Swami Vivekananda Biography

THE WORLD’S FIRST PARLIAMENT of Religions, which was held in the city of Chicago from September 11 to 27, 1893, was one of the great epoch-making events in the history of religions, especially in regards to Hinduism. Delegates came from all parts of the world, representing every form of organized religious belief. It was not only a Parliament of Religions; it was a parliament of humanity; and if this great assembly of religious ideas and creeds had done nothing more than make society aware of the “Unity in diversity” of the religious outlook of man, it would still have been unequaled among ecumenical conventions in character and importance. But it did far more than that. It roused a wave of new awareness in the Western world of the profundity and vitality of Eastern thought.

 News that the Parliament was to be held was heralded to all parts of the globe. Committees of various kinds were formed to organize it on a proper basis, and invitations were sent out to the heads or executive bodies of religious organizations the world over. Every religious creed was to send its own delegate or delegates, as the case might be, and reception committees were to receive them on their arrival in Chicago.

 During the seventeen days of the Parliament proper, there assembled a great concourse of humanity, which included many of the most distinguished people of the world. Many of the greatest minds of the West were in daily attendance, and among the delegates were high ecclesiastics of various faiths.

 The main sessions of the Parliament were held morning, afternoon, and evening in the large Hall of Columbus. Generally, the Hall of Columbus was full to overflowing; indeed, at times the overflow was so great that it nearly filled the adjoining twin Hall of Washington, where the speakers repeated their lectures to a second vast audience. Hundreds of papers and addresses were delivered during the main sessions. In addition, many talks were given before the thirty-five denominational congresses and auxiliary sections which were held either in the Hall of Washington or in the smaller halls of the building.

 Swami Vivekananda himself described the opening of the Parliament and his own state of mind in replying to the welcome offered to the delegates:

"On the morning of the opening of the Parliament, we all assembled in a building called the Art Palace, where one huge, and other smaller temporary halls were erected for the sittings of the Parliament. People from all nations were there. There was a grand procession, and we were all marshaled onto the platform. Imagine a hall below and a huge gallery above, packed with six or seven thousand men and women representing the best culture of the country, and on the platform learned men of all nations on the earth. And I who never spoke in public in my life to address this august assemblage!

 Indeed, that sea of faces might have given even a practiced orator stage fright. To speak before such a distinguished, critical, and highly intellectual gathering required intense self-confidence. The Swami had walked in the imposing procession of delegates, and had seen the huge assembly, the eager faces of the audience, and the authoritative and dignified princes of the Christian churches who sat on the platform. He was lost in amazement by the splendor of it all.

 He himself was alternately rapt in silent prayer and stirred by the eloquence of the speakers who had preceded him. Several times he had been called upon to speak, but he had said, “No, not now,” until the Chairman was puzzled and wondered if he would speak at all. At length, in the late afternoon, the Chairman insisted, and the Swami arose.

 His face glowed like fire. His eyes surveyed in a sweep the huge assembly before him. The whole audience grew intent; a pin could have been heard to fall. Then he addressed his audience as “Sisters and Brothers of America.” And with that, before he had uttered another word, the whole Parliament was caught up in a great wave of enthusiasm, as “seven thousand people rose to their feet in tribute” with shouts of applause. The Parliament had gone mad; everyone was cheering, cheering, cheering! The Swami was bewildered. For several minutes he attempted to speak, but the wild enthusiasm of the audience prevented it.

 The audience, as a whole, could not have known precisely why it cheered for Swamiji at his very first words. In other cases, there had been obvious reasons: political or religious sympathy, or previous knowledge of the speaker. In Vivekananda’s case there was nothing like this. No, it was inspired by something unspoken that came through Swamiji’s words. Bearing in mind that this was the first time he had addressed the great American public, and that he himself was strongly moved by the occasion, one cannot but think that the deepest powers of his Spirit were fully active as he stood there on the platform, and that the knowledge of his oneness with that huge crowd of men and women was communicating itself irresistibly to those who saw and heard him. The spontaneous and prolonged standing ovation that met Swamiji’s first words of greeting sprang from a source as deep as did those words themselves, and the rapport that was immediately created between himself and his audience beckoned the real significance of his visit to the West. When silence was restored, the Swami continued his address, quoted here in part:

"It fills my heart with joy unspeakable to rise in response to the grand words of welcome given to us by you. I thank you in the name of the most ancient order of monks the world has ever seen, of which the Buddha was only a member. I thank you in the name of the Mother of religions, of which Buddhism and Jainism are but branches; and I thank you, finally, in the name of the millions and millions of Hindu people . . .

 I am proud to belong to a religion that has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance . . . We believe not only in universal tolerance but we accept all religions to be true. I will quote to you, sisters and brothers, a few lines from a hymn which every Hindu child repeats every day. I feel that the very spirit of this hymn, which I have repeated from my earliest boyhood, which is every day repeated by millions and millions of people in India, has at last come to be realized. “As the different streams, having their sources in different places, all mingle their water in the sea; O Lord, so the different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee.”

 "The present convention, which is one of the most august assemblies ever held, is in itself an indication, a declaration to the world of the wonderful doctrine preached in the Bhagavad Gita: “Whosoever comes to Me, through whatsoever form I reach him, all are struggling through paths that in the end always lead to Me.”

 Sectarianism, bigotry and its horrible descendant, fanaticism, have possessed long this beautiful earth. It has filled the earth with violence, drenched it often and often with human blood, destroyed civilizations, and sent whole nations into despair. But its time has come, and I fervently believe that the bell that tolled this morning in honor of the representatives of the different religions of the earth at this Parliament is the death- knell to all fanaticism, that it is the death-knell to all persecution with the sword or the pen, and to all uncharitable feelings between brethren winding their way to the same goal, but through different ways."

 The applause that had punctuated Swamiji’s talk thundered out at its close. The people had recognized their hero and had taken him to their hearts; thenceforth he was the star of the Parliament.

 It was only a short talk, but its spirit of universality, its fundamental earnestness, and its broad-mindedness completely captivated the whole assembly. The Swami announced the universality of religious truths and the sameness of the goal of all religious realizations. And he was able to do so because he had sat at the feet of Paramahamsa Ramakrishna, a man of complete and authentic Realization, in far-off India, and had learned from him the truth that all religions were one, that they were all paths leading to the selfsame goal, the selfsame God. When the Swami sat down, the Parliament signified its approval by giving him a great and continuous ovation.

  Commenting on the reception accorded to the Swami’s first appearance before the Parliament, the Rev. John Henry Barrows wrote in The World’s Parliament of Religions, “When Swami Vivekananda addressed the audience as ‘Sisters and Brothers of America,’ there arose a standing ovation that lasted for several minutes.” Another eyewitness, Mrs. S. K. Blodgett, later recalled: “When that young man got up and said, ‘Sisters and Brothers of America,’ seven thousand people rose to their feet as a tribute to something they knew not what.”

 There are several contemporaneous descriptions and appreciations of Swamiji quoted in Life Magazine, and from various periodicals such as the Boston Evening Transcript. One of the finest appraisals comes from the Honorable Mr. Merwin-Marie Snell, President of the Scientific Section of the Parliament, as reported in
Life Magazine;

"Vivekananda was beyond question the most popular and influential speaker in the Parliament, who on all occasions was received with greater enthusiasm than any other speaker, Christian or Pagan."

  Harriet Monroe, the founder of Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, a publication through which she introduced many of America’s now famous poets, attended the World’s Fair, and recorded her impressions of the Parliament and of Vivekananda:

"The Congress of Religions was a triumph for all concerned, especially for its generalissimo, the Reverend John H. Barrows, of Chicago’s First Presbyterian Church, who had been preparing it for two years. When he brought down his gavel upon the world’s first Parliament of Religions, a wave of breathless silence swept over the audience — it seemed a great moment in human history, prophetic of the promised new era of tolerance and peace. On the stage with him, at his left, was a black-coated array of bishops and ministers representing the various familiar Protestant sects and the Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches; at his right, a brilliant group of strangely costumed dignitaries from afar — a Confucian from China, a Jain from India, a Theosophist from Allahabad, a white robed Shinto priest and four Buddhists from Japan, and a monk of the orange robe from Bombay.  

It was the last of these, Swami Vivekananda, the magnificent, who stole the whole show and captured the town. Others of the foreign groups spoke well, but the handsome monk in the orange robe gave us in perfect English a masterpiece. His personality, dominant, magnetic; his voice, rich as a bronze bell; the controlled fervor of his feeling; the beauty of his message to the Western world he was facing for the first time — these combined to give us a rare and perfect moment of supreme emotion. It was human eloquence at its highest pitch."

On September 19, the Swami read his celebrated paper on “Hinduism” — a summary of the philosophy, psychology, and general ideas and practices of Hinduism. Though the Swami was not the only Indian, or even the only Bengali present, he was the only representative of Hinduism proper. The other Hindu delegates stood for societies or churches or sects, but the Swami stood for Hinduism in its universal aspect. He gave forth the ideas of the Hindus concerning the soul and its destiny; he expounded the doctrines of the Vedanta philosophy, which harmonizes all religious ideals and all forms of worship, viewing them as various presentations of truth and as various paths to its realization. He preached the religious philosophy of Hinduism, which declares the soul to be eternally pure, eternally free, only appearing in the material world of the senses to be limited and manifold. He spoke of the attainment of the goal — the realization of One Eternal Divinity — as the result of innumerable efforts of many lives. He said that in order to realize our own Divinity, the self that says “I” and “mine” must vanish. This, however, did not mean the denial of true individuality; it meant, rather, its utmost fulfillment. By destroying the ignorance of selfishness within, one attained to infi- nite, universal individuality. The pervasive spirit of his address was the truth of Oneness. And he insisted that the realization of the Divinity within us inevitably led to our being able to see Divinity manifest everywhere.

 In this stunning talk, Swami Vivekananda gave coherence and unity to the bewildering number of sects and beliefs that through untold ages have gathered and flowered under the name of Hinduism. He revealed the central beliefs common to each widely divergent sect. He made it all not only clear but supremely inspiring, a living religion springing eternally from the very soul of humanity itself.

  Indeed, in this first statement of the Hindu religion that Swamiji made to the American public lay the seeds of all his subsequent teachings; that which he was later to develop and formulate in language adapted to Western understanding and culture was all there. Perhaps in that moment not only was Hinduism re-created, but a new religion for the world was given its first enunciation in the West — a religion both fulfilling the past, and lighting up the future.

 Among the many people who long remembered Swamiji’s paper on Hinduism and were profoundly moved by it, was a young student who went on to become a well-known and influential philosopher. In his “Recollections of Swami Vivekananda,” William Ernest Hocking wrote in his later years:

 "We all carry about with us unsolved problems of adjustment to this many-angled world. Without formulating questions, we are living quests, unless by some rare chance our philosophy of life is entirely settled. And to meet such a person may resolve a quest wholly without his knowledge; it may simply be a mode of being that brings the release.

 This was in measure the story of my first encounter with Swami Vivekananda, though I was only one of an immense audience . . . I was a casual visitor at the Fair, just turning twenty, interested in a dozen exhibits on the Midway . . . But aside from all this, I had a quietly disturbing problem of my own.

 I had been reading all I could get of the works of Herbert Spencer . . . I was convinced by him; . . . and yet it was somehow a vital injury to think of man as merely of the animals — birth, growth, mating, death — and nothing more — finis. I had had in my religion — Methodism — an experience of conversion with a strange enlightenment that gave me three days of what felt like a new vision of things, strangely lifted up. Spencer had explained that all away as just an emotional flurry — the world must be faced with a steady objective eye. The Christian cosmology was simply fancy.

 But still, Christianity was not the only religion. There were to be speakers from other traditions. They might have some insight that would relieve the tension. I would go for an hour and listen. I didn’t know the program. It happened to be Vivekananda’s period.

 He spoke not as arguing from a tradition, or from a book, but as from an experience and certitude of his own. I do not recall the steps of his address. But there was a passage toward the end, in which I can still hear the ring of his voice, and feel the silence of the crowd — almost as if shocked. The audience was well-mixed, but could be taken as one in assuming the Christian teachings that there had been a “fall of man” resulting in a state of “original sin,” such that “All men have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” But what is the speaker saying? I hear his emphatic rebuke:

“Call men sinners? It is a sin to call men sinners!”

Through the silence I felt something like a gasp running through the hall as the audience waited for the affirmation which must follow this blow. What his following words were, I cannot recall with the same verbal clarity: they carried the message that in all men there is that divine essence, undivided and eternal: reality is One, and that One, which is Brahman, constitutes the central being of each one of us.

 For me, this doctrine was a startling departure from anything that my scientific psychology could then recognize. One must live with these ideas and consider how one’s inner experience could entertain them. But what I could feel and understand was that this man was speaking from what he knew, not from what he had been told. He was well aware of the books; but he was more immediately aware of his own experience and his own status in the world; and what he said would have to be taken into account in any final world-view. I began to realize that Spencer could not be allowed the last word. And furthermore, that this religious experience of mine, which Spencer would dismiss as a psychological flurry, was very akin to the grounds of Vivekananda’s own certitude."

 Day after day the Parliament went on, with the Swami often speaking extemporaneously at its main sessions. He was allowed to speak longer than the usual half-hour, and being the most popu- lar speaker, he was always scheduled last in order to hold the audience. The people would sit from ten in the morning to ten at night, with only a recess of a half-hour for lunch, listening to paper after paper, in order to hear their favorite.

 On September 27, the Swami delivered his “Address at the Final Session,” and here he again rose to one of his most prophetic and luminous moods. He declared:

 "The Christian is not to become a Hindu or a Buddhist, nor a Hindu or a Buddhist to become a Christian. But each must assimilate the spirit of the others, and yet preserve his individuality and grow according to his own law of growth....

If the Parliament of Religions has shown anything to the world, it is this: It has proved to the world that holiness, purity, and charity are not the exclusive possessions of any church in the world, and that every system has produced men and women of the most exalted character."

 Thus did the unknown monk blossom into a world figure; the wandering renunciate of solitary days in India had overnight become the Prophet of a New Dispensation!

 On all sides his name resounded. Life-size pictures of him were posted in the streets of Chicago, with the words “The Monk Vivekananda” beneath them, and passers-by would stop to do reverence with bowed head. “From the day the wonderful Professor (Vivekananda) delivered his speech, which was followed by other addresses, he was followed by a crowd wherever he went,” a contemporary newspaper reported. The press rang with his fame. The best known and most conservative of the metropolitan newspapers proclaimed him a Prophet and a Seer. Indeed, the New York Herald spoke of him in these words:

"He is undoubtedly the greatest figure in the Parliament of Religions. After hearing him we feel how foolish it is to send missionaries to this learned nation."

The Boston Evening Transcript wrote on September 30:

He is a great favorite at the Parliament from the grandeur of his sentiments and his appearance as well. If he merely crosses the platform he is applauded, and yet this marked approval of thousands he accepts in a child- like spirit of gratification without a trace of conceit.

 Other leading newspapers of the United States were also eloquent about Swami Vivekananda. Well-known periodicals quoted his talks in full. The Review of Reviews described his address as “noble and sublime,” and the Critic of New York spoke of him as “an orator by Divine right.” Similar accounts of the Swami’s triumph appeared in other papers too numerous to quote here.

  Among personal appreciations, the Honorable Merwin- Marie Snell wrote some time after:

"No religious body made so profound an impression upon the Parliament and the American people at large as did Hinduism. And by far the most important representative of Hinduism was Swami Vivekananda, who, in fact, was beyond question the most popular and influential man in the Parliament. He frequently spoke, both on the floor of the Parliament itself, and at the meetings of the Scientific Section over which I had the honor to preside, and, on all occasions, he was received with greater enthusiasm than any other speaker, Christian or “Pagan.” The people thronged about him wherever he went, and hung with eagerness on his every word . . . The most rigid of orthodox Christians say of him, “He is indeed a prince among men!”

Dr. Annie Besant, who helped popularize the movement of Theosophy, gave her impression of the Swami at the Parliament:

A striking figure, clad in yellow and orange, shining like the sun of India in the midst of the heavy atmosphere of Chicago, a lion head, piercing eyes, mobile lips, movements swift and abrupt — such was my first impression of Swami Vivekananda, as I met him in one of the rooms set apart for the use of the delegates to the Parliament of Religions. Off the platform, his figure was instinct with pride of country, pride of race — the representative of the oldest of living religions, surrounded by curious gazers of nearly the youngest religion. India was not to be shamed before the hurrying arrogant West by this her envoy and her son. He brought her message, he spoke in her name, and the herald remembered the dignity of the royal land whence he came. Purposeful, virile, strong, he stood out, a man among men, able to hold his own.

On the platform another side came out. The dignity and the inborn sense of worth and power still were there, but all was subdued to the exquisite beauty of the spiritual message which he had brought, to the sublimity of that matchless truth of the East which is the heart and the life of India, the wondrous teaching of the Self. Enraptured, the huge multitude hung upon his words; not a syllable must be lost, not a cadence missed! “That man, a heathen!” said one, as he came out of the great hall, “and we send missionaries to his people! It would be more fitting that they should send missionaries to us!”

 So meteoric was the transformation of the Swami from obscurity to fame, that it can be truly said that he “awoke one morning to find himself famous.”

 Though the news about the proceedings of the Parliament of Religions, and about the Swami, had been coming out in the Indian newspapers since mid-September of 1893, it did not catch the attention of the Indian people till November, when a long article entitled “Hindus at the Fair,” first published in the Boston Evening Transcript of September 23, appeared in the leading papers of Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras. This article brought to India the first inkling that something extraordinary was taking place halfway around the globe. It read in part:

"Vivekananda’s address before the Parliament was broad as the heavens above us; embracing the best in all religions, as the ultimate universal religion — charity to all mankind, good works for the love of God, not for fear of punishment or hope of reward. He is a great favorite at the Parliament, from the grandeur of his sentiments and his appearance as well. If he merely crosses the platform he is applauded, and this marked approval of thousands he accepts in a childlike spirit of gratification, without a tram of conceit. It must be a strange experience, too, for this humble young Brahmin monk, this sudden transition from poverty and self-effacement, to affluence and aggrandizement..."

  From that time on, as news of Swami Vivekananda’s spectacular success at Chicago came from the American Press, it was reprinted in the leading Indian newspapers, notably the Indian Mirror, with enthusiastic editorial comments. It was not long before all of India knew that a young monk, a penniless sannyasin, had crossed the ocean, mixed with foreigners, and conquered the great international Parliament of Religions.

 Soon after came the publication of the Rev. John Henry Barrows’ two-volume work, The World’s Parliament of Religions
— an official and detailed history of the event. The book was reviewed exhaustively in the January issue of the American periodical the Review of Reviews, which account was, in turn, commented upon at length in an editorial in the Indian Mirror
of February 21, 1894. The fact that Barrows had given a prominent place to Swami Vivekananda and to his paper on Hinduism in his history put an official and impressive seal on the Swami’s great accomplishment. His achievement could no longer be brushed aside as a passing sensation by Christian missionaries and others to whose interest it was to discredit him. The deep mark he had made was now a matter of solid historical record. The
Mirror’s editorial read in part:

 "Dr. John Henry Barrows, the President of the Parliament of Religions, has just published the official report of the Parliament. A prominent place has been accorded to Swami Vivekananda in the report. “This speaker,” says Dr. Barrows, “is a high-caste Hindu and representative of orthodox Hinduism. He was one of the principal personalities in the Parliament.” Dr. Barrows characterizes the Swami’s address as “noble and sublime,” and it was so much appreciated for its breadth, its sincerity and its excellent spirit of toleration, that the Hindu representative soon came to be as much liked outside the Parliament as within it . . .

 Whatever may be the practical outcome of Swami Vivekananda’s mission to America, there can be no question that it has already had the effect of immensely raising the credit of true Hinduism in the eyes of the civilized world, and that is, indeed, a work for which the whole Hindu community should feel grateful to the Swami."

 Mr. Merwin-Marie Snell, President of the Scientific Section of the Parliament, wrote a long letter to the editor of the
Pioneer, an Anglo-Indian newspaper of Allahabad. His letter, dated January 30, 1894, was printed in the Pioneer on March 8 of the same year.

 This laudatory letter, written by a highly respected Western scholar, together with editorial reactions to it, added to India’s amazement and journalistic attention relating to the Swami’s success at the Parliament of Religions. A passage from Mr. Snell’s letter has been quoted earlier in this chapter; other portions read as follows:

 "I have felt inspired to voice the unanimous and heartfelt gratitude and appreciation of the cultured and broadminded portion of our public, and to give my personal testimony, as the President of the Scientific Section of the Parliament and of all the Conferences connected with the latter, and therefore an eyewitness, to the esteem in which Paramahamsa Vivekananda is held here, the influence that he is wielding, and the good that he is doing . . .

 Intense is the astonished admiration which the per- sonal presence and bearing and language of Vivekananda have wrung from a public accustomed to think of Hindus, thanks to the fables and half-truths of the missionaries, as ignorant and degraded “heathen”: there is no doubt that the continued interest is largely due to a genuine hunger for the spiritual truths which India through him has offered to the American people . . .

 Never before has so authoritative a representative of genuine Hinduism, as opposed to the emasculated and Anglicized versions of it so common in these days, been accessible to American inquirers: and it is certain that the American people at large, will, when he is gone, look forward with eagerness to his return . . . America thanks India for sending him."

Mr. Snell’s letter was widely circulated, and thus the Swami’s achievement, confirmed again and again by highly reputable sources, was becoming deeply impressed upon the mind of the Indian people.

 The next wave of amazement over the impact of Vivekananda at the Parliament of Religions to sweep over India was the publication in Madras and Calcutta of the text of the Swami’s paper on “Hinduism,” which he had delivered on September 19, 1893. The Calcutta pamphlet was distributed on March 11, 1894, at Dakshineswar, on the birthday celebration of Sri Ramakrishna. The Swami’s address created perhaps the greatest sensation of all, for it left no doubt of what precisely he had said to the American people, and in what precisely his achievement consisted. On March 21, the Indian Mirror printed a lengthy excerpt from his paper, commenting in part:

"The spirit that reigned over the Parliament and dominated the soul of almost every religious representative present was that of universal toleration and universal deliverance, and it ought to be a matter of pride to India, to all Hindus specially, that no one expressed, as the American papers say, this spirit so well as the Hindu representative, Swami Vivekananda. His address struck the keynote of the Parliament of Religions . . . The spirit of catholicity and toleration which distinguishes Hinduism, forming one of its broadest features, was never before so prominently brought to the notice of the world as it has been by Swami Vivekananda, and we make no doubt that the Swami’s address will have an effect on other religions, whose teachers, preachers, and missionaries heard him, and were impressed by his utterances."

 As the Swami’s “Paper on Hinduism” circulated through India, the tremendous historical significance of his mission became apparent to all. His epoch-making representation of Hinduism at the Parliament was to raise India not only in the estimation of the West, but in her own estimation as well, and was eventually to bring about a profound change in her national life. Years later, on the Swami’s passing from this world, the Brahmavadin
commented:

 "Had the late lamented Swami Vivekananda done nothing more than attend the Parliament of Religions in Chicago and deliver that one speech that brought India and America together almost immediately, he would still have been entitled to our fullest gratitude. That speech compelled attention both in method and substance. To Swami Vivekananda belongs the undying honor of being the pioneer in the noble work of Hindu religious revival."

 The Swami’s appearance at the Parliament of Religions had without question made him irreversibly famous throughout the world. Never again was he to wander alone, unknown through his beloved country. His world mission in its public aspect had begun. But in the midst of all the immediate acclaim and popularity that his appearance at the Parliament had brought him, he had no thought for himself; his heart continued to bleed for the impoverished in India. Personally he had no more wants. The mansions of some of the wealthiest of Chicago society were open to him, and he was received as an honored guest. But instead of feeling happy in this splendid environment, his heart continued to cry for the suffering souls in his beloved India. Name and fame and the approval of thousands had in no way affected him; though sumptuously cared for, he was the same monk as of old, always thinking of India’s poor. As he retired the first night and lay upon his bed, the terrible contrast between poverty-stricken India and opulent America pressed on him. He could not sleep for pondering over India’s plight. At length, overcome with emotion, he cried, “O Mother, to what a sad pass have we poor Indians come when millions of us die for want of a handful of rice, and here they spend millions of rupees upon their personal comforts! Who will raise the masses in India! Who will give them bread? Show me, O Mother, how I can help them.”

 Over and over again one finds the same intense love for the suffering shining out in his words and actions. The deep and spontaneous love that welled in his heart for the poor, the distressed, and the despised was the inexhaustible spring of all his activities. From this point on, Swami’s life becomes a world of intense thought and work. Hand in hand with giving the message of Hinduism to the West, the Swami was to work constantly trying to solve the problems of his country. Though the dusty roads and the parched tongue and the hunger of his days as a wandering monk were ascetic in the extreme, the experiences he was to undergo in foreign lands were to be even more severe. He was to strain him- self to the utmost. He was to work until work was no longer possible and the body dropped off from sheer exhaustion.

(From The Life of Swami Vivekananda and Swami Vivekananda in the West)