SWAMI IN DETROIT — 1896
When asked what preparation he made for speaking, he told us none — but neither did he go unprepared. He said that usually before a lecture he heard a voice saying it all. The next day he repeated what he had heard. He did not say whose, voice he heard. Whatever it was, it came as the expression of some great spiritual power, greater than his own normal power, released by the intensity of his concentration. This may have been quite unconscious. No written words can convey the vitality, the power, the majesty that came with his spoken words. What might happen to one's ideas, values, personality, if this current of power were let loose upon them! It was great enough to move the world, let alone one little human personality, which was but as a straw upon its mighty current. It was force that could sweep everything before it. Old ideas would change, the purposes and aims of life, its values would change, old tendencies would be directed into a new channel, the entire personality would be transmuted.
What was it which emanated from him which all felt and none could explain? Was it the ojas of which he so often spoke, that mysterious power which comes when the physical forces of the body are transmuted into spiritual power? When this happens, man has at his command a power so great that it can move the world. Every word that he utters is charged. One who possesses it may say only a few sentences, but they will be potent until the end of time, while the orator who lacks it may 'speak with the tongue of men and of angels', but it is as nothing, 'as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.' This, according to Swami Vivekananda, explains why the few simple sayings of a humble carpenter are still a power in the world after two thousand years, while all that was said by the scholars and the learned of his time has been forgotten.
To be continued.... (Reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda by Sister Christine)
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