18 April :
18 Apr 1900 : Letter to Josephine
Work is always difficult; pray for me Joe that my works stop for ever,
and my whole soul be absorbed in Mother. Her works, She knows. I
am well, very well mentally. I feel the rest of the soul more shall that
of the body. The battles are lost and won, I have bundled my things and
am waiting for the great deliverer.
"Shiva, O Shiva, carry my boat to the other shore."
"Shiva, O Shiva, carry my boat to the other shore."
After all, Joe, I am only the boy who used to listen with rapt
wonderment to the wonderful words of Ramakrishna under the Banyan at
Dakshineswar. That is my true nature; works and activities, doing good
and so forth are all superimpositions. Now I again hear his voice; the
same old voice thrilling my soul. Bonds are breaking — love dying, work
becoming tasteless — the glamour is off life. Only the voice of the
Master calling. — "I come Lord, I come." "Let the dead bury the dead,
follow thou Me." — "I come, my beloved Lord, I come."
Yes, I come. Nirvana is before me. I feel it at times — the same infinite ocean of peace, without a ripple, a breath.
I am glad I was born, glad I suffered so, glad I did make big blunders,
glad to enter peace. I leave none bound, I take no bonds. Whether this
body will fall and release me or I enter into freedom in the body, the
old man is gone, gone for ever, never to come back again! The guide, the
Guru, the leader, the teacher has passed away; the boy, the student,
the servant is left behind.
The sweetest moments of my life
have been when I was drifting: I am drifting again — with the bright
warm sun ahead and masses of vegetation around — and in the heat
everything is so still, so calm — and I am drifting languidly — in the
warm heart of the river! I dare not make a splash with my hands or feet —
for fear of breaking the marvellous stillness, stillness that makes you
feel sure it is an illusion!
Behind my work was ambition, behind my
love was personality, behind my purity was fear, behind my guidance the
thirst of power! Now they are vanishing, and I drift. I come! Mother, I
come! In Thy warm bosom, floating wheresoever Thou takest me, in the
voiceless, in the strange, in the wonderland, I come — a spectator, no
more an actor.
Oh, it is so calm! My thoughts seem to come from a
great, great distance in the interior of my own heart. They seem like
rains, distant whispers, and peace is upon every thing, sweet, sweet
peace — like that one feels for a few moments just before falling into
sleep, when things are seen and felt like shadows — without fear,
without love, without emotion. Peace that one feels alone, surrounded
with statues and pictures — I come! Lord, I come!
The world is, but
not beautiful nor ugly, but as sensations without exciting any emotion.
Oh, Joe, the blessedness of it! Everything is good and beautiful; for
things are all losing their relative proportions to me — my body among
the first. Om That Existence!
Join the year long 150th Birth Anniversary of Swami Vivekananda : sv150.org Vivekananda Kendra, Kanyakumari
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