SWAMIJI'S TIME

SWAMIJI’S TIME      J K  SIVAN

 MY MASTER

                                ‘’HOW  I FIND HIM?’’  

For years I lived with that man, but  never did I hear those lips utter one word of condemnation for any sect. He had the same sympathy for all of them; he had found the 'harmony between them. A man

may be intellectual, or devotional, or mystic, or active, and the various religions represent one or the other of these types. Yet

it is possible to combine all the four in one man, and this is what future humanity is going to do. That was his idea. He condemned

no one, but saw the good in all. People came by thousands to see this wonderful man, to hear him speak in a patois, every word of which was forceful and instinct with light. For it is not what is spoken, much less the language in which it is spoken, it is the personality of the speaker which dwells in everything he says

that carries weight. Every one of us feels this at times. We hear most splendid orations, most wonderfully reasoned out discourses,

and we go home and forget it all. At other times we hear a few words in the simplest of language, and they accompany us all our lives, become part and parcel of ourselves and produce lasting results. The words of a man who can put his personality into them take effect, but he must have tremendous personality. All teaching is giving and taking, the teacher gives and the taught receives, but the one must have something to give, and fhe other must be

open to receive.

This man came to live near Calcutta, the capital of India then, the most important university town in our country, which was send

ing out sceptics and materialists by the hundreds every year, yet the great men from the different universities used to come and

listen to him.

I heard of this man, and I went to hear him. He looked just like an

ordinary man, with nothing remarkable about him. He used the most simple language, and I thought,

" Can this man be a great teacher? "

 I crept near to him and asked him the question which I had been

asking others all my life:

" Do you believe in God, sir?"

"Yes," he replied.

"Can you proveit,sIr?" "

Yes."

 "How?"

"Because I see Him just as I see you here, only in a much intenser sense."

 That impressed me at once. For the first time I had found a

man who dared to say that he saw God, that religion was a reality, to be felt, to be sensed in an infinitely more intense way than we

can sense the world. I began to come near that man, day after day, and I actually saw that religion could be given. One touch, one glance, can make a whole life change.