“They alone live who live for others, the rest are more dead than alive.”
By Kanchan Banerjee
The grand plan
It appears today that a grand divine plot of a historical drama unfolded over the course of a century in preparation for the arrival of the great Swami to give his message to the world.
It is now well known that the transcendental movement was already in motion in America in the early 1800s epitomized by Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Emerson was part of a philosophical movement protesting the general state of culture and society, as well as the state of intellectualism at Harvard University and the doctrine of the Unitarian church taught at Harvard Divinity School. Emerson’s essay ‘The American Scholar’ called for a revolution in human consciousness.
Emerson wrote in his journal in 1831: “I owed a magnificent day to the Bhagavad Gita,”
Many of his Transcendentalist essays are Vedantic ideas from the Gita, the famous book documenting the most popular spiritual discourse by Sri Krishna.
Other famous American personalities, who were part of this movement that finds its origin in the Vedic wisdom that Swamiji presented in America only a few years later, were:
John Muir the American naturalist and original ecological thinker.
Margaret Fuller, one of the first feminist thinkers.
William Henry Channing the Chaplain of the United States House of Representatives.
Amos Bronson Alcott, the first promoter of a ‘vegan’ diet.
Theodore Parker, a reformer and abolitionist, whose words and the quotations he popularized would later inspire speeches by Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr. Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, an educator who opened the first English-language kindergarten in the United States.
Poet Emily Elizabeth Dickinson.
Henry David Thoreau was an American sage poet, philosopher and author, was a student of Emerson who studied Vedic ideas in depth and lived as a secular monk. Many have credited Immanuel Kant with the influence and origin of the Transcendental movement, Thoreau in Waldenspoke of the Transcendentalists’ debt to Vedic thought directly. He wrote:
“In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavat Gita, since whose composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial; and I doubt if that philosophy is not to be referred to a previous state of existence, so remote is its sublimity from our conceptions. ..The pure Walden water is mingled with the sacred water of the Ganges.”
Humanist and poet Walt Whitman was also influenced by the Bhagavat Gita and Indian thoughts. Though the two never met, Swamiji referred to Whitman as “the Sannyasin of America.”
And in a strange twist of destiny, Emerson’s relative, Sarah Ellen Waldo, became a devotee of Swamiji with a new name ‘HariDasi’ given by him transcribed the dictated text of his first book, “Raja Yoga,” in 1895 in New York. This book was Swamiji’s formal introduction of Yoga to America.
Due to the loss of much of the transcripts of Swamiji’s talks and data of his whereabouts, it is difficult to measure who he met and deeply influenced, like Prof. Wright of Harvard. However, it is well known that the who’s who of America and Europe had meetings with him. Here are some threads that can throw light upon this question.
Nikola Tesla who became very close to Swamiji, was friends with some of the best minds of that time who were also indirectly influenced by the Eastern thoughts presented by Swamij, they include:
Mark Twain, Robert Underwood Johnson, editor of Century magazine, Famous writer, Francis Marion Crawford, architect Stanford White, inventor Fritz Lowenstein, and Josiah Royce who were close with Emerson, Bertrand Russell, Mark Twain and other similar world thinkers.
Direct links can be found between Swamiji, Nicola Tesla, Lord Kelvin, Walter Russell and Sir William Thompson.
John D. Rockefeller, the exemplary philanthropist was directly influenced by Swamiji and launched his philanthropic endeavors after encounters with the Swami.
Two influential contemporary philosophers were very much influenced by Swamiji – William James, who was known as the ‘country’s premier intellectual’ of that era, and his brother was the master novelist Henry James who said Swamiji was blessed with “the power of personality,” and that he was the ideal missionary to pitch the message of Vedanta.
Many other well-known personalities were directly or indirectly influenced by Swamiji – among the notable movers and shakers of that time are: Aldous Huxley, Gerald Heard, J.D. Salinger, Gertrude Stein, Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, George Santyana and Somerset Maugham.
Many socially prominent women greatly helped and supported Swamiji in America. He has documented many of them in his letters.
Sara Bull in Cambridge, Josephine MacLeod in New York City, World famous opera singer Emma Calve and Margaret Noble in London were the most prominent ones. It was because of them that Swamiji was able to accomplish much of his mission.
Vivekananda Back to India
After his triumph in Chicago he returned to India only to receive a hero’s welcome.
Will Durant said: “Returning to India, he preached to his countrymen a more virile creed than any Hindu had offered them since Vedic Days. He redefined God as ‘the totality of all souls’ and called upon his fellow-men to practice religion not through vain asceticism and meditation, but through absolute devotion to mankind.”
“Rooted in the past, full of pride in India’s prestige, Vivekananda was yet modern in his approach to life’s problems, and was a kind of bridge between the past of India and her present.” said Pandit Nehru.
“If you want to know India, study Vivekananda. In him everything is positive and nothing negative.” Said – India’s Poet Laureate Rabindranath Tagore
Founder of Tata Industries in India Jamshedji Tata was inspired by the Swami. They met on the same ship on which Swamiji travelled to America.
Swamiji suggested creating national industries and institutes – both business and educational leading to self reliance in business, science and technology. Influenced by Swamiji, Jamshedji Tata spearheaded the formation of Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore alongside his famous steel plant.
Sir JC Bose, inventor of Radio also drew inspiration from his thoughts. India’s modern technological education system owes a lot to Swamiji.
Some world leaders about Swamiji
Let us hear what some prominent world leaders said about him.
‘He is the most brilliant wise man,’ ‘It is doubtful another man has ever risen above this selfless, spiritual meditation.’ Leo Tolstoy
“The thought of this warrior prophet of India left a deep mark upon the United States . . . I cannot touch these sayings of his . . . without giving a thrill through my body like an electric shock. And what shocks, what transports must have been produced when in burning words they issued from the lips of the hero!” – Romain Rolland, French Nobel Laureate writer.
‘Swami Vivekananda was the greatest spiritual ambassador of India, if I may say, in the history of India, and for that matter, the history of Asia.” – U Thant – Former Secretary-General of the United Nations
Writer Henry Miller noted “Vivekananda as the great sage of the modern age and the consummate messenger to rescue the West from spiritual bankruptcy.”
(This is part 5 of ‘Swami Vivekananda and the world’ series which has 9 parts)
