After spending about a week in the holy atmosphere of Varanasi, he left the city; and those monks and devotees who had made his acquaintance wondered where the Swami Vividishaenda the name the Swami was then using had gone. He had returned to the Baranagore Math, there to spend days with his brother-disciples in meditation, study and discussion. As his out look widened as the result of his travels and his contacts with various people, so he desired that that of his brother-disciples also should.

Sometimes a dim vision of the missionary life, of ministering to the poor and downtrodden at the urge of the inner self, would present itself to the Swami's mind. This idea of service of man as the manifestation of God engrossed him at times. What better way could there be of applying the ideas of Vedanta to practical life? And he strove to inspire his brother -disciples with this new idea of religion. Even in those early days he would urge them to go to the locality of the outcastes to preach.

But the monks were quite averse to preaching. Their ideal was the realization of God, first and foremost; after that, their example would be the teacher even as their Master's had been; and the former urgings of the Swami had confirmed them in this._x000d_ Now, though he continued to insist on the necessity of making oneself fit by realization for preaching, yet sometimes the spirit of the preacher would take hold of him. Once, when this mood was on him, he said to a brother-monk who was inveighing against lectures and sermons: "Everyone is preaching; what they do unconsciously I will do consciously. Ay, even if you, my brother-monks, stand in my way, I will go and preach among the Pariahs in the lowest slums.

Preaching means expression. Because Trailanga Swami remains silent and never talks, do you think he does not preach? His very silence is a sermon! Even trees and plants are preaching!" And that is what happened later on: Swami Vivekananda preached consciously and with soul stirring eloquence what the saints had hithorto done in silence. At Baranagore, this work commenced, and his first audience was the small group of monks and devotees there.