MY MASTER

SWAMIJI'S TIME J K SIVAN

VIVEKANANDA

MY MASTER

By teachers you must always remember what we mean in India,--

not a book-worm, but a man of realization, one who knows truth at first-hand and not centuries after. He found a Mohammedan Saint and went to live with him; he underwent the disciplines prescribed by him, and to his astonishment found that when faithfully carried out, these devotional methods led him to the same goal he had already attained. He gathered similar experience from following the true religion of Jesus the Christ. He went to the various sects existing in our country that were available to him, and whatever he took up he went into it with his whole heart. He did exactly as he was told, and in every instance he arrived at the same result. Thus from actual experience he came to know that the goal of every religion is the same, that each is trying to teach the same thing, the difference being largely in method, and still more in language. At the core, all sects and all religions have the same aim.

Then came to him the conviction that to be perfect, the sex idea must go, because soul has no sex, soul is neither male nor female.

It is only in the body that sex exists,and the man who desires to reach the spirit cannot at the same time hold to sex distinctions.

Having been born in a masculine body, this man now wanted to bring the feminine idea into everything. He began to think that he was a woman, he dressed like a woman, spoke like a woman,gave up the occupations of men, and lived among the women of his own family, until,after years of this discipline, his mind became changed, and he entirely forgot the idea of sex; all thought of that vanished and the whole view of life became changed to him.

We hear in the West about worshipping woman, but this is usually for her youth and beauty. This man meant by worshipping woman, that to him every woman's face was that of the Blissful Mother, and nothing but that. I myself have seen this man standing before those women whom society would not touch, and falling at their feet bathed in tears, saying:

" Mother, in one form Thou art in the street, and in another form Thou art the universe. I salute Thee, Mother, I salute Thee." Think of the blessedness of that life from which all carnality has vanished, when every woman's face has become transfigured, and only the face of the Divine Mother, the Blissful One, the Protectress of the human race shines upon the man who can look upon every woman with that love and reverence ! That is what we want.