The Master As I Saw Him

Swami Vivekananda said to Sister Nivedita: "It is no superstition with you, I am sure, you have the making in you of a world mover, and others will also come. Bold words and bolder deeds are what we want. Awake, awake great ones! The world is burning with misery. Can you sleep?" "In nothing, perhaps, did the personal freedom of Vivekananda show itself more plainly than in his grasp of the continuity of national life. The new form was always, to him, sanctified by the old consecration. To draw pictures of the goddess Saraswati was, according to him, "to worship her". The old Bhakti of the cow showed how receptive was the spirit of Hindu society of new and scientific methods of dairy farming, and the pasturing and the care of animals... Study was tapasya, and Hindu meditativeness an aid to scientific insight. All work was a form of renunciation. Love, even of home and family, was always capable of being wrought into a grander and more universal passion...".