One may ask why Swamiji gave a name-Vedanta-to the principles of religion. On the face of it, this was not necessary, for as he himself often observed, those principles have always existed, in greater or lesser degree, in every religion. And did he not write, "The real thing is the Religion taught by Sri Ramakrishna; let the Hindus call it Hinduism, and others call it in their own way"? Why, then, if the Religion could be found in established religions, did he call it by a specific name? One obvious and important reason is, of course, that the name already existed. The one religion in all its aspects had already been formulated and for thousands of years had been called Vedanta. Swamiji could not ignore this fact. I can think, however, of at least two other reasons.

First, he had, as we have seen, attempted throughout his lecture tour to define the harmony of religions in the truest sense and had concluded that it consisted in the recognition of the unity of religions or, rather, in the recognition of religion, which is always one and the same. Now, if he had not given religion a name, its concept would have remained vague, and the dangers of such vagueness are apparent. There would, for instance, be little likelihood of the essentials of religion remaining clearly defined and unadulterated if it were left for each creed to interpret them according to its particular inclinations. Compromise would be an inevitable result, and shortly the fundamentals of religion would be again lost in various dogmas. Moreover, not every religion or creed is possessed, or wants to be possessed, of all the fundamentals of religion; in fact, every religion, other than Hinduism, would be hard put to it to discover room for them within its tenets.

The second reason I can think of why Swamiji wanted to give a name to the one religion was that in so doing he not only ensured the purity of its principles, but made it possible for anyone to follow those principles without first attaching himself to a specific creed and burdening himself with forms and ceremonials not necessary to him. One could, in short, become a "Vedantin" and go straight to the heart of religion itself. "By combining some of the active and heroic elements of the West with calm virtues of the Hindus, there will come a type of men far superior to any that have ever been in this world, he had written in September 1894 to Haridas Viharidas Desai. Now in May of 1895 he wrote with firm purpose to Alasinga, "I am to create a new order of humanity here. But this new type of man could not come into existence unless he was thoroughly trained in the doctrines and practices of pure religion; and those doctrines and practices necessarily had to be defined and named, not only to safeguard them from adulteration, but to give them clarity and cohesiveness in the minds of their followers.

19 W. 38th St._x000d_ New York_x000d_ Dear Friend {E. T. Sturdy},_x000d_ I received your last duly, and as I had a previous arrangement to come to Europe by the end of this August, I take your invitation as a Divine Call._x000d_ "Truth alone triumphs, not untruth. Through truth alone lies the way to Devayana (the way to the gods)." Those who think that a little sugar-coating of untruth helps the spread of truth are mistaken and will find in the long run that a single drop of poison poisons the whole mass. . . . The man who is pure, and who dares, does all things. May the Lord ever protect you from illusion and delusion! I am ever ready to work with you, and the Lord will send us friends by the hundred, if only we be our own friends first. "The Atman alone is the friend of the Atman."_x000d_ Europe has always been the source of social, and Asia of spiritual power; and the whole history of the world is the tale of the varying combinations of those two powers. Slowly a new leaf is being turned in the story of humanity. The signs of this are everywhere. Hundreds of new plans will be created and destroyed. Only the fit will survive. And what but the true and the good is the fit?_x000d_ Yours etc.,_x000d_ Vivekananda

You will be pleased to know that the Swami has re¬turned and will hold a class tomorrow as usual, He asked me to notify the members of the classes, so as I fortunately had the list of the Wed. class [of which she had charge], that you sent me last week, I was able to do so. If you will kindly let me have the lists of the Sat. & Mon. classes, I will send them postals too. I will be over early tomorrow morning._x000d_ Yours sincerely, S.E.W.

But Miss Hamlen had had an agreement with Miss Waldo about the notices, and she meant to carry out her part of it. She replied to her ("on a portal out of respect to myself," she told Mrs. Bull) as follows:

8 p.m. April 24th _x000d_ I will send notices by Thursday evening's mail (as I agreed) to the Class Members of the Saturday morning and evening classes, and the Monday morning class, that those classes will meet again and I will then send to 33 St. the complete lists I have made of all class members._x000d_ _x000d_ Thanks for the papers, and I will send the money due._x000d_ Yours truly,_x000d_ E.L..H.

There it ended. “Do not think I am discouraged,” she wrote in her letter to Mrs. Bull. “I am amused by Miss W., so good, and so------!! To let herself be rude to me! Amused, perhaps. More likely broken hearted. But Miss Waldo had had her orders from Swamiji, and there had been no way to soften that blow.

Miss Hamlen took it valiantly. “I have sent the notices ‘as I agreed,’” she wrote to Mrs. Bull on April 26, “and will send the Class list book to 33 St. tomorrow morning.* But if Miss Farmer or Miss Thursby go to the Saturday evening class, I will go also, as I am a member of that class. In a very real sense, though perhaps unaware of it, she won a victory. “I saw Miss H. subjected to a test which few women could stand and she came out pure gold,” Ruth Ellis, show took over Miss Hamlen’s work in Swamiji’s classes, would write later to Mrs. Bull. “I consider myself fortunate in knowing her and having her for a friend._x000d_ * Miss Hamlen’s notices of Swamiji’s return to New York read:_x000d_ _x000d_ April 25th, 1895_x000d_ New York City._x000d_ _x000d_ The Swami Vivekananda has returned, and has his Classes at the usual hours, Saturdays Mondays and Wednesdays._x000d_ All interested to learn are welcome, but a basket is hung near the door of the class-room, to receive voluntary contributions from those who can contribute to the financial support of the work._x000d_ Miss S. E. Waldo,_x000d_ 249 Monroe Street,_x000d_ Brooklyn, N.Y.,_x000d_ has charge of the classes at_x000d_ 54 W. 33 St._x000d_ Yours truly,_x000d_ Elizabeth L. Hamlen

I am glad Miss Ellis (140 East 49 St.) is now assisting about the classes at 33 st. [Miss Hamlen wrote to Mrs. Bull on May 4]. She seats the people and attends to the door, etc, and Miss Waldo sits as usual by the Swami, with her note book. The Swami looked well and gave a very good lesson. [And on May 9:] I learn so much more since I sit quietly in a corner and have my mind only on his teaching. The other ladies, Miss Waldo and Miss Ellis, have been to classes since the beginning in January, so I feel conscientious about not working during the class hour.

And Swamiji was "lovely" to Miss Hamlen. "He talked with me when everybody was gone [after the Wednesday morning class],” she wrote happily. "I ate rice with him, and he said he wishes to give me two books. I said no he must not, but he said I must not say any more against a present from him." And in another letter written on this same day: "What a dear child he is he is really lovely to me now, and I shall never again let myself seem practical.

All was well with Landsberg, too-or almost so. He came to see his guru on the evening of May 8 and, according to Miss Hamlen, who heard it from Swamiji, they had a long and good talk together. But it was to be another week or so before the disciple was fully soothed.

Taking down names and giving notices is a big task, no doubt, and I am very thankful to both [Mr. Landsberg and Miss Hamlen] for doing that for me. But I am thoroughly persuaded that it is laziness. So henceforth I am doing and will do it all myself and thus avoid all further disturbance to others and to myself. . . . . After all, though I am very, very grateful to the young lady, Miss Hamlin, for the great hope and encouragement she gave me of introducing me to the “right sort of New Yorkers” and for the practical help she has given me, I think I had better do my little work with my own hands. It is nothing yet to seek others’ help. It is only a very very small bit of work.

Continuing in a sterner tone, he reminded Mrs. Bull that he would work in his own way, accepting help and advice only from a very few, whom he himself would choose:

Through the mercy of Ramakrishna, my instinct “sizes up” almost infallibly a human face as soon as I see it, and the result is this: you may do anything you please with my affairs, I will not even murmur;--I will be only too glad to take Miss Farmer's advice, in spite of ghosts and spooks. Behind the spooks I see a heart of immense love. . . . Even I will allow Landsberg to "monkey" with my affairs from time to time; but here I put a full stop. Help from any other persons besides these frighten me. That is all I can say. Not only for the help you have given me, but from my instinct (or, as I call it, inspiration of my Master), I regard you as my mother and will always abide by any advice or command you may have for me--but only personally. When you select a medium, I will beg leave to exercise my choice. That is all.

With the exception of this vacation in April, his classes continued steadily from the end of January through the month of May. "The classes are going on with a boom," he wrote to Mrs. Hale on April 26, “almost every day I have one and they are packed full." But from a financial point of view, the work was not at all successful. Indeed, it hardly could have been, for, as was said earlier, the Swami charged nothing for, the classes in his rooms, and although some of his followers were wealthy, most were poor and could make only few and small contributions, barely enough to maintain the classes themselves. The money earned from his public lectures, moreover, was meagre, for the lectures had "to go through so many hands". The rent of a hall, for instance, took a large toll. "Financially, the winter's work was no success at all," he wrote to Mrs. Hale on May 16 towards the close of the season. "I could barely keep myself up. But spiritually [it] was very great." And the Swami's students, poor though they were, came forward to keep the classes going. "My pupils have come round me with help," he wrote to Mrs. Bull in May, "and the classes will go on nicely now no doubt." He was happy that it was so. "I was so glad at it, because teaching has become a part of my life, as necessary to my life as eating or breathing."

The spiritual aspect of his work was, of course, the Swami's main concern. He could readily have commanded a large following had he wanted, but his greatest endeavour during this period was the training of those deeply earnest souls on whom he could count to carry on his work. This was the year of his hardest work and highest hopes in this direction. He went to the very heart of things in his efforts to make at least a few 'Men and women see his vision and become free. He did not believe in external, success; he was truly ready to wait even for centuries.

His immediate hope, however, was to break down religious sectarianism and superstition, to do, away with spiritual dependence, and to place before men the truths of the Advaita Vedanta—truths which make one stand on one's own feet, afraid of nothing, desirous of nothing, indifferent to the blows of fate. He wanted each individual to realize the One Reality, both within as the immeasurable Self, and without as the divine oneness of all life.

The Swami was also eager to spread the ideals underlying the highest spiritual realizations of all religions, making of each Saviour and World-teacher a refulgent torchlight of truth. He himself could worship at all altars, seeing the same light within the forms of every religious belief. His personality was literally saturated with all great ideals and his spirituality was of unlimited richness, the treasures of which he freely distributed. He deplored the narrowness of creedal religions.

Swamiji returned to his lodgings in New York on April 23 and found Landsberg gone. But he had only blessings for his disciple. “The trip did me good,” he wrote to Mrs. Bull, “and I enjoyed the country and the hills, especially Mr. Leggett’s country-house in New York State. Poor Landsberg has gone from this house. Neither has he left me his address. May the Lord bless Landsberg wherever he goes! He is one of the few sincere souls I have had the privilege in this life to come across. All is for good. All conjunctions are for subsequent disjunction. I hope I shall be perfectly able to work alone. The less help from men, the more from the Lord!

But Swamiji’s New York work did require helpers. Even during his absence he had, as Miss Hamlen put it, “to be held together.” Dutifully, she had written in her flowing hand to all the class members in both New York and Brooklyn, letting them know that there would be no class on Saturday, April 13. She sent out fifty or more letters again in regard to the Monday class, and on Tuesday she wrote to everyone yet again, assuring them this last time that she would inform them when the classes would reopen. Miss Hamlen did her best to push Swamiji to success. She never understood, she had no way of understanding, that her concepts of success were meaningless vis-à-vis his work. Nor could he brook them.

On his return to New York, he was surprised to find that Mr. Landsberg, who had been staying with him, had left without leaving any information behind. About this the Swami wrote to Mrs. Bull: "Poor Landsberg has gone from this house. Neither has he left one his address. May the Lord bless Landsberg wherever he goes! He is one of the few sincere souls I have had the privilege in this life to come across."

54 W. 33rd Street_x000d_ New York_x000d_ 24th April, 1895_x000d_ Dear Friend {Mr. E. T. Sturdy},_x000d_ I am perfectly aware that although some truth underlies the mass of mystical thought which has burst upon the Western world of late, it is for the most part full of motives, unworthy, or insane. For this reason, I have never had anything to do with these phases of religion, either in India or elsewhere, and mystics as a class are not very favourable to me. . . . _x000d_ I quite agree with you that only the Advaita philosophy can save mankind, whether in East or West, from "devil worship" and kindred superstitions, giving tone and strength to the very nature of man. India herself requires this, quite as much or even more than the West. Yet it is hard uphill work, for we have first to create a taste, then teach, and lastly proceed to build up the whole fabric._x000d_ Perfect sincerity, holiness, gigantic intellect, and an all-conquering will. Let only a handful of men work with these, and the whole world will be revolutionised. I did a good deal of platform work in this country last year, and received plenty of applause, but found that I was only working for myself. It is the patient upbuilding of character, the intense struggle to realise the truth, which alone will tell in the future of humanity. So this year I am hoping to work along this line--training up to practical Advaita realisation a small band of men and women. I do not know how far I shall succeed. The West is the field for work if a man wants to benefit humanity, rather than his own particular sect or country. I agree perfectly as to your idea of a magazine. But I have no_x000d_ business capacity at all to do these things. I can teach and preach, and sometimes write. But I have intense faith in Truth. The Lord will send help and hands to work with me. Only let me be perfectly pure, perfectly sincere, and perfectly unselfish._x000d_ "Truth alone triumphs, not untruth; through truth alone stretches the way to the Lord" (Atharva-Veda). He who gives up the little self for the world will find the whole universe his. . . . I am very uncertain about coming to England. I know no one there, and here I am doing some work. The Lord will guide, in His own time.

He had a small following, which included, for a time at least, Miss Ellen Waldo, "a soul filled with love of God and all mankind." Miss Waldo had, it would seem, been momentarily upset by Swamiji's prolonged absence. "Miss Waldo is serene again, evidently," Miss Hamlen would write to Mrs. Bull on April 24, "and very sorry for the Swami's exhaustion etc.' She is a very good woman to do work in regular classes. Among Landsberg's followers was also; he wrote, "Friedberg, my faithful disciple. . . . And a Few other gentlemen, lawyers and physicians, whose materialism I succeeded to supplant by true religious devotion. They will meet in my room once a week. . . . Of course we shall select an evening that will not interfere with the Swami's classes; for-needless to say-I shall Always direct to the Swami as to the master from whose treasure house of divine knowledge I picked up but a few precious jewels.

On the bright side, Landsberg returned to Mrs. Bull a check she had sent to him for his personal use. It was not that he did not need the money; though he earned a salary from his job with the Tribune, it was small, and he gave most of it to those who had less than he. He had true compassion for the poor and very little care for his own physical comfort, and for these qualities alone Swamiji would have cherished him.

54 W. 33 New York_x000d_ 25th April, 1895_x000d_ Dear Brother {Dr. I. Janes},_x000d_ I was away in the Catskill mountains and it was almost impossible to get a letter regularly posted from where I was--so accept my apology for the delay in offering you my most heartfelt thanks for your letter in the "Eagle"._x000d_ It was so scholarly, truthful and noble and withal so permeated with your natural universal love for the good and true everywhere. It is a great work to bring this world into a spirit of sympathy with each other but it should be done no doubt when such brave souls as you still hold your own. Lord help you ever and ever my brother and may you live long to carry on the mighty work you and your society has undertaken._x000d_ With my gratitude and love to you and to the members of the Ethical Society._x000d_ I remain Yours ever truly,_x000d_ Vivekananda

To Mrs. G. W. Hale_x000d_ [New York_x000d_ April 25, 1895]_x000d_ Dear Mother,_x000d_ I was away a long time in the country. Came back day before yesterday._x000d_ I think the summer coat is in Chicago. If so, will you kindly send it over c/o Miss Phillips, 19 W. 38 Str., New York? It is getting hot here every day._x000d_ I will remain in New York till the end of May, at least._x000d_ Hoping you are all in perfect health. I remain yours truly,_x000d_ Vivekananda

54 W. 33rd Street, New York_x000d_ 25th April, 1895_x000d_ Dear Mrs. Bull,_x000d_ The day before yesterday I received a kind note from Miss Farmer including a cheque for a hundred dollars for the Barbar House lectures. She is coming to New York next Saturday. I will of course tell her to put my name in her circulars; and what is more, I cannot go to Greenacre now; I have arranged to go to the Thousand Islands, wherever that may be. There is a cottage belonging to Miss Dutcher, one of my students, and a few of us will be there in rest and peace and seclusion. I want to manufacture a few "Yogis" out of the materials of the classes, and a busy farm like Greenacre is the last place for that, while the other is quite out of the way, and none of the curiosity-seekers will dare go there._x000d_ I am very glad that Miss Hamlin took down the names of the 130 persons who come to the Jnana-Yoga class. There are 50 more who come to the Wednesday Yoga class and about 50 more to the Monday class. Mr. Landsberg had all the names; and they will come anyhow, names or no names. . . . If they do not, others will, and so it will go on--the Lord be praised._x000d_ Taking down names and giving notices is a big task, no doubt, and I am very thankful to both of them for doing that for me. But I am thoroughly persuaded that it is laziness on my part, and therefore immoral, to depend on others, and always evil comes out of laziness. So henceforth I will do it all myself. . . . _x000d_ However, I will be only too glad to take in any one of Miss Hamlin's "right sort of persons", but unfortunately for me, not one such has as yet turned up. It is the duty of the teacher always to turn the "right sort" out of the most "unrighteous sort" of persons. After all, though I am very, very grateful to the young lady, Miss Hamlin, for the great hope and encouragement she gave me of introducing me to the "right sort of New Yorkers" and for the practical help she has given me, I think I had better do my little work with my own hands. . . . _x000d_ I am only glad that you have such a great opinion about Miss Hamlin. I for one am glad to know that you will help her, for she requires it. But, mother, through the mercy of Ramakrishna, my instinct "sizes up" almost infallibly a human face as soon as I see it, and the result is this: you may do anything you please with my affairs, I will not even murmur ;--I will be only too glad to take Miss Farmer's advice, in spite of ghosts and spooks. Behind the spooks I see a heart of immense love, only covered with a thin film of laudable ambition--even that is bound to vanish in a few years. Even I will allow Landsberg to "monkey" with my affairs from time to time; but here I put a full stop. Help from any other persons besides these frightens me. That is all I can say. Not only for the help you have given me, but from my instinct (or, as I call it, inspiration of my Master ), I regard you as my mother and will always abide by any advice you may have for me--but only personally . When you select a medium, I will beg leave to exercise my choice. That is all._x000d_ Herewith I send the English gentleman's letter. I have made a few notes on the margin to explain Hindustani words._x000d_ Your obedient son,_x000d_ Vivekananda

Nor had Dr. Janes made these points fully clear. But his masterful article was reply enough for the general public; there was no answer to it. Swamiji was much touched by his friend's vigorous championship of truth and expressed his appreciation in the following letter from New York, dated April 25,1895.

Dear brother _x000d_ _x000d_ I was away in the Catskill mountains[at Ridgely Manor] and it was almost impossible to get a letter regularly posted from where I was-so accept my apology for the delay in offering you my most heartfelt thanks for your letter in the "Eagle."_x000d_ It was so scholarly, truthful, noble and withal so permeated with your natural universal love for the good & true everywhere. It is a great work to bring this world into a spirit of sympathy with each other but it shall be done no doubt when such brave souls as you still hold your own. Lord bless you ever & ever my brother and may you live long to carry on the mighty work you and your society has undertaken_x000d_ With my gratitude & love to_x000d_ you and to the members of the Ethical Society _x000d_ I remain yours ever truly21_x000d_ Vivekananda

After his return from Ridgely, Swamiji wrote two letters to Mrs. Hale. Neither is dated, but their envelopes bear the postmarks, respectively, of April 25 and 26. (It is, incidentally, clear from both letters that he had had no intention of going to Chicago at this time as Landsberg had thought.) Since neither letter has been heretofore published, both are given here in full.

[April 25]_x000d_ _x000d_ Dear Mother_x000d_ _x000d_ I was away a long time in the country. Came back day before yesterday._x000d_ I think the summer coat is in chicago. if so will you kindly send it over c/o Miss Phillips 19 W. 38 str New York? It is getting hot here every day_x000d_ _x000d_ I will remain in New York till the end of May at least. Hoping you are all in perfect health I remain yours tly._x000d_ Vivekananda

54 W. 33._x000d_ New York_x000d_ [April 26]_x000d_ _x000d_ Dear Mother_x000d_ _x000d_ Perhaps you did not receive my letter asking you to send the Calcutta pamphlets about the Paramhansa Ramkrishna. Kindly send them to me at 54 W. 33. And also the pamphlets about the Calcutta meeting if you have any. Also the summer coat to the care of Miss Phillips 19 W. 38._x000d_ As I do not see any probability of my going soon to Chicago—I am thinking of drawing all my money from the Chicago bank to New York. Will you kindly ascertain the exact total amount I have in Chicago? So that I may draw it out at once and deposit it in some New York bank._x000d_ _x000d_ Kindly do these and I will bother you no more. I have written to India long ago about the rugs. I do not know whether Dewanji [Shri Haridas Viharidas Desai, Dewan of Junagadh] is alive or dead. I have no information._x000d_ _x000d_ I am all right and will be more than a month yet in Newyork. After that I am going to the Thousand Islands wherever that place may be for a little summer quiet and rest. Mrs. Bagley has been down here to see me and attended several of my classes._x000d_ _x000d_ The classes are going on with a boom; almost every day I have one, and they are packed full. But no “money” except they maintain themselves. I charge no fees. Except as the members contribute to the rent & c voluntarily._x000d_ _x000d_ It is mostly probable that I will go away this summer. With my love to all ever gratefully yours._x000d_ Vivekananda

To Mrs. G. W. Hale_x000d_ 54 W. 33._x000d_ New York_x000d_ [April 26, 1895]_x000d_ Dear Mother,_x000d_ Perhaps you did not receive my letter asking you to send the Calcutta pamphlets about the Paramahamsa Ramakrishna. Kindly send them to me at 54 W. 33, and also the pamphlets about the Calcutta meeting if you have any. Also the summer coat to the care of Miss Phillips, 19 W. 38._x000d_ As I do not see any probability of my going soon to Chicago, I am thinking of drawing all my money from the Chicago bank to New York. Will you kindly ascertain the exact total amount I have in Chicago so that I may draw it out at once and deposit it in some New York bank?_x000d_ Kindly do these and I will bother you no more. I have written to India long ago about the rugs. I do not know whether Dewanji is alive or dead. I have no information._x000d_ I am all right and will be more than a month yet in New York. After that I am going to the Thousand Islands__wherever that place may be__for a little summer quiet and rest. Mrs. Bagley has been down here to see me and attended several of my classes._x000d_ The classes are going on with a boom; almost every day I have one, and they are packed full. But no "money"__except they maintain themselves. I charge no fees, except as the mem¬bers contribute to the rent etc. voluntarily._x000d_ It is mostly probable that I will go away this summer._x000d_ With my love to all,_x000d_ Ever gratefully yours,_x000d_ Vivekananda

As Swamiji wrote to Mrs. Hale on April 26, his classes, though flourishing, were bringing only enough money to pay for the rent of the parlor rooms where they were held. Sometimes, as we have seen earlier, they had not brought even this much; and now again the collections fell short. A week later, on May a, he wrote to Mrs. Bull, "The classes are going on, but I am sorry to say, though the attendance is large, it does not even pay enough to cover the rent. I will try this week and then give up. But help came. A few days later Swamiji wrote again to Mrs. Bull: "Since writing to you my pupils have come round me with help and the classes will go on nicely now no doubt. I am so glad at it because teaching has become a part of my life, as necessary to my life as eating or breathing. Just as his Master had said. One recalls that less than ten years earlier Swamiji had vehemently declared to Sri Ramakrishna that he would not teach. "Your very bones will do it, Sri Ramakrishna had replied. And to be sure, his mission as world teacher was now the uppermost reason in his mind for staying in the Western world. On this same date, May 6, he wrote in a letter to Alasinga, "I am to create a new order of humanity here who are sincere believers in God and care nothing for the world. This must be slow, very slow. But Swamiji's mission was not for a day.

He went on holding classes throughout the month of May, and in order to supplement the contributions of his students, perhaps also to earn a little money for his Madras disciples, whom he was urging to launch an English-language magazine, and, above all, to touch a wider public, he gave more outside Lectures.

54 W. 33 New York_x000d_ May, 1895_x000d_ Dear __,_x000d_ Since writing to you my pupils have come round me with help, and the classes will go on nicely now no doubt._x000d_ I was so glad at it because teaching has become a part of my life, as necessary to my life as eating or breathing._x000d_ Yours,_x000d_ Vivekananda_x000d_ PS. I saw a lot of things about __ in an English paper, the Borderland . __ is doing good work in India, making the Hindus, very much to appreciate their own religion. . . . I do not find any scholarship in __'s writing, . . . nor do I find any spirituality whatever. However Godspeed to anyone who wants to do good to the world._x000d_ How easily this world can be duped by humbugs and what a mass of fraud has gathered over the devoted head of poor humanity since the dawn of civilisation

This is what one of your ancestors said: "Even in this life, they have conquered relativity whose mind is fixed in sameness"--one who is believed to be God incarnate. We all believe it. Are his words then vain and without meaning? If not, and we know they are not, any attempt against this perfect equality of all creation, irrespective of birth, sex, or even qualification, is a terrible mistake, and no one can be saved until he has attained to this idea of sameness._x000d_ Follow, therefore, noble Prince, the teachings of the Vedanta, not as explained by this or that commentator, but as the Lord within you understands them. Above all, follow this great doctrine of sameness in all things, through all beings, seeing the same God in all._x000d_ This is the way to freedom; inequality, the way to bondage. No man and no nation can attempt to gain physical freedom without physical equality, nor mental freedom without mental equality._x000d_ Ignorance, inequality, and desire are the three causes of human misery, and each follows the other in inevitable union. Why should a man think himself above any other man, or even an animal? It is the same throughout:_x000d_ {Sanskrit}_x000d_ --"Thou art the man, Thou the woman, Thou art the young man, Thou the young woman."_x000d_ Many will say, "That is all right for the Sannyasins, but we are householders." No doubt, a householder having many other duties to perform, cannot as fully attain to this sameness; yet this should be also their ideal, for it is the ideal of all societies, of all mankind, all animals, and all nature, to attain to this sameness. But alas! They think inequality is the way to attain equality, as if they could come to right by doing wrong!_x000d_ This is the bane of human nature, the curse upon mankind, the root of all misery--this inequality. This is the source of all bondage, physical, mental, and spiritual._x000d_ {Sanskrit}_x000d_ --"Since seeing the Lord equally existent everywhere, he injures not Self by self, and so goes to the Highest Goal" (Gita, XIII. 28). This one saying contains, in a few words, the universal way to salvation._x000d_ You, Rajputs, have been the glories of ancient India. With your degradation came national decay, and India can only be raised if the descendants of the Kshatriyas co-operate with the descendants of the Brahmins, not to share the spoils of pelf and power, but to help the weak, to enlighten the ignorant, and to restore the lost glory of the holy land of their forefathers._x000d_ And who can say but that the time is propitious? Once more the wheel is turning up, once more vibrations have been set in motion from India, which are destined at no distant day to reach the farthest limits of the earth. One voice has spoken, whose echoes are rolling on and gathering strength every day, a voice even mightier than those which have preceded it, for it is the summation for them all. Once more the voice that spoke to the sages on the banks of the Sarasvati, the voice whose echoes reverberated from peak to peak of the "Father of Mountains", and descended upon the plains through Krishna, Buddha, and Chaitanya in all-carrying floods, has spoken again. Once more the doors have opened. Enter ye into the realms of light, the gates have been opened wide once more._x000d_ And you, my beloved Prince--you the scion of a race who are the living pillars upon which rests the religion eternal, its sworn defenders and helpers, the descendants of Rama and Krishna, will you remain outside? I know, this cannot be. Yours, I am sure, will be the first hand that will be stretched forth to help religion once more. And when I think of you, Raja Ajit Singh, one in whom the well-known scientific attainments of your house have been joined to a purity of character of which a saint ought to be proud, to an unbounded love for humanity, I cannot help believing in the glorious renaissance of the religion eternal, when such hands are willing to rebuild it again._x000d_ May the blessings of Ramakrishna be on you and yours for ever and ever, and that you may live long for the good of many, and for the spread of truth is the constant prayer of--_x000d_ Vivekananda.

During the residence of the Swamiji in America, the following Address from the Maharaja of Khetri (Rajputana), dated March 4th, 1895, was received by him:

My dear Swamiji,_x000d_ As the head of this Durbar (a formal stately assemblage) held today for this special purpose, I have much pleasure in conveying to you, in my own name and that of my subjects, the heartfelt thanks of this State for your worthy representation of Hinduism at the Parliament of Religions, held at Chicago, in America._x000d_ I do not think the general principles of Hinduism could be expressed more accurately and clearly in English than what you have done, with all the restrictions imposed by the very natural shortcomings of language itself._x000d_ The influence of your speech and behaviour in foreign lands has not only spread admiration among men of different countries and different religions, but has also served to familiarise you with them, to help in the furtherance of your unselfish cause. This is very highly and inexpressibly appreciated by us all, and we should feel to be failing in our duty, were I not to write to you formally at least these few lines, expressing our sincere gratitude for all the trouble you have taken in going to foreign countries, and to expound in the American Parliament of Religions the truths of our ancient religion which we ever hold so dear. It is certainly applicable to the pride of India that it has been fortunate in possessing the privilege of having secured so able a representative as yourself._x000d_ Thanks are also due to those noble souls whose efforts succeeded in organising the Parliament of Religions, and who accorded to you a very enthusiastic reception. As you were quite a foreigner in that continent, their kind treatment of you is due to their love of the several qualifications you possess, and this speaks highly of their noble nature._x000d_ I herewith enclose twenty printed copies of this letter, and have to request that, keeping this one with yourself, you will kindly distribute the other copies among your friends._x000d_ With best regards,_x000d_ I remain,_x000d_ Yours very sincerely,_x000d_ RAJA AJIT SINGH BAHADUR OF KHETRI

The Swamiji sent the following reply:

"Whenever virtue subsides, and wickedness raises its head, I manifest Myself to restore the glory of religion"--are the words, O noble Prince, of the Eternal One in the holy Gita, striking the keynote of the pulsating ebb and flow of the spiritual energy in the universe. _x000d_ These changes are manifesting themselves again and again in rhythms peculiar to themselves, and like every other tremendous change, though affecting, more or less, every particle within their sphere of action, they show their effects more intensely upon those particles which are naturally susceptible to their power.

As in a universal sense, the primal state is a state of sameness of the qualitative forces--a disturbance of this equilibrium and all succeeding struggles to regain it, composing what we call the manifestation of nature, this universe, which state of things remains as long as the primitive sameness is not reached--so, in a restricted sense on our own earth, differentiation and its inevitable counterpart, this struggle towards homogeneity, must remain as long as the human race shall remain as such, creating strongly marked peculiarities between ethnic divisions, sub-races and even down to individuals in all parts of the world.

In this world of impartial division and balance, therefore, each nation represents, as it were, a wonderful dynamo for the storage and distribution of a particular species of energy, and amidst all other possessions that particular property shines forth as the special characteristic of that race. And as any upheaval in any particular part of human nature, though affecting others more or less, stirs to its very depth that nation of which it is a special characteristic, and from which as a centre it generally starts, so any commotion in the religious world is sure to produce momentous changes in India, that land which again and again has had to furnish the centre of the wide-spread religious upheavals; for, above all, India is the land of religion.

Each man calls that alone real which helps him to realise his ideal. To the worldly-minded, everything that can be converted into money is real, that which cannot be so converted is unreal. To the man of a domineering spirit, anything that will conduce to his ambition of ruling over his fellow men is real--the rest is naught; and man finds nothing in that which does not echo back the heartbeats of his special love in life.

Those whose only aim is to barter the energies of life for gold, or name, or any other enjoyment; those to whom the tramp of embattled cohorts is the only manifestation of power; those to whom the enjoyments of the senses are the only bliss that life can give--to these, India will ever appear as an immense desert whose every blast is deadly to the development of life, as it is known by them.

But to those whose thirst for life has been quenched for ever by drinking from the stream of immortality that flowers from far away beyond the world of the senses, whose souls have cast away--as a serpent its slough--the three-fold bondages of lust, gold, and fame, who, from their height of calmness, look with love and compassion upon the petty quarrels and jealousies and fights for little gilded puff-balls, filled with dust, called "enjoyment" by those under a sense-bondage; to those whose accumulated force of past good deeds has caused the scales of ignorance to fall off from their eyes, making them see through the vanity of name and form--to such wheresoever they be, India, the motherland and eternal mine of spirituality, stands transfigured, a beacon of hope to everyone in search of Him who is the only real Existence in a universe of vanishing shadows.

The majority of mankind can only understand power when it is presented to them in a concrete form, fitted to their perceptions. To them, the rush and excitement of war, with its power and spell, is something very tangible, and any manifestation of life that does not come like a whirlwind, bearing down everything before it, is to them as death. And India, for centuries at the feet of foreign conquerors, without any idea or hope of resistance, without the least solidarity among its masses, without the least idea of patriotism, must needs appear to such, as a land of rotten bones, a lifeless putrescent mass.

It is sad--the fittest alone survive. How is it, then, that this most unfitted of all races, according to commonly accepted ideas, could bear the most awful misfortunes that ever befall a race, and yet not show the least signs of decay? How is it that, while the multiplying powers of the so-called vigorous and active races are dwindling every day, the immoral (?) Hindu shows a power of increase beyond them all? Great laurels are due, no doubt, to those who can deluge the world with blood at a moment's notice; great indeed is the glory of those who, to keep up a population of a few millions in plenty, have to starve half the population of the earth, but is no credit due to those who can keep hundreds of millions in peace and plenty, without snatching the bread from the mouth of anyone else? Is there no power displayed in bringing up and guiding the destinies of countless millions of human beings, through hundreds of centuries, without the least violence to others?

The mythologists of all ancient races supply us with fables of heroes whose life was concentrated in a certain small portion of their bodies, and until that was touched they remained invulnerable. It seems as if each nation also has such a peculiar centre of life, and so long as that remains untouched, no amount of misery and misfortune can destroy it.

In religion lies the vitality of India, and so long as the Hindu race do not forget the great inheritance of their forefathers, there is no power on earth to destroy them.

Nowadays everybody blames those who constantly look back to their past. It is said that so much looking back to the past is the cause of all India's woes. To me, on the contrary, it seems that the opposite is true. So long as they forgot the past, the Hindu nation remained in a state of stupor; and as soon as they have begun to look into their past, there is on every side a fresh manifestation of life. It is out of this past that the future has to be moulded; this past will become the future.

The more, therefore, the Hindus study the past, the more glorious will be their future, and whoever tries to bring the past to the door of everyone, is a great benefactor to his nation. The degeneration of India came not because the laws and customs of the ancients were bad, but because they were not allowed to be carried to their legitimate conclusions.

Every critical student knows that the social laws of India have always been subject to great periodic changes. At their inception, these laws were the embodiment of a gigantic plan, which was to unfold itself slowly through time. The great seers of ancient India saw so far ahead of their time that the world has to wait centuries yet to appreciate their wisdom, and it is this very inability on the part of their own descendants to appreciate the full scope of this wonderful plan that is the one and only cause of the degeneration of India.

Ancient India had for centuries been the battlefield for the ambitious projects of two of her foremost classes--the Brahmins and the Kshatriyas.

On the other hand, the priesthood stood between the lawless social tyranny of the princes over the masses, whom the Kshatriyas declared to be their legal food. On the other hand, the Kshatriya power was the one potent force which struggled with any success against the spiritual tyranny of the priesthood and the ever-increasing chain of ceremonials which they were forging to bind down the people with.

The tug of war began in the earliest periods of the history of our race, and throughout the Shrutis it can be distinctly traced. A momentary lull came when Shri Krishna, leading the faction of Kshatriya power and of Jnana, showed the way to reconciliation. The result was the teachings of the Gita--the essence of philosophy, of liberality, of religion. Yet the causes were there, and the effect must follow.

The ambition of these two classes to be the masters of the poor and ignorant was there, and the strife once more became fierce. The meagre literature that has come down to us from that period brings to us but faint echoes of that mighty past strife, but at last it broke out as a victory for the Kshatriyas, a victory for Jnana, for liberty--and ceremonial had to go down, much of it for ever. This upheaval was what is known as the Buddhistic reformation. On the religious side, it represented freedom from ceremonial; on the political side, overthrow of the priesthood by the Kshatriyas.

It is a significant fact that the two greatest men ancient India produced, were both Kshatriyas--Krishna and Buddha--and still more significant is the fact that both of these God-men threw open the door of knowledge to everyone, irrespective of birth or sex.

In spite of its wonderful moral strength, Buddhism was extremely iconoclastic; and much of its force being spent in merely negative attempts, it had to die out in the land of its birth, and what remained of it became full of superstitions and ceremonials, a hundred times cruder than those it was intended to suppress. Although it partially succeeded in putting down the animal sacrifices of the Vedas, it filled the land with temples, images, symbols, and bones of saints.

In spite of its wonderful moral strength, Buddhism was extremely iconoclastic; and much of its force being spent in merely negative attempts, it had to die out in the land of its birth, and what remained of it became full of superstitions and ceremonials, a hundred times cruder than those it was intended to suppress. Although it partially succeeded in putting down the animal sacrifices of the Vedas, it filled the land with temples, images, symbols, and bones of saints.

Above all, in the medley of Aryans, Mongols, and aborigines which it created, it unconsciously led the way to some of the hideous Vamacharas. This was especially the reason why this travesty of the teaching of the great Master had to be driven out of India by Shri Shankara and his band of Sannyasins.

Thus even the current of life, set in motion by the greatest soul that ever wore a human form, the Bhagavan Buddha himself, became a miasmic pool, and India had to wait for centuries until Shankara arose, followed in quick succession by Ramanuja and Madhva.

By this time, an entirely new chapter had opened in the history of India. The ancient Kshatriyas and the Brahmins had disappeared. The land between the Himalayas and the Vindhyas, the home of the Aryas, the land which gave birth to Krishna and Buddha, the cradle of great Rajarshis and Brahmarshis, became silent, and from the very farther end of the Indian Peninsula, from races alien in speech and form, from families claiming descent from the ancient Brahmins, came the reaction against the corrupted Buddhism.

What had become of the Brahmins and Kshatriyas of Aryavarta? They had entirely disappeared, except here and there a few mongrel clans claiming to be Brahmins and Kshatriyas, and in spite of their inflated, self-laudatory assertions that the whole world ought to learn from {Sanskrit}, they had to sit in sackcloth and ashes, in all humility, to learn at the feet of the Southerners. The result was the bringing back of the Vedas to India--a revival of Vedanta, such as India never before had seen; even the householders began to study the Aranyakas.

In the Buddhistic movement, the Kshatriyas were the real leaders, and whole masses of them become Buddhists. In the zeal of reform and conversion, the popular dialects had been almost exclusively cultivated to the neglect of Sanskrit, and the larger portion of Kshatriyas had become disjointed from the Vedic literature and Sanskrit learning. Thus this wave of reform, which came from the South, benefited to a certain extent the priesthood, and the priests only. For the rest of India's millions, it forged more chains than they had ever known before._x000d_ The Kshatriyas had always been the backbone of India, so also they had been the supporters of science and liberty, and their voices had rung out again and again to clear the land from superstitions; and throughout the history of India they ever formed the invulnerable barrier to aggressive priestly tyranny.

When the greater part of their number sank into ignorance, and another portion mixed their blood with savages from Central Asia and lent their swords to establish the rules of priests in India, her cup became full to the brim, and down sank the land of Bharata, not to rise again, until the Kshatriya rouses himself, and making himself free, strikes the chains from the feet of the rest. Priestcraft is the bane of India. Can man degrade his brother, and himself escape degradation?

Know, Rajaji, the greatest of all truths, discovered by your ancestors, is that the universe is one. Can one injure anyone without injuring himself? The mass of Brahmin and Kshatriya tyranny has recoiled upon their own heads with compound interest; and a thousand years of slavery and degradation is what the inexorable law of Karma is visiting upon them.

In the great Sanskrit epic, the Mahabharata, the story is told how the hero, Yudhishthira, when asked by Dharma to tell what was the most wonderful thing in the world, replied, that it was the persistent belief of mankind in their own deathlessness in spite of their witnessing death everywhere around them almost every moment of their lives. And, in fact, this is the most stupendous wonder in human life. In spite of all arguments to the contrary urged in different times by different schools, in spite of the inability of reason to penetrate the veil of mystery which will ever hang between the sensuous and the supersensuous worlds, man is thoroughly persuaded that he cannot die._x000d_ We may study all our lives, and in the end fail to bring the problem of life and death to the plane of rational demonstration, affirmative or negative. We may talk or write, preach or teach, for or against the permanency or impermanency of human existence as much as we like; we may become violent partisans of this side or that; we may invent names by the hundred, each more intricate than its predecessor, and lull ourselves into a momentary rest under the delusion of our having solved the problem once for all; we may cling with all our powers to any one of the curious religious superstitions or the far more objectionable scientific superstitions--but in the end, we find ourselves playing an external game in the bowling alley of reason and raising intellectual pin after pin, only to be knocked over again and again._x000d_ But behind all this mental strain and torture, not infrequently productive of more dangerous results than mere games, stands a fact unchallenged and unchallengeable--the fact, the wonder, which the Mahabharata points out as the inability of our mind to conceive our own annihilation. Even to imagine my own annihilation I shall have to stand by and look on as a witness._x000d_ Now, before trying to understand what this curious phenomenon means, we want to note that upon this one fact the whole world stands. The permanence of the external world is inevitably joined to the permanence of the internal; and, however plausible any theory of the universe may seem which asserts the permanence of the one and denies that of the other, the theorist himself will find that in his own mechanism not one conscious action is possible, without the permanence of both the internal and the external worlds being one of the factors in the motive cause. Although it is perfectly true that when the human mind transcends its own limitations, it finds the duality reduced to an indivisible unity, on this side of the unconditioned, the whole objective world--that is to say, the world we know--is and can be alone known to us as existing for the subject, and therefore, before we would be able to conceive the annihilation of the subject we are bound to conceive the annihilation of the object._x000d_ So far it is plain enough. But now comes the difficulty. I cannot think of myself ordinarily as anything else but a body. My idea of my own permanence includes my idea of myself as a body. But the body is obviously impermanent, as is the whole of nature--a constantly vanishing quantity._x000d_ Where, then, is this permanence?_x000d_ There is one more wonderful phenomenon connected with our lives, without which "who will be able to live, who will be able to enjoy life a moment?"--the idea of freedom._x000d_ This is the idea that guides each footstep of ours, makes our movements possible, determines our relations to each other--nay, is the very warp and woof in the fabric of human life. Intellectual knowledge tries to drive it inch by inch from its territory, post after post is snatched away from its domains, and each step is made fast and iron-bound with the railroadings of cause and effect. But it laughs at all our attempts, and, lo, it keeps itself above all this massive pile of law and causation with which we tried to smother it to death! How can it be otherwise? The limited always requires a higher generalisation of the unlimited to explain itself. The bound can only be explained by the free, the caused by the uncaused. But again, the same difficulty is also here. What is free? The body or even the mind? It is apparent to all that they are as much bound by law as anything else in the universe._x000d_ Now the problem resolves itself into this dilemma: either the whole universe is a mass of never-ceasing change and nothing more, irrevocably bound by the law of causation, not one particle having a unity of itself, yet is curiously producing an ineradicable delusion of permanence and freedom, or there is in us and in the universe something which is permanent and free, showing that the basal constitutional belief of the human mind is not a delusion. It is the duty of science to explain facts by bringing them to a higher generalisation. Any explanation, therefore, that first wants to destroy a part of the fact given to be explained, in order to fit itself to the remainder, is not scientific, whatever else it may be._x000d_ So any explanation that wants to overlook the fact of this persistent and all-necessary idea of freedom commits the above-mentioned mistake of denying a portion of the fact in order to explain the rest, and is, therefore, wrong. The only other alternative possible, then, is to acknowledge, in harmony with our nature, that there is something in us which is free and permanent._x000d_ But it is not the body; neither is it the mind. The body is dying every minute. The mind is constantly changing. The body is a combination, and so is the mind, and as such can never reach to a state beyond all change. But beyond this momentary sheathing of gross matter, beyond even the finer covering of the mind is the Atman, the true Self of man, the permanent, the ever free. It is his freedom that is percolating through layers of thought and matter, and, in spite of the colourings of name and form, is ever asserting its unshackled existence. It is his deathlessness, his bliss, his peace, his divinity that shines out and makes itself felt in spite of the thickest layers of ignorance. He is the real man, the fearless one, the deathless one, the free._x000d_ Now freedom is only possible when no external power can exert any influence, produce any change. Freedom is only possible to the being who is beyond all conditions, all laws, all bondages of cause and effect. In other words, the unchangeable alone can be free and, therefore, immortal. This Being, this Atman, this real Self of man, the free, the unchangeable is beyond all conditions, and as such, it has neither birth nor death._x000d_ "Without birth or death, eternal, ever-existing is this soul of man."

Swamiji wrote his third article of this New York period in May in response to a request that he contribute to a discussion that was being carried on in the ,New York Morning Advertiser. "Is the Soul Immortal!?" was the question, and a number of illustrious thinkers were asked to present their views. Among the invited contributors, aside from Swamiji, were Dr. Charles August Briggs, then America's leading theologian; Dr. E. Benjamin Andrews, President of Brown University; Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, a well-known author; Cardinal Gibbons; Bishop John P. Newman; and Professor Max Muller. Swamiji's article was introduced with the words:

The main discussion is continued today by Swami Vivekananda, the learned and thoughtful Hindu. He argues that there can be no annihilation of the soul, with picturesque force.

Swamiji's article, the force of which was, one thinks, more eloquent and logical than picturesque, has been republished in volume four of the Complete Works under the title "Is the Soul Immortal?" It was short and concise, and though every word of it was of importance (as was always so with his words, written or spoken], let us quote from it here only briefly:

Now the problem resolves itself into this dilemma: either the whole universe is a mass of never-ceasing change and nothing more, irrevocably bound by the law of causation, not one particle having a unity of itself, yet is curiously producing an ineradicable delusion of per¬manence and freedom, or, there is in us and in the universe something which is permanent and free, showing that the basal constitutional belief of the human mind [that we are immortal and free] is not a delusion. . . ._x000d_ . . . Any explanation that wants to overlook the fact of this persistent and all-necessary idea of freedom commits the . . . Mistake of denying a portion of the fact in order to explain the rest and is, therefore, wrong. The only other alternative possible, then, is to acknowledge, in harmony with our nature, that there is something in us which is free and permanent.

. . . It is not the body; neither is it the mind . . . . But beyond this momentary sheathing of gross matter, beyond even the finer covering of the mind is the Atman, the true Self of man, the percolating through layers of thought and matter, and in spite of the colourings of name and form, is ever asserting its unshackled existence. It is the his deathlessness, his bliss, his peace, his divinity, that shines out and makes itself felt in spite of the thickest layers of ignorance. He is the real man, the fearless one, the deathless one, the free.

. . . This Being, this Atman, this real Self of man, the free, the unchangeable, is beyond all conditions, and as such, it has neither birth nor death.

Among the many people who were devoted to the Swami's teachings at this time were Mrs. Ole Bull of Cambridge, whom we met in the preceding chapter, Dr. Allan Day, Miss 8. Ellen Waldo, Miss Mary Phillips, Professor Wyman, Professor John Henry Wright, a Dr. Street, who was later to take the vows of Sannyasa from the Swami and be known as Swami Yogananda, and many clergymen and other laymen of note. Mr. Francis Leggett, Mrs. Sturges (later Mrs. Francis Leggett), and Miss Josephine MacLeod, well known society people of New York, were numbered among his most intimate friends and helped him in various ways. Dr. and Mrs. Egbert Guernsey, at whose house in the Fifth Avenue the Swami often stayed, looked upon him as a son. The Austin Corbins were also among his followers, as was the internationally famous singer, Emma Thursby. The members of the Dixon Society before which, as we have seen above, he was invited many times to lecture, became champions of his ideas.

To Mrs. G. W. Hale_x000d_ 54 W. 33 New York_x000d_ The 1st of May 1895_x000d_ Dear Mother,_x000d_ Many, many thanks for sending the coat. Now I am well equipped for summer. I am so sorry the rugs could not come before I leave this country. They will come if Dewanji is alive._x000d_ I have been out of town a few days and have now come back all right__healthy as ever._x000d_ Lord bless you ever and ever for your untiring kindness to me._x000d_ Ever your grateful Son,_x000d_ Vivekananda_x000d_ P.S. The History of Rajasthan I present you, and the satchel to the babies. Yours,_x000d_ Vivekananda

The rugs were to arrive in America a year later-in June of 1995. Meanwhile, Swamiji seems to have had an uneasy feeling about the Dewan-a premonition perhaps. On May I, 1895, he again wrote to Mrs. Hale:

U.S.A._x000d_ 2nd May, 1895_x000d_ Dear S--,_x000d_ So you have made up your mind to renounce the world. I have sympathy with your desire. There is nothing so high as renunciation of self. But you must not forget that to forgo your own favourite desire for the welfare of those that depend upon you is no small sacrifice. Follow the spotless life and teachings of Shri Ramakrishna and look after the comforts of your family. You do your own duty, and leave the rest to Him._x000d_ Love makes no distinction between man and man, between an Aryan and a Mlechchha, between a Brahmana and a Pariah, nor even between a man and a woman. Love makes the whole universe as one's own home. True progress is slow but sure. Work among those young men who can devote heart and soul to this one duty--the duty of raising the masses of India. Awake them, unite them, and inspire them with this spirit of renunciation; it depends wholly on the young people of India._x000d_ Cultivate the virtue of obedience, but you must not sacrifice your own faith. No centralisation is possible unless there is obedience to superiors. No great work can be done without this centralisation of individual forces. The Calcutta Math is the main centre; the members of all other branches must act in unity and conformity with the rules of that centre._x000d_ Give up jealousy and conceit. Learn to work unitedly for others. This is the great need of our country._x000d_ Yours with blessings,_x000d_ Vivekananda

To Mr. Francis H. Leggett_x000d_ 54 W. 33rd St._x000d_ New York_x000d_ the 4th May '95_x000d_ Dear Friend,_x000d_ Many thanks for your kind present. The cigars are indeed delicious__and a hundred times so, as coming from you._x000d_ With everlasting love and regards,_x000d_ I remain yours truly,_x000d_ Vivekananda

New York_x000d_ 5th May, 1895_x000d_ Dear Babies {the Hale Sisters},_x000d_ What I expected has come. I always thought that although Prof. Max Muller in all his writings on the Hindu religion adds in the last a derogatory remark, he must see the whole truth in the long run. As soon as you can, get a copy of his last book Vedantism ; there you will find him swallowing the whole of it--reincarnation and all._x000d_ Of course, you will not find it difficult at all to understand, as it is only a part of what I have been telling you all this time._x000d_ Many points you will find smack of my paper in Chicago._x000d_ I am glad now the old man has seen the truth, because that is the only way to have religion in the face of modern research and science._x000d_ Hope you are enjoying Todd's Rajasthan ._x000d_ With all love, your brother,_x000d_ Vivekananda_x000d_ PS. When is Miss Mary coming to Boston?--V.

U.S.A._x000d_ 6th May, 1895._x000d_ Dear Alasinga,_x000d_ This morning I received your last letter and that first volume of the Bhashya of Ramanujacharya. A few days ago I received another letter from you. Also I received a letter from Mr. Mani Iyer. I am doing well and going on in the same old rate. You mention about the lectures of Mr. Lund. I do not know who he is or where he is. He may be some one lecturing in Churches; for had he big platforms, we would have heard of him. Maybe, he gets them reported in some newspapers and sends them to India; and the missionaries may be making trade out of it. Well, so far I guess from the tone of your letters. It is no public affair here to call forth any defence from us; for in that case I will have to fight hundreds of them here every day. For India is now in the air, and the orthodox, including Dr. Barrows and all the rest, are struggling hard to put out the fire. In the second place, every one of these orthodox lectures against India must have a good deal of abuse hurled against me. If you hear some of the filthy stories the orthodox men and women invent against me, you will be astonished. Now, do you mean to say that a Sannyasin should go about defending himself against the brutal and cowardly attacks of these self-seeking men and women? I have some very influential friends here who, now and then, give them their quietus. Again, why should I waste my energies defending Hinduism if the Hindus all go to sleep? What are you three hundred millions of people doing there, especially those that are so proud of their learning etc.? Why do you not take up the fighting and leave me to teach and preach? Here am I struggling day and night in the midst of stranger. . . . What help does India send? Did the world ever see a nation with less patriotism than the Indian? If you could send and maintain for a few years a dozen well-educated strong men to preach in Europe and America, you would do immense service to India, both morally and politically. Every man who morally sympathises with India becomes a political friend. Many of the Western people think of you as a nation of half-naked savages, and therefore only fit to be whipped into civilisation. If you three hundred millions become cowed by the missionaries--you cowards--and dare not say a word, what can one man do in a far distant land? Even what I have done, you do not deserve._x000d_ Why do you not send your defences to the American magazines? What prevents you? You race of cowards--physical, moral, and spiritual! You animals fit to be treated as you are with two ideas before you--lust and money--you want to prod a Sannyasin to a life of constant fighting, and you are afraid of the "Saheb logs", even missionaries! And you will do great things, pish! Why not some of you write a beautiful defence and send it to the Arena Publishing Company of Boston? The Arena is a magazine which will gladly publish it and perhaps pay you hard money. So far it ends. Think of this when you will be tempted to be a fool. Think that up to date every blackguard of a Hindu that had hitherto come to Western lands had too often criticised his own faith and country in order to get praise or money. You know that I did not come to seek name and fame; it was forced upon me. Why shall I go back to India? Who will help me? . . . You are children, you prattle you do not know what. Where are the men in Madras who will give up the world to preach religion? Worldliness and realisation of God cannot go together. I am the one man who dared defend his country, and I have given them such ideas as they never expected from a Hindu. There are many who are against me, but I will never be a coward like you. There are also thousands in the country who are my friends, and hundreds who would follow me unto death; every year they will increase, and if I live and work with them, my ideals of life and religion will be fulfilled. Do you see?_x000d_ I do not hear much now about the Temple Universal that was to be built in America; yet I have a firm footing in New York, the very centre of American life, and so my work will go on. I am taking several of my disciples to a summer retreat to finish their training in Yoga and Bhakti and Jnana, and then they will be able to help carry the work on. Now my boys, go to work._x000d_ Within a month I shall be in a position to send some money for the paper. Do not go about begging from the Hindu beggars. I will do it all myself with my own brain and strong right hand. I do not want the help of any man here or in India. . . . Do not press too much the Ramakrishna Avatara._x000d_ Now I will tell you my discovery. All of religion is contained in the Vedanta, that is, in the three stages of the Vedanta philosophy, the Dvaita, Vishishtadvaita and Advaita; one comes after the other. These are the three stages of spiritual growth in man. Each one is necessary. This is the essential of religion: the Vedanta, applied to the various ethnic customs and creeds of India, is Hinduism. The first stage, i.e. Dvaita, applied to the ideas of the ethnic groups of Europe, is Christianity; as applied to the Semitic groups, Mohammedanism. The Advaita, as applied in its Yoga-perception form, is Buddhism etc. Now by religion is meant the Vedanta; the applications must vary according to the different needs, surroundings, and other circumstances of different nations. You will find that although the philosophy is the same, the Shaktas, Shaivas, etc. apply it each to their own special cult and forms. Now, in your journal write article after article on these three systems, showing their harmony as one following after the other, and at the same time keeping off the ceremonial forms altogether. That is, preach the philosophy, the spiritual part, and let people suit it to their own forms. I wish to write a book on this subject, therefore I wanted the three Bhashyas; but only one volume of the Ramanuja (Bhashya) has reached me as yet._x000d_ The American Theosophists have seceded from the others, and now they hate India. Poor things! And Sturdy of England who has lately been in India and met my brother Shivananda wrote me a letter wanting to know when I go over to England. I wrote him a nice letter. What about Babu Akshay Kumar Ghosh? I do not hear anything from him more. Give the missionaries and others their dues. Get up some of our very strong men and write a nice, strong, but good-toned article on the present religious revival in India and send it to some American magazine. I am acquainted with only one or two of them. You know I am not much of a writer. I am not in the habit of going from door to door begging. I sit quiet and let things come to me. . . . Now, my children, I could have made a grand success in the way of organising here, if I were a worldly hypocrite. Alas! That is all of religion here; money and name=priest, money and lust=layman. I am to create a new order of humanity here who are sincere believers in God and care nothing for the world. This must be slow, very slow. In the meantime you go on with your work, and I shall steer my boat straight ahead. The journal must not be flippant but steady, calm, and high-toned. . . . Get hold of a band of fine, steady writers. . . . Be perfectly unselfish, be steady and work on. We will do great things; do not fear. . . . One thing more. Be the servant of all, and do not try in the least to govern others. That will excite jealousy and destroy everything. . . . Go on. You have worked wonderfully well. We do not wait for help, we will work it out, my boy, be self-reliant, faithful and patient. Do not antagonise my other friends, live in harmony with all. My eternal love to all._x000d_ Ever yours with blessings,_x000d_ Vivekananda_x000d_ PS. Nobody will come to help you if you put yourself forward as a leader. . . . Kill self first if you want to succeed.

54 W. 33, New York,_x000d_ 7th May, 1895_x000d_ Dear Mrs. Bull,_x000d_ . . . I had a newspaper from India with a publication in it of Dr. Barrows' short reply to the thanks sent over from India. Miss Thursby will send it to you. Yesterday I received another letter from India from the President of Madras meeting to thank the Americans and to send me an Address. . . . This gentleman is the chief citizen of Madras and a Judge of the Supreme Court, a very high position in India._x000d_ I am going to have two public lectures more in New York in the upper hall of the Mott's Memorial Building. The first one will be on Monday next, on the Science of Religion. The next, on the Rationale of Yoga. . . . Has Miss Hamlin sent you the book on the financial condition of India? I wish your brother will read it and then find out for himself what the English rule in India means._x000d_ Ever gratefully your son,_x000d_ Vivekananda

54 West 33rd Street, New York_x000d_ May, 1895, Thursday_x000d_ Dear Mrs. Bull,_x000d_ The classes are going on; but I am sorry to say, though the attendance is large, it does not even pay enough to cover the rent. I will try this week and then give up._x000d_ I am going this summer to the Thousand Islands to Miss Dutcher's, one of my students. The different books on Vedanta are now being sent over to me from India. I expect to write a book in English on the Vedanta Philosophy in its three stages when I am at Thousand Islands, and I may go to Greenacre later on. Miss Farmer wants me to lecture there this summer._x000d_ I am rather busy just now in writing a promised article for the Press Association on Immortality._x000d_ Yours,_x000d_ Vivekananda

Mott Memorial Hall was an unprepossessing three-story building on Madison Avenue near Twenty-seventh Street and had possibly been selected for Swamiji’s lectures by the Vedanta Society’s vice-president, Dr. Edward G. Day, for it was a renowned medical headquarters. Unfortunately, everything that we known at present about Swamiji’s two lectures in this building is contained in the following announcement, which appeared on May 11 in the Religious Notices of the New York Herald:_x000d_ ATTENTION!—The Swami Vivekananda of India will deliver two lectures at Mott Memorial Hall, 64 Madison av., on Monday evenings, May 13 and 20, at 8:15, subjects, “The Science of Religion” and “The Rationale of Yoga.” Course ticket, $1; single tickets, 75 cents; for sale at the hall.

(The same information appeared in a handbill that Miss Phillips, secretary of the Vedanta Society, had had printed. The only copy known to be extent had belonged to Mrs. Bull, who, for her own satisfaction, crossed out a laudatory paragraph, the inclusion of which she considered, perhaps rightly, to be “bad judgment.” Mrs. Bull’s copy, which had been sent to her by Miss Hamlen on May 12, is here reproduced.)

In May, and perhaps also in April, the Swami lectured in the Motts Memorial Building, a small hall at 64 Madison Avenue, New York. Only two titles of these talks are at present known. "The Science of Religion" and "The Rationale of Yoga'

Even before settling in New York, the Swami had, of course, made ardent admirers and disciples of many distinguished persons. It was his earnest desire to initiate a few as sannyasis and to train them so that they would he fitted to carry on his American work in his absence. Two had already become "his proclaimed disciples", though they had not as yet received actual initiation into Sannyasa. These were Madame Marie Louise (whose last name is not known) and Leon Landsberg, the latter of whom lived for about two and a half months with the Swami in his New York quarters on West Thirty-third Street, helping him with the organizational aspect of his work. The description of these two followers of the Swami is best given in the New York Herald a few months after they received Sannyasa in the summer of 1895. To quote from the paper:

The Swami Abhayananda is a Frenchwoman, but naturalized and twenty-five years resident of New York. She has a curious history. For a quarter of a century she has been known to liberal circles as a materialist, socialist.... Twelve months ago she was a prominent member of the Manhattan Liberal Club. Then she was known in the press and on the platform as Mme Marie Louise, a fearless, progressive, advanced woman, whose boast it was that she was always in the forefront of the battle and ahead of her times.

The second disciple is also an enthusiast. With that skill which Vivekananda shows in all his dealings with men, the Hindu has chosen his fast disciples well. The Swami Kripananda, before he was taken into the circle and took the vows of poverty and chastity, was a newspaper man, employed on the staff of one of the most prominent New York papers. By birth he is a Russian Jew, named Leon Landsberg, and, if it were known, his life history is probably as interesting as that of Swami Abhayananda.

New York_x000d_ 14th May, 1895_x000d_ Dear Alasinga,_x000d_ . . . Now I have got a hold on New York, and I hope to get a permanent body of workers who will carry on this work when I leave the country. Do you see, my boy, all this newspaper blazoning is nothing? I ought to be able to leave a permanent effect behind me when I go; and with the blessings of the Lord it is going to be very soon. . . .Men are more valuable than all the wealth of the world. You need not worry about me. The Lord is always protecting me. My coming to this country and all my labours must not be in vain._x000d_ The Lord is merciful, and although there are many who try to injure me any way they can, there are many also who will befriend me to the last. Infinite patience, infinite purity, and infinite perseverance are the secret of success in a good cause._x000d_ Ever yours with blessings,_x000d_ Vivekananda

To Mrs. G. W. Hale_x000d_ 54 W. 33_x000d_ New York_x000d_ 16th May '95_x000d_ Dear Mother,_x000d_ Your kind note duly reached. The books have arrived safe and more are coming. The Sanskrit books pay no duty, being classics. I expect a big package from Khetri. The big packet was from the Raja of Khetri, sending me an address from a meeting held of Rajput nobility at Mount Abu, for my work in this country. I do not know whether I will be able to come over to Chicago or not. I am trying to get a free pass; in case I succeed I will come, else not. Financially this winter's work was no suc¬cess at all__I could barely keep myself up__but spiritually very great. I am going to the Thousand Islands for the summer to visit a friend and some of my pupils will be there._x000d_ I have got plenty of books now to read from India, and I will be quite engaged this summer._x000d_ The Khetri package will not arrive soon, so kindly make arrangements that it will be received during your absence if you go away. [There] will have to be paid a heavy duty for [it,] I am afraid._x000d_ Mrs. [Florence] Adams brought me the love from the [Hale] Sisters on her way to Europe. She started this morning. A large package of books also I expect soon. The original Upan¬ishads__there is no duty on them._x000d_ I have had some trouble with my stomach; hope it will be over in a few days._x000d_ With love to all, I am ever your affectionate Son,_x000d_ Vivekananda

In a heretofore unpublished letter to Mrs. Hale, dated May 16, 1895, Swamiji had written from New York in regard to the arrival and nonarrival of books and other packages and packets from India always a matter of concern. His letter is given here in full:

The sun goes down, its crimson rays_x000d_ Light up the dying day;_x000d_ A startled glance I throw behind_x000d_ And count my triumph shame;_x000d_ No one but me to blame._x000d_ _x000d_ Each day my life I make or mar,_x000d_ Each deed begets its kind,_x000d_ Good good, bad bad, the tide once set_x000d_ No one can stop or stem;_x000d_ No one but me to blame._x000d_ _x000d_ I am my own embodied past;_x000d_ Therein the plan was made;_x000d_ The will, the thought, to that conform,_x000d_ To that the outer frame;_x000d_ No one but me to blame._x000d_ _x000d_ Love comes reflected back as love,_x000d_ Hate breeds more fierce hate,_x000d_ They mete their measures, lay on me _x000d_ Through life and death their claim;_x000d_ No one but me to blame._x000d_ _x000d_ I cast off fear and vain remorse,_x000d_ I feel my Karma's sway_x000d_ I face the ghosts my deeds have raised--_x000d_ Joy, sorrow, censure, fame;_x000d_ No one but me to blame._x000d_ _x000d_ Good, bad, love, hate, and pleasure, pain_x000d_ Forever linked go,_x000d_ I dream of pleasure without pain,_x000d_ It never, never came;_x000d_ No one but me to blame._x000d_ _x000d_ I give up hate, I give up love,_x000d_ My thirst for life is gone;_x000d_ Eternal death is what I want,_x000d_ Nirvanam goes life's flame;_x000d_ No one is left to blame._x000d_ _x000d_ One only man, one only God, one ever perfect soul,_x000d_ One only sage who ever scorned the dark and dubious ways,_x000d_ One only man who dared think and dared show the goal--_x000d_ That death is curse, and so is life, and best when stops to be._x000d_ _x000d_ Om Nama Bhagavate Sambuddhaya_x000d_ Om, I salute the Lord, the awakened.

Mrs. Bull was in New York to hear the second of these lectures. In her sporadic diary, Miss Thursby noted on May 15: “Mrs. Bull arrives. A week later she was back in Cambridge, for on May 23 Landsberg wrote one of his interminable letters to her, in which it is clear he had talked with her of his troubles. “Explain [it],” he wrote, “by instinct, intuition or my ardent desire to hear soon from one with_x000d_ whom during the last eight days my mind was constantly occupied-whatever may have been the cause of my expectation . . . I was as sure that you would write me at your earliest convenience as I was sure of the nobility of your soul and your unselfish love of which you have given me so many marked examples." His letter goes on in this vein at some length; in total sincerity he poured out his gratitude. "I was thirsting my whole life long after a little sympathy, a little love, warm unselfish love, but never could find it. And now you give me all this in abundance, to me a stranger, a tramp, who has done nothing to deserve it.

Although Landsberg had talked with Swamiji as early as May 8 and had attended a class or two, it was Mrs. Bull who, somehow, in her gentle, sympathetic, and persuasive way had stilled the tumult in his mind and heart. "Just see the effect of your broad unselfish love!" he now wrote to her. "It has calmed the storm that, on account of the recent events, was raging in my soul and stirred it up to its very foundations. It has brought me back, not only to my Guru, but also to God. So it was that Landsberg fully returned, not at this late date to Thirty-Third Street, but to Swamiji. Once again he regularly attended his guru's classes, and in this long letter of May 23 he devoted three sentences to them. "The Swami's classes ,"

He informed Mrs. Bull, "are going on smoothly. Last Wednes¬day's Class [May 22] for men, in spite of the inclemency of weather, was attended by over twenty persons, lawyers, physicians, clergymen, all men of good moral and mental caliber. I am sure that in next class we will have at least twice this number. Again, in a letter to Mrs. Bull dated June 4 he wrote, "The classes were closed on Saturday (June I), both here and in Brooklyn, and the Swami's last lectures were permeated with the spirit of his master"124 which last phrase he must have picked up from Mrs. Bull herself.

(Of Swamiji's Brooklyn classes we know only that toward the end of January he had given, as mentioned earlier (page 27), two parlor lectures at the residence of a Mrs. Auel, whose address was 65 Lefferts Place. These may have ban the beginning of a course of classes that continued through May.)

c/o Miss Philips_x000d_ 19 West 38th Street_x000d_ New York_x000d_ 28th May, 1895_x000d_ Dear Alasinga,_x000d_ Herewith I send a hundred dollars or £20-8-7 in English money. Hope this will go just a little in starting your paper. Hoping to do more by and by._x000d_ I remain, ever yours, with blessings,_x000d_ Vivekananda_x000d_ PS. Reply immediately to it C/o the above address. New York will be my headquarters henceforth._x000d_ I have succeeded in doing something in this country at last._x000d_ V.

On May 28 the Swami wrote to Mrs. Bull, telling her that he had an invitation to speak at a Parliament of Religions at Toronto, Canada. "I will go there", he said, "from Thousand Island Park and return. . . ." The trip would not have been a long one, Toronto being on the north shore of Lake Ontario, some hundred and fifty miles from the effluence of the St. Lawrence River, where the Thousand Islands were clustered. The invitation, however, was later cancelled. On July 13 the Swami was to write to Mrs. Bull from Thousand Island ]Park: "The Toronto affair has fallen through, because the clergymen objected to a heathen. There is one invitation from the Christian Union of Oak Beach [a small resort town near New York City]. I do not know whether I will go there. As I intend to go to Chicago in August, I ought to give to the people here all the time I can." For this same reason, the Swami declined an invitation to visit the Greenacre Conferences that summer. He wished to devote all the time he could to those loyal and deeply earnest students who would follow him to the retreat at Thousand Island Park. In an earlier letter to Mrs. Bull, he had written on April 25: "I want to manufacture a few 'yogis' out of the materials of the classes, and a busy fair like Greenacre is the last place for that, and it [Thousand Islands] is quite out of the way, and none of the curiosity seekers will dare go there."

In the meanwhile, he accepted an invitation from Mr. Francis Leggett to visit his fishing camp in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. He left New York on June 4, as we learn not only from Landsberg, but from two heretofore unpublished notes that he wrote to Mrs. Bull. The first, partially published elsewhere, was dated May 28; the second, June 4 :_x000d_ The 28th May'95_x000d_ Dear Mother _x000d_ Your last kind letter to hand. This week will be the last of my classes. I am going next Tuesday with Mr. Leggett to Maine. He has a fine lake and a forest there. I will be two or three weeks there.* From thence I go to the Thousand Islands. Also I have an invitation to speak at a parliament of religions at Toronto Canada on July 18th. I will go there from Thousand Islands and return back. _x000d_ So far everything is going on well with me _x000d_ Ever your grateful son _x000d_ Vivekananda _x000d_ P.S. My regards & love to your daughter and pray for her speedy recovery'_x000d_ _x000d_ * Swamiji stayed at Mr. Leggett’s camp for twelve days.

While Swamiji may not always have been "sweet," his classes and lectures could not fail to be permeated with the true spirit of his Master-an immense force, of which he had had, intimate firsthand knowledge and which had been transmitted to him in full. He was well aware of the incalculably effective spiritual power that flowed through him. Two weeks before the close of his New York classes he summed up the season's work in a letter to Mrs. Hale. "Financially," he wrote, "this winter's work was no success at all. I could barely keep myself up, but spiritually [it was] very great Was it not Swamiji's task to infuse the "force" that was Sri Ramakrishna into the underlying spirit of the age, to articulate the two into one tremendous surge toward unity and freedom? Was it not for this that his Master had come to earth and that he himself had come?

In any event, Swamiji's active life was entirely absorbed in the task of applying his Master's message (the full significance of which perhaps he alone understood) to all aspects of Western and Eastern life. Eastern life he well knew; about Western life he never ceased to learn. When he was not hold¬ing classes or giving lectures, or granting private interviews, or meditating, he spent much of his time in the study of Western culture and history. Indeed, as a world teacher, he was also a world student; everything pertaining to humanity interested him, and, as always, he read prodigiously, retaining all he read and relating every facet of man's life and thought W spiritual ideals. In the spring of 1895 he was also organizing his work in India by means of long heartening and rousing letters; this period was, in fact, one of intense activity in this regard, and his work of planning, of finding practical solutions to India's complex problems, and of directing and inspiring his brother monks and his disciple, was in itself a stupendous task-one that requires a chapter of its own to do it justice.

But in the midst of furious work, of teaching, studying, writing, carrying on a voluminous correspondence, in the midst of bitter opposition which lasted in some quarters into the spring of 1895,* in the midst of adulation from both those who looked upon him as a "social lion" and those who knew his true worth, he remained always in the blissful repose that asked nothing of and took nothing from the world. He never compromised his message--"What!" he exclaimed, "Measure my soul according to what the bond-slaves of the world say? Pooh! but his message in its vastness embraced all; he gave everything to everyone and, with the unstudied precision which is, surely, a quality of grace, he gave to each in the right way at the right time._x000d_ _x000d_ * The last serious opposition to Swamiji came from the Ramabai Circle of Brooklyn in the early part of 1895. For details of this controversy, see Prophetic Mission—2, chapter thirteen.

He cared nothing for praise and nothing for blame. "No one ever succeeded in keeping society in good humor and at the same time did great works," he had written to Mrs. Bull in March. "One must work as the dictate comes from within, and then if it is right and good, society is bound to veer round, perhaps centuries after one is dead and gone. We must plunge heart and soul and body into the work. And until we be ready to sacrifice everything else to one Idea and to one alone, we never, never will see the Light

54 West 33rd Street, New York_x000d_ June, 1895_x000d_ Dear Mrs. Bull,_x000d_ I have just arrived home. The trip did me good, and I enjoyed the country and the hills, and especially Mr. Leggett's country-house in New York State. Poor Lands- berg has gone from this house. Neither has he left one his address. May the Lord bless Landsberg wherever he goes! He is one of the few sincere souls I have had the privilege in this life to come across._x000d_ All is for good. All conjunctions are for subsequent disjunction. I hope I shall be perfectly able to work alone. The less help from men, the more from the Lord! Just now I received a letter from an Englishman in London who had lived in India in the Himalayas with two of my brethren. He asks me to come to London._x000d_ Yours,_x000d_ Vivekananda

1895_x000d_ {original in Bengali}_x000d_ Dear Shashi {Ramakrishnananda},_x000d_ . . . I am quite in agreement with what Sarada is doing, but it is not necessary to preach that Ramakrishna Paramahamsa was an Incarnation, and things of that sort. He came to do good to the world; not to trumpet his own name--you must always remember this. Disciples pay their whole attention to the preservation of their master's name and throw overboard his teachings; and sectarianism etc., are the result. Alasinga writes of Charu; but I do not recollect him. Write all about him and convey him my thanks. Write in detail about all; I have no time to spare for idle gossip. . . . Try to give up ceremonials. They are not meant for Sannyasins; and one must work only so long as one does not attain to illumination. . . . I have nothing to do with sectarianism, or party-forming and playing the frog-in-the-well, whatever else I may do. . . . It is impossible to preach the catholic ideas of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and form sects at the same time. . . . Only one kind of work I understand, and that is doing good to others; all else is doing evil. I therefore prostrate myself before the Lord Buddha. . . . I am a Vedantist; Sachchidananda--Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute--is my God. I scarcely find any other God than the majestic form of my own Self. By the word "Incarnation" are meant those who have attained that Brahmanhood, in other words, the Jivanmuktas--those who have realised this freedom in this very life. I do not find any speciality in Incarnations: all beings from Brahma down to a clump of grass will attain to liberation-in-life in course of time, and our duty lies in helping all to reach that state. This help is called religion; the rest is irreligion. This help is work; the rest is evil-doing--I see nothing else. Other kinds of work, for example, the Vaidika or the Tantrika, may produce results; but resorting to them is simply waste of life, for that purity which is the goal of work is realisable only through doing good to others. Through works such as sacrifices etc., one may get enjoyments, but it is impossible to have the purity of soul. . . . Everything exists already in the Self of all beings. He who asserts he is free, shall be free. He who says he is bound, bound he shall remain. To me, the thought of oneself as low and humble is a sin and ignorance. "{Sanskrit}--This Atman is not to be attained by one who is weak." "{Sanskrit}--If you say Brahman is , existence will be the result; if you say Brahman is not , non-existent It shall verily become." He who always thinks of himself as weak will never become strong, but he who knows himself to be a lion, "{Sanskrit}--rushes out from the world's meshes, as a lion from its cage." Another point, it was no new truth that Ramakrishna Paramahamsa came to preach, though his advent brought the old truths to light. In other words, he was the embodiment of all the past religious thoughts of India. His life alone made me understand what the Shastras really meant, and the whole plan and scope of the old Shastras._x000d_ Missionaries and others could not do much against me in this country. Through the Lord's grace the people here like me greatly and are not to be tricked by the opinions of any particular class. They appreciate my ideas in a manner my own countrymen cannot do, and are not selfish. I mean, when it comes to practical work they will give up jealousy and all those ideas of self-sufficiency. Then all of them agree and act under the direction of a capable man. That is what makes them so great. But then they are a nation of Mammon-worshippers. Money comes before everything. People of our country are very liberal in pecuniary matters, but not so much these people. Every home has a miser. It is almost a religion here. But they fall into the clutches of the priests when they do something bad, and then buy their passage to heaven with money. These things are the same in every country--priestcraft. I can say nothing as to whether I shall go back to India and when. There also I shall have to lead a wandering life as I do here; but here thousands of people listen to and understand my lectures, and these thousands are benefited. But can you say the same thing about India? . . . I am perfectly at one with what Sarada is doing. A thousand thanks to him. . . . In Madras and Bombay I have lots of men who are after my heart. They are learned and understand everything. Moreover they are kind-hearted and can therefore appreciate the philanthropic spirit. . . . I have printed neither books nor anything of the kind. I simply go on lecturing tours. . . . When I take a retrospective view of my past life, I feel no remorse. From country to country I have travelled teaching something, however little, to people, and in exchange for that have partaken of their slices of bread. If I had found I had done no work, but simply supported myself by imposing upon people, I would have committed suicide today. Why do those who think themselves unfit to teach their fellow-beings, wear the teacher's garb and earn their bread by cheating them? Is not that a deadly sin? . . . _x000d_ Yours etc.,_x000d_ Vivekananda

21 W. 34th St._x000d_ New York_x000d_ June, 1895_x000d_ Dear Joe {Josephine MacLeod},_x000d_ Experiences are gathering a bit thick round you. I am sure they will lift many a veil more._x000d_ Mr. Leggett told me of your phonograph. I told him to get a few cylinders--I talk in them through somebody's phonograph and send them to Joe--to which he replied that he could buy one, because "I always do what Joe asks me to do." I am glad there is so much of hidden poetry in his nature._x000d_ I am going today to live with the Guernseys as the doctor wants to watch me and cure me. . . . Doctor Guernsey, after examining other things, was feeling my pulse, when suddenly Landsberg (whom they had forbidden the house) got in and retreated immediately after seeing me. Dr. Guernsey burst out laughing and declared he would have paid that man for coming just then, for he was then sure of his diagnosis of my case. The pulse before was so regular, but just at the sight of Landsberg it almost stopped from emotion. It is sure only a case of nervousness. He also advises me strongly to go on with Doctor Helmer's treatment. He thinks Helmer will do me a world of good, and that is what I need now. Is not he broad?_x000d_ I expect to see "the sacred cow" today in town. I will be in New York a few days more. Helmer wants me to take three treatments a week for four weeks, then two a week for four more, and I will be all right. In case I go to Boston, he recommends me to a very good ostad (expert) there whom he would advise on the matter._x000d_ I said a few kind words to Landsberg and went upstairs to Mother Guernsey to save poor Landsberg from embarrassment._x000d_ Ever yours in the Lord,_x000d_ Vivekananda

He could be alone to walk in the woods or sit by the late as often and for as long as he wished. At other times he enjoyed the companionship of his friends and was as merry as they. And they were merry indeed; this sojourn at Camp Percy was a sort of betrothal party in the wilds. Besse (or Betty) MacLeod Sturges and Francis Leggett had just become engaged and were planning to be married in Paris in September. To Alberta Sturges (Betty's eighteen-year-old daughter) Swamiji wrote a few weeks later of those cloudless days at the Camp. "We had such jolly good times up there at Percy with Mr. Leggett-isn't he a saint? . . . We had a good deal of rowing . . . And I learnt a point or two in rowing. Aunt Joe Joe had to pay for her sweetness; the flies and mosquitoes would not leave her a moment. They rather gave me a wide berth I think because they were very orthodox sabbatarian flies and would not touch a heathen. Again, I think I used to sing a good deal at Percy and that must have frightened them away. We had such fine birch trees. I got up an idea of making books out of the bark as used to be done in ancient times in our country and wrote Sanskrit verses for your mother and aunt "3 Apropos of Swamiji's learning a point or two in rowing, the story is told that he once missed his stroke and nearly capsized the boat, falling backward, hitting his head on the aide-and laughing.

The problem, however, solved itself. One of his New York students owned a small cottage at Thousand Island Park, a village situated on Wellesley Island, the second largest island in the Thousand Island group of the St. Lawrence River. She offered the use of the cottage to the Swami and as many students as it would accommodate. This plan appealed to him, and he agreed to join the students there after his brief visit to Camp Percy in New Hampshire. (And this he was to do, as it turned out, on June 18.) He said that those who were willing to put aside all other interests and devote themselves to studying the Vedanta, travelling more than three hundred miles to a suitable spot, were the ones really in earnest; he would recognize them as disciples. He did not expect many would take so much trouble, but if any responded, he would do his share in helping them on the path. And indeed the classes he was to hold at Thousand Island Park would outshine in spiritual inspiration even those he had held in New York. But it should be mentioned here that other students of Swamiji's, though less fortunate, were also earnest; for to their credit they continued to hold the New York class by themselves. He was much pleased by it. "Our class in New York is going on," he was to write to .Betty Sturges on July 29, "They have bravely carried it on, although I was not there."

Summer was beginning to press down upon the city; people were leaving for the mountains and seashore, and Swamiji himself longed for rest. Yet more urgent than his need for an extended vacation was his desire to place his work on a permanent footing. Since many of his students themselves disliked the thought of his classes being discontinued during the summer months, a plan had evolved which made it possible for him to escape from the sweltering city and, at the same time, to train the group of men and women who, he hoped, could eventually carry on his work--a plan which was to result, in any case, in some of the most spiritually fruitful days of his American mission. One of his students, a Miss Dutcher, offered him a cottage that she owned at Thousand Island Park, a small community on one of the "Thousand Islands" in the St. Lawrence River. The house was to be for his own use and that of as many of his students as it would accommodate. Swamiji accepted, agreeing to join at Thousand Island Park any students earnest enough to travel the three hundred miles from New York City.

Dissatisfied with those who mistook what he meant by the term "organization" and who did not catch his spirit, thinking, perhaps, that he wanted to "make a success" of his work, he wrote in this regard to his Western disciple Swami Abhayananda in the autumn of 1895:

We have no organization, nor want to build any. Each one is quite independent to teach, quite free to preach whatever he or she likes. _x000d_ If you have the spirit within, you will never fail to attract others.... Individuality is my motto. I have no ambition beyond training individuals. I know very little; that little I teach without reserve; where I am ignorant I confess it as such ... I am a sannyasin. As such I hold myself as a servant, not as a master in this world. And he adds that whether people love him or hate him, they all alike are welcome. He says that he seeks no help, nor rejects any, that he has no right to he helped and that if he is helped by others it is their mercy. He avers that when he became a sannyasi, he did so with his whole' mind welcoming anything, even starvation and the utmost misery.

Gradually his disciples came to understand his ideal. Possessed with the Western consciousness of the necessity of external organization, it took some time for them to see that what he desired was a spiritual rather than a temporal organization, a union of noble, pure, persevering, and energetic souls, bent on personal realization and moved to work by a genuine interest in and love for humanity: He carried on his work in this spirit, resolutely rejecting interference.

By the month of June 1895, the Swami began to feel himself wearing out. His work had been exceedingly strenuous; lecturing both privately and publicly, and always at a tension, he had become exhausted; his nerves were racked, his brain tired, his whole body overtaxed. He longed for a brief period, of rest and recuperation. But personally, he was satisfied. His message was being kindly received, and he had a few hundred followers, many of whom he had never seen, in his rushing hither and thither over the United States the previous year, he had everywhere sown his ideas. Though it might be that he received no credit for them, he saw that they were being echoed from pulpits and rostrums, and he was satisfied that the ideals of the Sanatana Dharma were spreading and percolating through the whole thought-world of America. On July 9, 1895, he wrote to the Raja of Khetri: "I have planted a seed in this country; it is already a plant, and I expect it to be a tree very soon. I have got a few hundred followers. I shall make several sannyasins, and then I go to India, leaving the work to them. The more the Christian priests oppose me, the more I am determined to leave a permanent mark on their country."

To have impressed the American nation with a new thought, to have propagated new ideas among those who were bred and brought up in a different ideal of life and religion, had been no easy task. And to have done so within two years was all the more wonderful. The Swami had, no doubt, the Divine Power behind him; he had intense sincerity, great ability, and unwearying perseverance. Above all, he had Realization. That was the secret.

Having almost exhausted himself by the uninterrupted work of class and public lecturing, the Swami in the beginning of June 1895', accepted the invitation of Mr. Francis Leggett to his fishing lodge, Camp Percy, beside a lake in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. There he rested for nearly two weeks, reading the Gita and meditating alone for hours together in the silence of leafy birch and maple woods. His one idea was to him in communion with the Highest, and indeed this was a time for him of profound experience. The story was later told by Miss Josephine MacLeod, who, with her widowed sister, Mrs. William Sturges, was also a guest of Mr. Leggett, that one day a workman found the Swami lying on the shore of the lake—to all appearances dead. Rushing to the spot, Mr. Leggett and the two women did everything in their power to rouse him. Failing, they were about to give up, when signs of life appeared, and gradually he returned to normal. The Swami had presumably entered into Samadhi. It is little wonder that he came forth from the solitude of Camp Percy a veritable avalanche of spirituality, ready to make his disciples realize many forms of Truth at but a glance, a touch, or wish.

But Swamiji could move without effort from the playful mood of a summer vacation to immergence in the highest bliss. He who had had to restrain himself (not always successfully) from entering into Samadhi during his classes in New York City could now give free rein to his mind, and it at once rushed, as it were, to its "own abode." In later years, during her stays at Belur Math, Miss MacLeod sometimes told of Swamiji's samadhi at Camp Percy. The following account of her words was given by Swami Vijayananda:_x000d_ One morning before breakfast Swamiji came out from his room with a Sanskrit Gita in his hand. I (Josephine MacLeod] was behind him. Seeing me, he said, "Joe, I am going to sit under that pine (pointing to a nearby pine) and read the Bhagavad Gita. See that the breakfast is sumptuous to-day." Half an hour later I went over to the pine tree and saw Swamiji sitting there motionless. The Gita had fallen from his hand and the front of his robe was wet with tears.

I went nearer and saw that his breathing had stopped altogether. I trembled in fear Swamiji must be dead. I did not shout, but ran to Francis Leggett and told him, "Come quick, Swami Vivekananda has left us." My sister ran to the spot with loud cries and my [future] brother-in-law also came with tears in his eyes. By now seven or eight minutes had passed. Swamiji was still in the same position. But my brother-in-law said, "He is in a trance; I will shake him out of it" I stopped him, shouting, "Never do that!" I remembered that Swamiji had said once that when he would be in deep meditation one should not touch him. Another five minutes or so passed, and then we saw the signs of breathing. His eyes had been half closed; now slowly they opened. And then Swamiji, as if soliloquizing, said, "Who am I, where am I?" Thrice he spoke like that, and then, wide awake, he saw us, was very much embarrassed, stood up, and said, "I am sorry to have frightened you all. But I have this state of consciousness now and then. I shall not leave my body in your country. Betty, I am hungry, let's hurry.

According to another version, also related by Miss MacLeod, the gardener (or caretaker) had found Swamiji by the lake to all appearances dead and had called the other, who did indeed touch him in an attempt to restore him. But in what ever way Swamiji was brought back to normal consciousness, he may well have been in nirvikalpa samadhi, in which state (If one may so call it) the body appears in all respects to be dead and the mind itself is merged in Brahman. This was not to be the only time that summer of 1895 that Swamiji lost all outer consciousness. But never (as far as is known) was he to remain long in the highest state; for his Master had "kept the key." It had been at Cossipore, Calcutta, that Swamiji (then Narendra Nath Datta) had first entered into nirvikalpa samadhi. His Master, Sri Ramakrishna, had then said to him, "Now then, the Mother has shown you everything. Just as a treasure is locked up in a box, so will this realization you have just had be locked up and the key shall remain with me. You have work to do. And to be sure, we find in Swamiji's biographies that he was, as it were, thrown down from that state, or from its threshold, again and again (a return possible only to the world's great spiritual Teachers), in order that he might carry out his mission. It may have happened so at Camp Percy.

Later, when he was in India, Swamiji was to say to his disciple Sharat Chandra Chakravarty: "A time comes when what you call differentiation vanishes, and we cannot per¬ceive it at all. I have experienced that state in my own life." "When have you done so?" the disciple asked, and Swamiji replied:

One day in the temple-garden at Dakshineswar Shri Ramakrishna touched me over the heart, and first of' all I began to see that the houses-rooms, doors, windows, verandahs-the trees, the sun, the moon-all were flying off, shattering to pieces as it were-reduced to atoms and molecules-and ultimately become merged in the Akasha. Gradually, again, the Akasha also vanished, and after that, my consciousness of the ego with it; what happened next I do not recollect. I was at first frightened. Coming back from that state, again I began to see the houses, doors, windows, verandahs, and other things. On another occasion, I had exactly the same realisation by the side of a lake in America. . . . Know-this knowledge of Oneness is what the Shastras speak of as realisation of the Brahman, by knowing which, one gets rid of Fear, and the shackles of birth and death break for ever.

Was not Swamiji speaking here of his experience at Camp Percy? _x000d_ (On the shore of Late Michigan he had also entered into samadhi, but on that occasion it was Sri Ramakrishna who, appearing to him, drew him back "to the Work for which he had come to the world.)

As we have seen above, Swamiji's first season of New York classes came to a close on the first of June. He was pleased with the work he had done and the response he had received. "This winter's work in N.Y. was splendid," he was to write to Mary Hale later in the month, "and it may die if I suddenly go over to India, so I am not sure about going to India soon."128 Indeed as early as May 14 he had written to Alasinga, "Now I have got a hold on New York, and I hope to get a permanent body of workers who will carry on the work when I leave the country. . .

Of course financially it is a failure, but men are more valuable than all the wealth of the world.

Mrs. Ole Bull_x000d_ 4th June '95_x000d_ Dear Mother,_x000d_ Today I leave New York at 5 p.m. by steamer with Mr. Leggett.The classes were closed on Saturday last [June 1] and so far the work has been very successful, no small part of which is due to you._x000d_ Ever praying for you and yours,_x000d_ I am ever your faithful Son,_x000d_ Vivekananda_x000d_ P.S. I will acquaint you with my whereabouts as soon as I know it myself.

On June 4, 1895, Mr. Francis Leggett’s party of five took a steamer from New York to Portland, Maine, a train from Portland to the small village of Percy, New Hampshire, in a remote region of the White Mountains, and a rowboat to Mr. Leggett’s rustic cabin, known as White Birch Lodge. The Lodge stood on the very edge of the lake; behind stretched woods of laurel, birch, and pine, and across the lake itself were forest-covered hills, luxuriantly green in the first weeks of June. The party arrived at one o’clock on the afternoon of the sixth; they recorded the event in the Lodge’s Log Book, and signed their names: “Besse MacLeod Sturges; Francis H. Leggett; Josephine MacLeod; Georgia Waitham Spence [an elder cousin of the MacLeod sisters]; Swami Vivekananda, India, Heathen Hindu.

Swamiji’s twelve day stay at Camp Percy among congenial friends would give him more than a rest of body and mind, it would provide as well the freedom of time and space in which his spirit could soar. Indeed, in some respects Camp Percy, with its quiet, its woods, its lake, and its remoteness from civilization (one could reach the house from the nearest village only by rowing for nearly an hour to the far end of the long lake) was like a hidden forest ashrama in India.

7th June, 1895_x000d_ Dear Mrs. Bull,_x000d_ I am here at last with Mr. Leggett. This is one of the most beautiful spots I have ever seen. Imagine a lake, surrounded with hills covered with a huge forest, with nobody but ourselves. So lovely, so quiet, so restful! And you may imagine how glad I am to be here after the bustle of cities._x000d_ It gives me a new lease of life to be here. I go into the forest alone and read my Gita and am quite happy. I will leave this place in about ten days and go to the Thousand Island Park. I will meditate by the hour and days here and be all alone to myself. The very idea is ennobling._x000d_ Vivekananda

Percy N. H._x000d_ 17 June, 1895_x000d_ (written on birch bark)_x000d_ Dear Sister {Mary Hale}, _x000d_ Going tomorrow to the Thousand Islands care Miss Dutcher's, Thousand Island Park, N.Y. Where are you now? Where will you all be in summer? I have a chance of going to Europe in August, I will come to see you before I go. So write to me. Also I expect books and letters from India. Kindly send them care Miss Phillips, 19 W. 38th Street, N.Y. This is the bark in which all holy writings are written in India. So I write Sanskrit: May the husband of Uma (Shiva) protect you always._x000d_ May you all be blessed ever and ever._x000d_ Vivekananda