be unselfish, but when he looks at the face of his wife it makes him selfish. The mother thinks she will be perfectly unselfish, but she looks at her baby, and immediately selfishness comes. So with everything in this world. As soon as selfish desires arise, as soon as some selfish pursuit is followed, immediately the whole man, the real man, is gone: he is like a brute, he is a slave, he forgets his fellow men. No more does he say, "You first and I afterwards," but it is "I first and let everyone else look out for himself."_x000d_ We find that Krishna's message has also a place for us. Without that message, we cannot move at all. We cannot conscientiously and with peace, joy, and happiness, take up any duty of our lives without listening to the message of Krishna: "Be not afraid even if there is evil in your work, for there is no work which has no evil." "Leave it unto the Lord, and do not look for the results."_x000d_ On the other hand, there is a corner in the heart for the other message: Time flies, this world is finite and all misery. With your good food, nice clothes, and your comfortable home, O sleeping man and woman, do you ever think of the millions that are starving and dying? Think of the great fact that it is all misery, misery, misery! Note the first utterance of the child: when it enters into the world, it weeps. That is the fact--the child weeps. This is a place for weeping! If we listen to the Messenger, we should not be selfish._x000d_ Behold another Messenger, He of Nazareth. He teaches, "Be ready, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." I have pondered over the message of Krishna, and am trying to work without attachment, but sometimes I forget. Then, suddenly, comes to me the message of Buddha: "Take care, for everything in the world is evanescent, and there is always misery in this life." I listen to that, and I am uncertain which to accept. Then again comes, like a thunderbolt, the message: "Be ready, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." Do not delay a moment. Leave nothing for tomorrow. Get ready for the final event, which may overtake you immediately, even now. That message, also, has a place, and we acknowledge it. We salute the Messenger, we salute the Lord._x000d_ And then comes Mohammed, the Messenger of equality. You ask, "What good can there be in his religion?" If there were no good, how could it live? The good alone lives, that alone survives; because the good alone is strong, therefore it survives. How long is the life of an impure man, even in this life? Is not the life of the pure man much longer? Without doubt, for purity is strength, goodness is strength. How could Mohammedanism have lived, had there been nothing good in its teaching? There is much good. Mohammed was the Prophet of equality, of the brotherhood of man, the brotherhood of all Mussalmans._x000d_ So we see that each Prophet, each Messenger, has a particular message. When you first listen to that message, and then look at his life, you will see his whole life stands explained, radiant._x000d_ Now, ignorant fools start twenty thousand theories, and put forward, according to their own mental development, explanations to suit their own ideas, and ascribe them to these great Teachers. They take their teachings and put their misconstruction upon them. With every great Prophet his life is the only commentary. Look at his life: what he did will bear out the texts. Read the Gita, and you will find that is exactly borne out by the life of the Teacher._x000d_ Mohammed by his life showed that amongst Mohammedans there should be perfect equality and brotherhood. There was no question of race, caste, creed, colour, or sex. The Sultan of Turkey may buy a Negro from the mart of Africa, and bring him in chains to Turkey; but should he become a Mohammedan and have sufficient merit and abilities, he might even marry the daughter of the Sultan. Compare this with the way in which the Negroes and the American Indians are treated in this country! And what do Hindus do? If one of your missionaries chance to touch the food of an orthodox person, he would throw it away. Notwithstanding our grand philosophy, you note our weakness in practice; but there you see the greatness of the Mohammedan beyond other races, showing itself in equality, perfect equality regardless of race or colour._x000d_ Will other and greater Prophets come? Certainly they will come in this world. But do not look forward to that. I should better like that each one of you became a Prophet of this real New Testament, which is made up of all the Old Testaments. Take all the old messages, supplement them with your own realisations, and become a Prophet unto others. Each one of these Teachers has been great; each has left something for us; they have been our Gods. We salute them, we are their servants; and, all the same, we salute ourselves; for if they have been Prophets and children of God, we also are the same. They reached their perfection, and we are going to attain ours now. Remember the words of Jesus: "The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!" This very moment let every one of us make a staunch resolution: "I will become a Prophet, I will become a messenger of Light, I will become a child of God, nay, I will become a God!"

it comes from the Pasadena Star of February 8. Midway down a column headed "Throop Notes" one finds the following paragraph:_x000d_ The Swami Vivekananda visited the Institution Tuesday [February 6]. He was much pleased with the school, especially with the manual training department. He will probably visit the institute again soon and he may introduce sloyd into his schools in India.

The Star was referring to the Throop Polytechnic Institute and Manual Training School, founded in 1891 by Amos G. Throop. In 1900 this school, "where boys and girls might be taught to use their hands and their brains simultaneously and practice sloyd, a word that means woodworking-occupied a sturdy brownstone building across the street from the Universalist Church in Pasadena. According to its own notices in the Daily Star, the Throop Institute offered "full instruction in usual studies from fourth grade through the college. Also courses in mechanical & architectural drawing . . . Wood carving, clay modeling, free-hand drawing & water color, . . . Sewing, cooking, wood work, forging, design and construction of machinery, [and was equipped with] Biological, Physical, Chemical and Electrical laboratories." This thoroughgoing institute, whose enrollment then numbered 308, was one of the few schools of its kind in the United States. Its influence was to spread rapidly, and it was to grow apace into what is now Pasadena’s famed California Institute of Technology, more familiarly known as "Cal Tech."

At present, very little is known of how the Swami spent his time during the remainin7 three weeks that he stayed in the southern part of California. His letters during this period give us little exact information. It is known, however, that on February 6 the Swami visited what was then called the Throop Polytechnic Institute and Manual Training School, and was much interested in the practical training given to both boys and girls. This visit of the Swami to the Throop Institute is of particular interest, for the small school, which in 1900 was one Of the few of its kind in the United States, was to grow into the now famous and extensive California Institute of Technology.

There was a great monarch named Bharata. The land which is called India by foreigners is known to her children as Bharata Varsha. Now, it is enjoined on every Hindu when he becomes old, to give up all worldly pursuits--to leave the cares of the world, its wealth, happiness, and enjoyments to his son--and retire into the forest, there to meditate upon the Self which is the only reality in him, and thus break the bonds which bind him to life. King or priest, peasant or servant, man or woman, none is exempt from this duty; for all the duties of the householder--of the son, the brother, the husband, the father, the wife, the daughter, the mother, the sister--are but preparations towards that one stage, when all the bonds which bind the soul to matter are severed asunder for ever._x000d_ The great king Bharata in his old age gave over his throne to his son, and retired into the forest. He who had been ruler over millions and millions of subjects, who had lived in marble palaces, inlaid with gold and silver, who had drunk out of jewelled cups--this king built a little cottage with his own hands, made of reeds and grass, on the banks of a river in the Himalayan forests. There he lived on roots and wild herbs, collected by his own hands, and constantly meditated upon Him who is always present in the soul of man. Days, months, and years passed. One day, a deer came to drink water near by where the royal sage was meditating. At the same moment, a lion roared at a little distance off. The deer was so terrified that she, without satisfying her thirst, made a big jump to cross the river. The deer was with young, and this extreme exertion and sudden fright made her give birth to a little fawn, and immediately after she fell dead. The fawn fell into the water and was being carried rapidly away by the foaming stream, when it caught the eyes of the king. The king rose from his position of meditation and rescuing the fawn from the water, took it to his cottage, made a fire, and with care and attention fondled the little thing back to life. Then the kindly sage took the fawn under his protection, bringing it up on soft grass and fruits. The fawn thrived under the paternal care of the retired monarch, and grew into a beautiful deer. Then, he whose mind had been strong enough to break away from lifelong attachment to power, position, and family, became attached to the deer which he had saved from the stream. As he became fonder and fonder of the deer, the less and less he could concentrate his mind upon the Lord. When the deer went out to graze in the forest, if it were late in returning, the mind of the royal sage would become anxious and worried. He would think, "Perhaps my little one has been attacked by some tiger--or perhaps some other danger has befallen it; otherwise, why is it late?"_x000d_ Some years passed in this way, but one day death came, and the royal sage laid himself down to die. But his mind, instead of being intent upon the Self, was thinking about the deer; and with his eyes fixed upon the sad looks of his beloved deer, his soul left the body. As the result of this, in the next birth he was born as a deer. But no Karma is lost, and all the great and good deeds done by him as a king and sage bore their fruit. This deer was a born Jatismara, and remembered his past birth, though he was bereft of speech and living in an animal body. He always left his companions and was instinctively drawn to graze near hermitages where oblations were offered and the Upanishads were preached._x000d_ After the usual years of a deer's life had been spent, it died and was next born as the youngest son of a rich Brahmin. And in that life also, he remembered all his past, and even in his childhood was determined no more to get entangled in the good and evil of life. The child, as it grew up, was strong and healthy, but would not speak a word, and lived as one inert and insane, for fear of getting mixed up with worldly affairs. His thoughts were always on the Infinite, and he lived only to wear out his past Prarabdha Karma. In course of time the father died, and the sons divided the property among themselves; and thinking that the youngest was a dumb, good-for-nothing man, they seized his share. Their charity, however, extended only so far as to give him enough food to live upon. The wives of the brothers were often very harsh to him, putting him to do all the hard work; and if he was unable to do everything they wanted, they would treat him very unkindly. But he showed neither vexation nor fear, and neither did he speak a word. When they persecuted him very much, he would stroll out of the house and sit under a tree, by the hour, until their wrath was appeased, and then he would quietly go home again._x000d_ One day, when the wives of the brothers had treated him with more than usual unkindness, Bharata went out of the house, seated himself under the shadow of a tree and rested. Now it happened that the king of the country was passing by, carried in a palanquin on the shoulders of bearers. One of the bearers had unexpectedly fallen ill, and so his attendants were looking about for a man to replace him. They came upon Bharata seated under a tree; and seeing he was a strong young man, they asked him if he would take the place of the sick man in bearing the king's palanquin. But Bharata did not reply. Seeing that he was so able-bodied, the king's servants caught hold of him and placed the pole on his shoulders. Without speaking a word, Bharata went on. Very soon after this, the king remarked that the palanquin was not being evenly carried, and looking out of the palanquin addressed the new bearer, saying "Fool, rest a while; if thy shoulders pain thee, rest a while." Then Bharata laying the pole of the palanquin down, opened his lips for the first time in his life, and spoke, "Whom dost thou, O King, call a fool? Whom dost thou ask to lay down the palanquin? Who dost thou say is weary? Whom dost thou address as `thou'? If thou meanest, O King, by the word `thee' this mass of flesh, it is composed of the same matter as thine; it is unconscious, and it knoweth no weariness, it knoweth no pain. If it is the mind, the mind is the same as thine; it is universal. But if the word `thee' is applied to something beyond that, then it is the Self, the Reality in me, which is the same as in thee, and it is the One in the universe. Dost thou mean, O King, that the Self can ever be weary, that It can ever be tired, that It can ever be hurt? I did not want, O King--this body did not want--to trample upon the poor worms crawling on the road, and therefore, in trying to avoid them, the palanquin moved unevenly. But the Self was never tired; It was never weak; It never bore the pole of the palanquin: for It is omnipotent and omnipresent." And so he dwelt eloquently on the nature of the soul, and on the highest knowledge, etc. The king, who was proud of his learning, knowledge, and philosophy, alighted from the palanquin, and fell at the feet of Bharata, saying, "I ask thy pardon, O mighty one, I did not know that thou wast a sage, when I asked thee to carry me." Bharata blessed him and departed. He then resumed the even tenor of his previous life. When Bharata left the body, he was freed for ever from the bondage of birth.

(Delivered in California )_x000d_ _x000d_ Hiranyakashipu was the king of the Daityas. The Daityas, though born of the same parentage as the Devas or gods, were always, at war with the latter. The Daityas had no part in the oblations and offerings of mankind, or in the government of the world and its guidance. But sometimes they waxed strong and drove all the Devas from the heaven, and seized the throne of the gods and ruled for a time. Then the Devas prayed to Vishnu, the Omnipresent Lord of the universe, and He helped them out of their difficulty. The Daityas were driven out, and once more the gods reigned. Hiranyakashipu, king of the Daityas, in his turn, succeeded in conquering his cousins, the Devas, and seated himself on the throne of the heavens and ruled the three worlds--the middle world, inhabited by men and animals; the heavens, inhabited by gods and godlike beings; and the nether world, inhabited by the Daityas. Now, Hiranyakashipu declared himself to be the God of the whole universe and proclaimed that there was no other God but himself, and strictly enjoined that the Omnipotent Vishnu should have no worship offered to Him anywhere; and that all the worship should henceforth be given to himself only._x000d_ Hiranyakashipu had a son called Prahlada. Now, it so happened, that this Prahlada from his infancy was devoted to God. He showed inclinations of this as a child; and the king of the Daityas, fearing that the evil he wanted to drive away from the world would crop up in his own family, made over his son to two teachers called Shanda and Amarka, who were very stern disciplinarians, with strict injunctions that Prahlada was never to hear even the name of Vishnu mentioned. The teachers took the prince to their home, and there he was put to study with the other children of his age. But the little Prahlada, instead of learning from his books, devoted all the time in teaching the other boys how to worship Vishnu. When the teachers found it out, they were frightened, for the fear of the mighty king Hiranyakashipu was upon them, and they tried their best to dissuade the child from such teachings. But Prahlada could no more stop his teaching and worshipping Vishnu than he could stop breathing. To clear themselves, the teachers told the terrible fact to the king, that his son was not only worshipping Vishnu himself, but also spoiling all the other children by teaching them to worship Vishnu._x000d_ The monarch became very much enraged when he heard this and called the boy to his presence. He tried by gentle persuasions to dissuade Prahlada from the worship of Vishnu and taught him that he, the king, was the only God to worship. But it was to no purpose. The child declared, again and again, that the Omnipresent Vishnu, Lord of the universe, was the only Being to be worshipped--for even he, the king, held his throne only so long as it pleased Vishnu. The rage of the king knew no bounds, and he ordered the boy to be immediately killed. So the Daityas struck him with pointed weapons; but Prahlad's mind was so intent upon Vishnu that he felt no pain from them._x000d_ When his father, the king, saw that it was so, he became frightened but, roused to the worst passions of a Daitya, contrived various diabolical means to kill the boy. He ordered him to be trampled under foot by an elephant. The enraged elephant could not crush the body any more than he could have crushed a block of iron. So this measure also was to no purpose. Then the king ordered the boy to be thrown over a precipice, and this order too was duly carried out; but, as Vishnu resided in the heart of Prahlada, he came down upon the earth as gently as a flower drops upon the grass. Poison, fire, starvation, throwing into a well, enchantments, and other measures were then tried on the child one after another, but to no purpose. Nothing could hurt him in whose heart dwelt Vishnu._x000d_ At last, the king ordered the boy to be tied with mighty serpents called up from the nether worlds, and then cast to the bottom of the ocean, where huge mountains were to be piled high upon him, so that in course of time, if not immediately, he might die; and he ordered him to be left in this plight. Even though treated in this manner, the boy continued to pray to his beloved Vishnu: "Salutation to Thee, Lord of the universe. Thou beautiful Vishnu!" Thus thinking and meditating on Vishnu, he began to feel that Vishnu was near him, nay, that He was in his own soul, until he began to feel that he was Vishnu and that he was everything and everywhere._x000d_ As soon as he realised this, all the snake bonds snapped asunder; the mountains were pulverised, the ocean upheaved, and he was gently lifted up above the waves, and safely carried to the shore. As Prahlada stood there, he forgot that he was a Daitya and had a mortal body: he felt he was the universe and all the powers of the universe emanated from him; there was nothing in nature that could injure him; he himself was the ruler of nature. Time passed thus, in one unbroken ecstasy of bliss, until gradually Prahlada began to remember that he had a body and that he was Prahlada. As soon as he became once more conscious of the body, he saw that God was within and without; and everything appeared to him as Vishnu._x000d_ When the King Hiranyakashipu found to his horror that all mortal means of getting rid of the boy who was perfectly devoted to his enemy, the God Vishnu, were powerless, he was at a loss to know what to do. The king had the boy again brought before him, and tried to persuade him once more to listen to his advice, through gentle means. But Prahlada made the same reply. Thinking, however, that these childish whims of the boy would be rectified with age and further training, he put him again under the charge of the teachers, Shanda and Amarka, asking them to teach him the duties of the king. But those teachings did not appeal to Prahlada, and he spent his time in instructing his schoolmates in the path of devotion to the Lord Vishnu._x000d_ When his father came to hear about it, he again became furious with rage, and calling the boy to him, threatened to kill him, and abused Vishnu in the worst language. But Prahlada still insisted that Vishnu was the Lord of the universe, the Beginningless, the Endless, the Omnipotent and the Omnipresent, and as such, he alone was to be worshipped. The king roared with anger and said: "Thou evil one, if thy Vishnu is God omnipresent, why doth he not reside in that pillar yonder?" Prahlada humbly submitted that He did do so. "If so," cried the king, "let him defend thee; I will kill thee with this sword." Thus saying the king rushed at him with sword in hand, and dealt a terrible blow at the pillar. Instantly a thundering voice was heard, and lo and behold, there issued forth from the pillar Vishnu in His awful Nrisimha form--half-lion, half-man! Panic-stricken, the Daityas ran away in all directions; but Hiranyakashipu fought with him long and desperately, till he was finally overpowered and killed._x000d_ Then the gods descended from heaven and offered hymns to Vishnu, and Prahlada also fell at His feet and broke forth into exquisite hymns of praise and devotion. And he heard the Voice of God saying, "Ask, Prahlada, ask for anything thou desirest; thou art My favourite child; therefore ask for anything thou mayest wish." And Prahlada choked with feelings replied, "Lord, I have seen Thee. What else can I want? Do thou not tempt me with earthly or heavenly boons." Again the Voice said: "Yet ask something, my son." And then Prahlada replied, "That intense love, O Lord, which the ignorant bear to worldly things, may I have the same love for Thee; may I have the same intensity of love for Thee, but only for love's sake!"_x000d_ Then the Lord said, "Prahlada, though My intense devotees never desire for anything, here or hereafter, yet by My command, do thou enjoy the blessings of this world to the end of the present cycle, and perform works of religious merit, with thy heart fixed on Me. And thus in time, after the dissolution of thy body, thou shalt attain Me." Thus blessing Prahlada, the Lord Vishnu disappeared. Then the gods headed by Brahma installed Prahlada on the throne of the Daityas and returned to their respective spheres.

Los Angeles_x000d_ 15th February, 1900_x000d_ Dear Dhira Mata {Mrs. Bull},_x000d_ Before this reaches you, I am off to San Francisco. You already know all about the work. I have not done much work, but my heart is growing stronger every day, physically and mentally. Some days I feel I can bear everything and suffer everything. There was nothing of note inside the bundle of papers sent by Miss Muller. I did not write her, not knowing her address. Then again, I am afraid._x000d_ I can always work better alone, and am physically and mentally best when entirely alone! I scarcely had a day's illness during my eight years of lone life away from my brethren. Now I am again getting up, being alone. Strange, but that is what Mother wants me to be. "Wandering alone like the rhinoceros", as Joe likes it. I think the conferences are ended. Poor Turiyananda suffered so much and never let me know; he is so strong and good. Poor Niranjan, I learn from Mrs. Sevier, is so seriously ill in Calcutta that I don't know whether he has passed away or not. Well, good and evil both love company; queer, they come in strings. I had a letter from my cousin telling me her daughter (the adopted little child) was dead. Suffering seems to be the lot of India! Good. I am getting rather callous, rather stilted, of late. Good. Mother knows. I am so ashamed of myself--of this display of weakness for the last two years! Glad it is ended._x000d_ Ever your loving son,_x000d_ Vivekananda

And to Mrs. Bull he wrote on the same day (February 15), "I have not done much work, but my heart is growing stronger every day, physically and mentally. Some days I feel I can bear everything and suffer everything. . . . I can always work better alone, and am physically and mentally best when entirely alone! I scarcely had a day’s illness during my eight years of lone life away from my brethren. Now I am again getting up, being alone. Strange, but that is what Mother wants me to be. `Wandering alone like the rhinoceros’.. .. I am so ashamed of myself-of this display of weakness for the last two years! Glad it is ended.

C/o Miss Mead,_x000d_ 447 Douglas Building,_x000d_ Los Angeles, California_x000d_ 15th Feb., 1900_x000d_ My dear Nivedita,_x000d_ Yours of the __ reached me today at Pasadena. I see Joe has missed you at Chicago--although I have not heard anything from them yet from New York. _x000d_ There was a bundle of English newspapers from England with a line on the envelope expressing good wishes for me and signed, F.H.M. Nothing important was in those, however. I would have written a letter to Miss Muller, but I do not know the address; then I was afraid to frighten her._x000d_ In the meanwhile, Mrs. Leggett started a plan of a $100 subscription each a year for ten years to help me, and headed the list with her $100 for 1900, and got 2 others here to do the same. Then she went on writing letters to all my friends asking each to join in it. When she went on writing to Mrs. Miller I was rather shy--but she did it before I knew. A very polite but cold letter came to her in reply from Mrs. Hale, written by Mary, expressing their inability and assuring her of their love for me. I am afraid Mrs. Hale and Mary are displeased. But it was not my fault at all!!_x000d_ I get news from Mrs. Sevier that Niranjan is seriously ill in Calcutta. I do not know if he has passed away. Well--but I am strong now, Margo, stronger than ever I was mentally. I was mentally getting a sort of ironing over my heart. I am getting nearer a Sannyasin's life now. I have not had any news from Saradananda for two weeks. I am glad you got the stories; rewrite them if you think so--get them published if you find anybody to do it and take the proceeds, if any, for your work. I do not want any. I have got a few hundred dollars here. Going to San Francisco next week, and hope to do better there. Tell Mary when you see her next that I had nothing whatsoever to do with the proposal of $100 a year subscription to Mrs. Hale. I am so grateful to them._x000d_ Well, money will come for your school, never fear--it has got to come; if it does not come, who cares? One road is quite as good as the other. Mother knows best. I don't know whether I am very soon going to the East or not. If I have an opportunity, of course I will go to Indiana._x000d_ The international scheme is a good one and by all means join it, and be the medium of getting some Indian women's clubs to join it through you, which is better. . . . _x000d_ Things shall look up for us, never mind. As soon as the war is finished we go to England and try to do a big work there. What do you think? Shall I write to Mother Superior? If so, send her whereabouts. Has she written to you? Sturdies and "Shakies" will all come round--hold on._x000d_ You are learning your lessons--that is all I want. So am I; the moment we are fit, money and men must flow towards us. Between my nerves and your emotion we may make a mess of everything just now. So Mother is curing my nerves and drilling you into level-headedness-and then we go. This time good is coming in chunks, I am sure. We will make the foundations of the old land shake this time._x000d_ . . . I am getting cool as a cucumber--let anything come, I am ready. The next move--any blow shall tell--not one miss--such is the next chapter._x000d_ With all love,_x000d_ Vivekananda

And to Sister Nivedita he could write, "I am strong now, Margo, stronger than ever I was mentally. I was mentally getting a sort of ironing over my heart. I am getting nearer a Sannyasin’s life now.

In our country, owing to all learning being in Sanskrit from the ancient times, there has arisen an immeasurable gulf between the learned and the common folk. All the great personages, from Buddha down to Chaitanya and Ramakrishna, who came for the well-being of the world, taught the common people in the language of the people themselves. Of course, scholarship is an excellent thing; but cannot scholarship be displayed through any other medium than a language that is stiff and unintelligible, that is unnatural and merely artificial? Is there no room for art in the spoken language? What is the use of creating an unnatural language to the exclusion of the natural one? Do you not think out your scholastic researches in the language which you are accustomed to speak at home? Why then do you introduce such a queer and unwieldy thing when you proceed to put them in black and white? The language in which you think out philosophy and science in your mind, and argue with others in public--is not that the language for writing philosophy and science? If it is not, how then do you reason out those truths within yourselves and in company of others in that very language? The language in which we naturally express ourselves, in which we communicate our anger, grief, or love, etc.--there cannot be a fitter language than that. We must stick to that idea, that manner of expression, that diction and all. No artificial language can ever have that force, and that brevity and expressiveness, or admit of being given any turn you please, as that spoken language. Language must be made like pure steel--turn and twist it any way you like, it is again the same--it cleaves a rock in twain at one stroke, without its edge being turned. Our language is becoming artificial by imitating the slow and pompous movement--and only that--of Sanskrit. And language is the chief means and index of a nation's progress._x000d_ If you say, "It is all right, but there are various kinds of dialects in different parts of Bengal--which of them to accept?"--the answer is: We must accept that which is gaining strength and spreading through natural laws, that is to say, the language of Calcutta. East or west, from wheresoever people may come, once they breathe in the air of Calcutta, they are found to speak the language in vogue there; so nature herself points out which language to write in. The more railroads and facilities of communication there are, the more will the difference of east and west disappear, and from Chittagong to Baidyanath there will be that one language, viz that of Calcutta. It is not the question which district possesses a language most approaching Sanskrit--you must see which language is triumphing. When it is evident that the language of Calcutta will soon become the language of the whole of Bengal, then, if one has to make the written and spoken language the same, one would, if one is intelligent enough certainly make the language of Calcutta one's foundation. Here local jealousies also should be thrown overboard. Where the welfare of the whole province is concerned, you must overlook the claims to superiority of your own district or village._x000d_ Language is the vehicle of ideas. It is the ideas that are of prime importance, language comes after. Does it look well to place a monkey on a horse that has trappings of diamonds and pearls? Just look at Sanskrit. Look at the Sanskrit of the Brahmanas, at Shabara Swami's commentary on the Mimamsa philosophy, the Mahabhashya of Patanjali, and, finally, at the great commentary of Acharya Shankara: and look also at the Sanskrit of comparatively recent times. You will at once understand that so long as a man is alive, he talks a living language, but when he is dead, he speaks a dead language. The nearer death approaches, the more does the power of original thinking wane, the more is there the attempt to bury one or two rotten ideas under a heap of flowers and scents. Great God! What a parade they make! After ten pages of big adjectives, all on a sudden you have--"There lived the King!" Oh, what an array of spun-out adjectives, and giant compounds, and skilful puns! They are symptoms of death. When the country began to decay, then all these signs became manifest. It was not merely in language--all the arts began to manifest them. A building now neither expressed any idea nor followed any style; the columns were turned and turned till they had all their strength taken out of them. The ornaments pierced the nose and the neck and converted the wearer into a veritable ogress; but oh, the profusion of leaves and foliage carved fantastically in them! Again, in music, nobody, not even the sage Bharata, the originator of dramatic performances, could understand whether it was singing, or weeping, or wrangling, and what meaning or purpose it sought to convey! And what an abundance of intricacies in that music! What labyrinths of flourishes--enough to strain all one's nerves! Over and above that, that music had its birth in the nasal tone uttered through the teeth compressed, in imitation of the Mohammedan musical experts! Nowadays there is an indication of correcting these; now will people gradually understand that a language, or art, or music that expresses no meaning and is lifeless, is of no good. Now they will understand that the more strength is infused into the national life, the more will language, art, and music, etc. become spontaneously instinct with ideas and life. The volume of meaning that a couple of words of everyday use will convey, you may search in vain in two thousand set epithets. Then every image of the Deity will inspire devotion, every girl decked in ornaments will appear to be a goddess, and every house and room and furniture will be animated with the vibration of life.

Pasadena_x000d_ 20th February, 1900_x000d_ My Dear Mary {Hale},_x000d_ Your letter bearing the sad news of Mr. Hale's passing away reached me yesterday. I am sorry, because in spite of monastic training, the heart lives on; and then Mr. Hale was one of the best souls I met in life. Of course you are sorry, miserable, and so are Mother Church and Harriet and the rest, especially as this is the first grief of its kind you have met, is it not? I have lost many, suffered much, and the most curious cause of suffering when somebody goes off is the feeling that I was not good enough to that person. When my father died, it was a pang for months, and I had been so disobedient. You have been very dutiful; if you feel anything like that, it is only a form of sorrow._x000d_ Just now I am afraid life begins for you, Mary, in earnest. We may read books, hear lectures, and talk miles, but experience is the one teacher, the one eye-opener. It is best as it is. We learn, through smiles and tears we learn. We don't know why, but we see it is so; and that is enough. Of course Mother Church has the solace of her religion. I wish we could all dream undisturbed good dreams._x000d_ You have had shelter all your life. I was in the glare, burning and panting all the time. Now for a moment you have caught a glimpse of the other side. My life is made up of continuous blows like that, and hundred times worse, because of poverty, treachery, and my own foolishness! Pessimism! You will understand it, how it comes. Well, well, what shall I say to you, Mary? You know all the talks; only I say this and it is true--if it were possible to exchange grief, and had I a cheerful mind, I would exchange mine for your grief ever and always. Mother knows best._x000d_ Your ever faithful brother,_x000d_ Vivekananda

California_x000d_ 21st February, 1900_x000d_ {original in Bengali}_x000d_ My dear Akhandananda,_x000d_ I am very glad to receive your letter and go through the details of news. Learning and wisdom are superfluities, the surface glitter merely, but it is the heart that is the seat of all power. It is not in the brain but in the heart that the Atman, possessed of knowledge, power, and activity, has Its seat. "{Sanskrit}--The nerves of the heart are a hundred and one" etc. The chief nerve-centre near the heart, called the sympathetic ganglia, is where the Atman has Its citadel. The more heart you will be able to manifest, the greater will be the victory you achieve. It is only a few that understand the language of the brain, but everyone, from the Creator down to a clump of grass, understands the language that comes from the heart. But then, in our country, it is a case of rousing men that are, as it were, dead. It will take time, but if you have infinite patience and perseverance, success is bound to come. No mistake in that._x000d_ How are the English officials to blame? Is the family, of whose unnatural cruelty you have written, an isolated one in India? Or, are there plenty of such? It is the same story all over the country. But then, it is not as a result of pure wickedness that the selfishness commonly met with in our country has come. This bestial selfishness is the outcome of centuries of failure and repression. It is not real selfishness, but deep-rooted despair. It will be cured at the first inkling of success. It is only this that the English officials are noticing all round; so how can they have faith at the very outset? But tell me, do they not sympathise with any real work that they meet with? . . . _x000d_ In these days of dire famine, flood, disease, and pestilence, tell me where your Congressmen are. Will it do merely to say, "Hand the government of the country over to us"? And who is there to listen to them? If a man does work, has he to open his mouth to ask for anything? If there be two thousand people like you working in several districts, won't it be the turn of the English themselves to consult you in matter of political moment? "{Sanskrit} The wise man should achieve his object." . . . A__ was not allowed to open a centre, but what of that! Has not Kishengarh allowed it?--Let him work on without ever opening his lips; there is no use of either telling anything to anybody, or quarrelling with any. Whoever will assist in this work of the Divine Mother of the universe, will have Her grace, and whoever will oppose it will not only be "{Sanskrit}--raising a deadly enemy for nothing", but also laying the axe to his own prospects. {Sanskrit} etc.,--all in good time. Many a little makes a mickle. When a great work is being done, when the foundations are laid or a road constructed, when super-human energy is needed--it is one or two extraordinary men who silently and noiselessly work through the world of obstacles and difficulties. When thousands of people are benefited, there is a great tomtoming, and the whole country is loud in notes of praise. But then the machine has already been set agoing, and even a boy can work it, or a fool add to it some impetus. Grasp this that, that benefit done to a village or two, that orphanage with its twenty orphans, those ten or twenty workers--all these are enough; they form the nucleus, never to be destroyed. From these, hundreds of thousands of people will be benefited in time. Now we want half a dozen lions, then excellent work will be turned out by even hundreds of jackals. . . . If orphan girls happen to come to your hands for shelter, you must take them in above all else. Otherwise, Christian missionaries will take them, poor things, away! What matters it that you have no particular arrangements for them? Through the Divine Mother's will, they will be provided for. When you get a horse, never you worry about the whip. . . . Get together whomsoever you can lay your hands on, no picking and choosing now--everything will be set right in course of time. In every attempt there are many obstacles to cope with, but gradually the path becomes smooth._x000d_ Convey to the European officer many thanks from me. Work on fearlessly--there is a hero! Bravo! Thrice well done! The starting of a centre at Bhagalpur that you have written about is no doubt a good idea--enlightening the schoolboys and things of that sort. But our mission is for the destitute, the poor, and the illiterate peasantry and labouring classes, and if, after everything has been done for the first, there is spare time, then only for the gentry. Those peasants and labouring people will be won over by love. Afterwards it will be they who will collect small sums and start missions at their own villages, and gradually, from among those very men, teachers will spring._x000d_ Teach some boys and girls of the peasant classes the rudiments of learning and infuse a number of ideas into their brains. Afterwards the peasants of each village will collect funds and have one of these in their village. "{Sanskrit}--One must raise oneself by one's own exertions"--this holds good in all spheres. We help them to help themselves. That they are supplying you with your daily bread is a real bit of work done. The moment they will come to understand their own condition and feel the necessity of help and improvement, know that your work is taking effect and is in the right direction, while the little good that the moneyed classes, out of pity, do to the poor, does not last, and ultimately it does nothing _x000d_ but harm to both parties. The peasants and labouring classes are in a moribund condition, so what is needed is that the moneyed people will only help them to regain their vitality, and nothing more. Then leave the peasants and labourers to look to their own problem, to grapple with and solve it. But then you must take care not to set up class-strife between the poor peasants, the labouring people, and the wealthy classes. Make it a point not to abuse the moneyed classes. "{Sanskrit}--The wise man should achieve his own object."_x000d_ Victory to the Guru! Victory to the Mother of the Universe! What fear! Opportunity, remedy, and its application will present themselves. I do not care about the result, well or ill. I shall be happy if only you do this much of work. Wordy warfares, texts and scriptures, doctrines and dogmas--all these I am coming to loathe as poison in this my advanced age. Know this for certain that he who will work will be the crown on my head. Useless bandying of words and making noise is taking away our time, is consuming our life-energy, without pushing the cause of humanitarianism a step further. {Sanskrit}--Away with fear! Bravo! There is a hero indeed! May the blessed Guru be enthroned in your heart, and the Divine Mother guide your hands._x000d_ Yours affectionately,_x000d_ Vivekananda

Swamiji was a master storyteller and often jeweled his lectures with Hindu legends, parables, and tales from the Puranas, not for the sake of adornment, but to highlight or illustrate some principle, to focus attention on some particular teaching. Rarely, however, did he devote an entire lecture to the telling of a story, and in this respect his "Mahabharata" and "Ramayana" are without parallel in the Complete Works. It should perhaps be mentioned here that they did not fall from Swamiji’s lips in the same polished style in which they appear today. Before finding their way into print they were heavily edited by Charlotte Sevier, who served for many years at Mayavati as an assistant editor of Prabuddha Bharata.

The same is not true of "Buddhistic India." As published today, this lecture stands as it was taken down. All Swamiji’s fire and enthusiasm are there, immortalized, as it were, in his own informal yet powerful sentences that pour out as though a vast reservoir of ideas were pressing forward. He spoke of various socio-religious problems, to which, as is clear from his then recent Bengali work, Prachya 0 Paschatya ("East and West"), he had been giving much thought. One reads, for instance, his denunciation of an excess of monasticism and, more particularly, of nonresistance as a national policy. Speaking of the spread of Buddhistic monasticism, he said: "The real cause of the downfall [of India] is here. Monasticism is all very good for a few; but when you preach it in such a fashion that every man or woman who has a mind immediately gives up social life, when you find over the whole of India monasteries, some containing a hundred thousand monks, sometimes twenty thousand monks in one building huge, gigantic buildings, these monasteries, scattered all over India and, of course, centres of learning, and all that-who were left to procreate progeny, to continue the race? Only the weaklings. All the strong and vigorous minds went out. And then came national decay by the sheer loss of vigor. I will tell you of this marvellous brotherhood. It is great. But theory and idea is one thing and actual working is another thing. The idea is very great: practicing nonresistance and all that, but if all of us go out in the street and practice non¬resistance, there would be very little left in this city. That is to say, the idea is all right, but nobody has yet found a practical Solution how to attain it "

As was the case with almost all the lectures Swamiji gave at the Shakespeare Club, "The Great Teachers of the World" was unique. While he had given, and was still to give, separate lectures on one or another of the world’s great Teachers-¬Krishna, Buddha, Christ, Mohammed-this lecture was, as far as is known, the only one in which he brought these Incarnations and Prophets together and pointed out the special contributions of each. He also pointed out, as he had done at other times, the divinity common to them all. "These great Teachers are the living Gods on this earth," he cried. "Whom else should we worship? : . . These divine men have been worshipped and will be worshipped so long as man is man. Therein is our faith, therein is our hope of a reality. Of what avail is a mere mystical principle! The purpose and intent of what I have to say to you is this, that I have found it possible in my life to worship all of them, and to be ready for all that are yet to come.

One is tempted to go on quoting from Swamiji’s lectures, for each sentence seems to reveal some new facet of his thought, some fresh and vigorous flashing of truth. But his lectures and classes are published elsewhere for all to read, and, for the time being at least, I shall forgo further quotations.