Wednesday 18 April 2018

From the letters of Sister Nivedita

यतो धर्म: ततो जय:

To Miss J. MacLeod

21A High Sr. Wimbledon
Jan 4, 1901

I wish I could come to you Dear, and tell you everything and ask you what I ought and ought not to do.

And yet the very thought of such a thing seems like selfishness. But it is so difficult to know the Right - so difficult Yum Yum. And so easy to go through life simply fighting and opposing. Have I any business to go on in England? Is it a real call to stay here? - or only a fancied call? As far as wishes go - my whole soul is in India. I am more and more convinced that there is nothing to be done outside. And what I am doing here seems the merest fancy-work.

Your words - "In whom I have all faith" - hit me hard. Do I deserve you faith? How long shall I deserve it? I donot know. I can not tell. Only I am trying to do right, with all my heart. If you feel prompted to wire "start at once for India," you may be sure that I shall do it without fail.

I am trying to get the whole of the Brahmo feeling and tradition honestly. And it seems a right and necessary side to get. There has been a tremendous resolution on his side to overcome - for he felt that honour could never permit my hearing his views from him. But at last I think I am getting it all. And I am throwing myself into it completely, as I think S.R.K. would wish me to do, and trying, if that might be, to reach GOD that way. You will remember that we (or at least I) did not love even Shiva and Kali at first. Even S.R.K. can not have loved all religions equally. So I may say without any disloyalty to the effort I am making that at present it is dreadfully like the Puritanism of my childhood. But I feel strongly that the more this is the fact, the more must I try to do it. And sometimes I am quite clear and sure that the call and the effort come straight from S.R.K. Himself. And at other times I think of Swami and shudder - for I do not think he could understand or approve - and to be disapproved of by him is still the uttermost death to me. Moreover, I seem to be casting away all that I have lived for - all that it has been Freedom to possess - so far. But how mean even to think in such a way! As if it were so dreadful to see one's own miserable little self in the wrong! No wonder one is so shy of seeing it hungry or cold or ridiculed!

The Brahmavadin review of Kali is too awful. It explains frankly to an inquisitive world hat Vireshwar was Swami's family name - etc - !



http://www.sisternivedita.org




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