This, in short, was my impression of Swamiji on the first day of our meeting. As days went and I knew more and more of him, it gained greater and greater strength. I only saw on the first day the few sparks that shot forth into our range of vision from a soul aglow with the fire of divine love and wisdom. It was yet in store for me to see many more sparks from the same source that drew me near to it, gave me a closer view of it, and enabled even my icy cold heart to possess a little of its warmth. I have already told you that I had always thought that Swamiji's gigantic intellect was the result of his highly elevated life of purity. Greater acquaintance with him was making my belief stronger till one day his own words made it a settled conviction with me. It was a memorable evening in my life, which shall never be effaced from my mind, when a question from one of his would-be disciples brought forth an exhaustive and stirring discourse on brahmacharya or sexual purity. In the course of the discourse he was explaining to us the incalculable value of purity in religious life, how to practise it, how religious fervour, suddenly aroused by working on the emotional side of man to the utter neglect of the moral and intellectual, is apt to produce great reaction on the sexual desires and so forth. Then at last when he came to talk of the infinite powers of strict sexual purity and how the animal propensity is converted into spiritual might, he warmed up to such a high pitch of earnestness that it seemed as if the transparent soul within was flowing out in torrents through his lips, bathing its hearers with its heavenly waters. The picture that was being drawn by his words in our minds saw its own prototype in the figure that stood before us. And I leave it to you, gentlemen, to imagine the effect of these concluding words of the discourse upon us: "My Master had told me that if I could attain to the perfect state of purity I had just described. I will have spiritual insight. I ventured to stand before the world only when I had been satisfied that I had attained to it. I earnestly appeal to you, my boys, to keep to this ideal with adamantine firmness. Pray, do not be unworthy of me. "On another occasion too I heard him speak of his spiritual insight which could at once see the end of a thing hidden in the womb of futurity, of which the beginning is only made. I must not be understood to mean that intellectual brightness is always a sign of spirituality. A man may have a great intellect without being in the least spiritual. On the other hand a man may be spiritual without having his mind stored with informations, vast and varied, or without the power to put his words in a logical form. But truth will always be his and will flash upon his mind of itself. My present idea of Swamiji's intellect has undergone some modification from what it was before I knew him personally. He combined in him spiritual insight with an intellect of the highest order. Truth came to him by intuition. But he would press his intellect into its service by giving it a logical form and making it convincing by a rich supply of facts and analogies stored in his brain.
To Be Continue..
(Source : Vedanta Kesari, January-February 1923)
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कथा : विवेकानन्द केन्द्र { Katha : Vivekananda Kendra }
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सिद्धयसिद्धयोर्निर्विकार: कर्ता सात्त्विक उच्यते ॥१८.२६॥
Freed from attachment, non-egoistic, endowed with courage and enthusiasm and unperturbed by success or failure, the worker is known as a pure (Sattvika) one. Four outstanding and essential qualities of a worker. - Bhagwad Gita : XVIII-26
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