Text of the
letter from Swami Vivekananda to Josephine
McCleod:
ALAMEDA,
CALIFORNIA,
18th April, 1900.
MY DEAR JOE,
Just now I
received yours and Mrs. Bulls welcome letter.
I direct this to London. I am so glad Mrs.
Leggett is on the sure way to recovery.
I am so sorry Mr.
Leggett resigned the presidentship.
Well, I keep quiet for fear of making further
trouble.
You know my methods are extremely harsh and once
roused I may rattle A too much for his peace
of mind.
I wrote to him only to tell him that his notions
about Mrs. Bull are entirely wrong.
Work is always difficult; pray for me Joe that
my works stop for ever, and my whole soul be
absorbed in Mother. Her works, She knows.
You must be glad
to be in London once more the old friends,
give them all my love and gratitude.
I am well, very
well mentally. I feel the rest of the soul more
shall that of the body. The battles are lost and
won, I have bundled my things and am waiting for
the great deliverer.
Shiva, O
Shiva, carry my boat to the other shore.
After all, Joe, I
am only the boy who used to listen with rapt
wonderment to the wonderful words of Ramakrishna
under the Banyan at Dakshineswar. That is my
true nature; works and activities, doing good
and so forth are all superimpositions. Now I
again hear his voice; the same old voice
thrilling my soul. Bonds are breaking love
dying, work becoming tasteless the glamour
is off life. Only the voice of the Master
calling. I come Lord, I come. Let
the dead bury the dead, follow thou Me.
I come, my beloved Lord, I come.
Yes, I come.
Nirvana is before me. I feel it at times the
same infinite ocean of peace, without a ripple,
a breath.
I am glad I was
born, glad I suffered so, glad I did make big
blunders, glad to enter peace. I leave none
bound, I take no bonds. Whether this body will
fall and release me or I enter into freedom in
the body, the old man is gone, gone for ever,
never to come back again! The guide, the Guru,
the leader, the teacher has passed away; the
boy, the student, the servant is left behind.
You understand
why I do not want to meddle with A. Who am I
to meddle with anyone, Joe? I have long given up
my place as a leader I have no right to
raise my voice. Since the beginning of this year
I have not dictated anything in India. You know
that. Many thanks for what you and Mrs. Bull
have been to me in the past. All blessings
follow you ever! The sweetest moments of my life
have been when I was drifting: I am drifting
again with the bright warm sun ahead and
masses of vegetation around and in the heat
everything is so still, so calm and I am
drifting languidly in the warm heart of the
river! I dare not make a splash with my hands or
feet for fear of breaking the marvellous
stillness, stillness that makes you feel sure it
is an illusion!
Behind my work
was ambition, behind my love was personality,
behind my purity was fear, behind my guidance
the thirst of power! Now they are vanishing, and
I drift. I come! Mother, I come! In Thy warm
bosom, floating wheresoever Thou takest me, in
the voiceless, in the strange, in the
wonderland, I come a spectator, no more an
actor.
Oh, it is so
calm! My thoughts seem to come from a great,
great distance in the interior of my own heart.
They seem like faint, distant whispers, and
peace is upon every thing, sweet, sweet peace
like that one feels for a few moments just
before falling into sleep, when things are seen
and felt like shadows without fear, without
love, without emotion. Peace that one feels
alone, surrounded with statues and pictures
I come! Lord, I come!
The world is,
but not beautiful nor ugly, but as sensations
without exciting any emotion. Oh, Joe, the
blessedness of it! Everything is good and
beautiful; for things are all losing their
relative proportions to me my body among the
first. Om That Existence!
I hope great
things to come to you all in London and Paris.
Fresh joy fresh benefits to mind and body.
With love as ever
to you and Mrs. Bull,
Yours faithfully,
VIVEKANANDA.
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The
text portion in purple was inexplicably
cut out in this production.
I
have been studying how I may compare
This prison where I live unto the world:
And for because the world is populous
And here is not a creature but myself,
I cannot do it; yet I'll hammer it out.
My brain I'll prove the female to my soul,
My soul the father; and these two beget
A generation of still-breeding thoughts,
And these same thoughts people this little world,
In humours like the people
of this world,
For no thought is contented. The better sort,
As thoughts of things divine, are intermix'd
With scruples and do set the word itself
Against the word:
As thus, 'Come, little ones,' and then again,
'It is as hard to come as for a camel
To thread the postern of a small needle's eye.'
Thoughts tending to ambition, they do plot
Unlikely wonders; how these vain weak nails
May tear a passage through the flinty ribs
Of this hard world, my ragged prison walls,
And, for they cannot, die in their own pride.
Thoughts tending to content flatter themselves
That they are not the first of fortune's slaves,
Nor shall not be the last; like silly beggars
Who sitting in the stocks refuge their shame,
That many have and others must sit there;
And in this thought they find a kind of ease,
Bearing their own misfortunes on the back
Of such as have before endured the like.
Thus play I in one person many people,
And none contented: sometimes am I king;
Then treasons make me wish myself a beggar,
And so I am: then crushing penury
Persuades me I was better when a king;
Then am I king'd again: and by and by
Think that I am unking'd by Bolingbroke,
And straight am nothing: but whate'er I be,
Nor I nor any man that but man is
With nothing shall be pleased, till he be eased
With being nothing.
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