Swami Vivekananda in the memory of Ida Ansell - 8

Tom immediately began to give his services as usher in Swamiji's lectures, and as soon as she was able, Edith went to hear him. It was while she was standing near the entrance waiting for Tom to count the collection that Swamiji saw her, and called to her, "Madame, you come here," She went to him and he said. "If you would like to see me privately come to the flat. No collection is taken there; everything is free."

"When shall I come?" she asked.

"Tomorrow morning at nine o'clock."

She went to the flat the next morning and sat on one side of a bay window. Swamiji came in chanting and sat at the other side of the window. "Well, Madame," he said. Edith was so moved that she could not speak and could not stop crying for a long time. Then Swamiji said. "Come tomorrow morning at the same time." She went to him several times for spiritual instruction. He gave her some simple breathing exercises, warning her not to practise them except in his presence. He told her that he thought the work of the Home of Truth was the best then available in the West, and he appreciated the fact that the workers there did not charge for spiritual assistance, as some others did.


One time Swamiji said, "I am the disciple of a man who could not write his own name, but I am not worthy to unloose his shoes. How often I have wished that I could take this intellect and throw it in the Ganga."

"But Swami," protested one woman, "your intellect is what we like about you." "That is because you are a fool. Madame, as I am," was Swamiji's answer.

At the end of the last meeting of the class, Edith was departing quietly when Swamiji shouted. "Madame, you come back. Go into the dining room and sit down." When he finished saying good-bye to the others, he went in and asked her to stay to dinner. Then he began to cook and made her peel potatoes and onions. While working, he was chanting verses from the Gita and once he stopped and recited in English the sixty-first verse of the eighteenth chapter: "The Lord lives in the heart of every creature. He turns them round and round upon the wheel of his Maya." "You see, Madame," he said, "he has us on the wheel. What can we do?"

To be continued...(Memoirs of Ida Ansell)

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The main theme of my life is to take the message of Sanatana Dharma to every home and pave the way for launching, in a big way, the man-making programme preached and envisaged by great seers like Swami Vivekananda. - Mananeeya Eknathji

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. . . Are you Strong? Do you feel Strength? — for I know it is Truth alone that gives Strength. Strength is the medicine for the world's disease . . . This is the great fact: "Strength is LIFE; Weakness is Death."

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