The Dedicated : Journey Inward

Margaret had met Swami Vivekananda and his extraordinary hold brought total change in her outlook. Swamiji left for America in November 1895 and that gave Margaret an opportunity to ruminate over what he had said of God, of religion, of culture, et. el. Like a theological student, she studied the talks again and again. The words of Swamiji always fascinated her especially when he said : ‘Never feel yourself forsaken. Do you know how God dwells in man? He hides Himself like a Hindu lady of noble birth behind a lattice curtain. He is always there, like that lady who sees everything, though no one suspects her presence.’ Margaret worked on all these and made efforts to silence her thoughts after repeating with great humility the injunction : Pray in any form, for the Lord knows even the footfall of an ant. She was gradually progressing in her sadhana.

Her deeper meditation made her feel that the new sources of power and harmony were springing up within her. She was aware of the change of attitude that had taken place. That encouraged her for her upward journey into the realms of superior truth. The many and varied stages of her journey no longer frightened her. Each Sadhak needs to go through such stages. She felt her backslidings, her wrong turnings, her sudden halts, her stumblings, etc. played their part in the Divine plan.

These changes also made her aware of the ever expanding circles of consciousness of each individual. She felt : Man must grow continually…He has duties toward his wife, his children, his parents. He has others towards his village, his town, his district, and finally his country. This further expands to humanity when he sees God Himself in each man he serves. She felt such a man can move worlds, when his tiny ego is dead and God has taken its place.

With this progress in her mind Margaret had mentally decided to be a disciple of Swamiji. In April 1896 when Swamiji returned to London, she declared it so to Swamiji. But was she really ready to give up her independence of thought? Was it really possible for her to totally surrender? Was she to give up her questioning attitude? Swamiji was rather pleased to see her completely transformed and was ready to satisfy her spiritual quest in all earnestness. He was seeing history repeating once again. And as he had experienced it at the feet of Sri Ramakrishna Paramhamsa, he was equally eager to allow Margaret to grow in this correct way of spiritual enlightenment.

Swamiji took classes on Jnana Yoga. In it he talked about the philosophical theory of Maya. It was quite difficult unless one thinks and analyses it in depth. Margaret thought over it and formulated it in her own words : By Maya is thus meant that shimmering, elusive, half-real, half-unreal complexity, in which there is no rest, no satisfaction, no ultimate certainty, of which we become aware through the senses, and through the mind as dependent on the senses. At the same time, ‘and that by which all this is pervaded, know That to be the Lord Himself.’ In those two conceptions placed side by side is contained all the Hindu theology.

But such understanding also did not satisfy Margaret. She felt the need to discuss extremely personal problems with Swamiji. She confided them to him simply, not expecting him to solve her difficulties but merely to teach her to consider them unselfishly. She was making efforts to break away from the circle of logic to enter into the pure experience of her soul.

What happened next…………………….

The Dedicated : First Meeting with Swamiji

Margaret was successful on all fronts. But the search of Truth had made her more inward. Her search in Christianity didn’t give her satisfaction. Experiments in science were giving satisfactory results but were not quenching the thirsty soul. The day was nearing.

Her friend Ebenezer Cook one day told her ‘Lady Isabel Margesson is inviting a few friends to her house to hear a Hindu Swami speak. Will you come?’ She knew something about him from Mr. E T Sturdy. Margaret arranged herself to be free on that day. She was a bit late to reach Lady Isabel’s house. There were some 15 people in the room. Swami Vivekananda sat facing Margaret. He wore a full-cut robe of saffron yellow with a bright red cummerbund. He was perfectly calm, self-absorbed, and indifferent to what was going on around him. As the curtain fell, in complete silence, Swamiji prayed “Shiva, Shiva, Namah Shivaya”.

He spoke at great length, in a calm, well modulated voice. He chanted lines from Sanskrit and translated it into perfect English. All the time he was communicating the words of Light. He answered in simple language, using poetic images. The whole of his talk exuded an all-pervading intimacy.

Margaret for the first time was feeling of complete emptiness. It had annihilated her will power and critical sense even. She was caught by a strange new force and felt as if her mind was reaching to broader and vaster regions.

He said : Man imagines that God cannot do without him, but who can help the Infinite? Even the hand that comes to us through the darkness will have to be our own….we infinite dreamers who dream infinite dreams.

He further said : All our struggle is for Freedom, we seek neither misery nor happiness, but Freedom, Freedom alone.

Margaret experienced profound peace. She felt that she should be alone, should ponder over that message brought from a land of which she had dreamt in her childhood. Margaret heard his talks, asked questions. In his talks, she had at last discovered a religion whose foundations, classification of elements and forms of worship could be discussed scientifically. She found him discussing a religion which constantly maintained contact between spiritual and practical life through the medium of experience.

Margaret recalled her these meetings later in 1904. In a letter to her friend from Calcutta, she wrote : Suppose He had not come to London that time! Life would have been like a headless dream, for I always knew that I was waiting for something. I always said that a call would come. And it did. But if I had known more of life I should perhaps have doubted whether when the time came I should certainly recognize it. Fortunately, I knew little, and was spared the torture…..Always I had this burning voice within, but nothing to utter. How often and often I have sat down pen in hand to speak, and there was no speech! And now there is no end to it! As surely as I am fitted to my world, so surely is my world in need of me, waiting – ready. The arrow has found its place in the bow. But if He had not come! If He had meditated on the Himalayan peaks!… I, for one, had never been here…..”

Now begins her training.

The Dedicated : Initial Days

Margaret was going through a difficult process which each Sadhak has to go through. The higher the aim, the more the hurdles. But it all depends, how one takes it. Margaret faced everything, took every opportunity to know in depth the Truth, transformed every obstacle into opportunity. In her own words in the talk she gave later at the Hindu Ladies’ Social Club in Bombay in 1902, she said :
I was born and bred an Englishwoman and up to the age of 18 I was trained and educated as English girls are. Christian religious doctrines were of course early instilled into me. Even from my girlhood I was inclined to venerate all religious teachings and I devotedly worshipped the child Jesus, loved Him with my whole heart for the self-sacrifices He always willingly underwent, and felt I could not worship Him enough for His crucifying Himself to bestow salvation on the human race. But after the age of 18 I began to harbour doubts as to the truth of the Christian doctrines. Many of them began to seem to me false and incompatible with Truth. These doubts grew stronger and stronger and at the same time my faith in Christianity tottered more and more. For seven years I was in this wavering state of mind, very unhappy and yet very, very eager to seek the Truth. I shunned going to church and yet sometimes my longing to bring restfulness to my spirit impelled me to rush into church and be absorbed in the service in order to feel at peace within, as I had hitherto done, and as others round me were doing. But alas! No peace, no rest was there for my troubled soul all eager to know the Truth.

During the seven years of wavering it occurred to me that in the study of natural science I should surely find the Truth I was seeking. So I began ardently to study how this world was created and all things in it and I discovered that in the laws of Nature at least there was consistency, but it made the doctrines of the Christian religion seem all the more inconsistent. Just then I happened to get a life of Buddha and in it I found that here also was a child who lived ever so many centuries before the child Christ, but whose sacrifices were no less self-abnegating than those of the other. This dear child Gautama took a strong hold on me and for the next three years I plunged into the study of the religion of Buddha, and became more and more convinced that the salvation he preached was decidedly more consistent with the Truth than the preachings of the Christian religion.

Margaret with all these experiences could not live without religion. That was a heritage which she had received. How did that come to fulfillment? How did she come in contact with Swami Vivekananda to whom she was to dedicate herself?

The Dedicated

Miss Margaret Elizabeth Noble who later became Bhagini Nivedita was born on Oct 28, 1867.

Margaret was the eldest with a sister May and brother Richmond. Her father Samuel Noble used to take Margaret for service. He had set an example of perfect self-abnegation and he strictly lived his religion which gave moral value to everything he did. A missionary returned from India when came to visit Samuel saw Margaret and said : ‘India seeks diligently for her God! India will summon you, perhaps, as it has summoned me. Be ready always.’ At that time itself she had looked for India on the map. Just at the age of 34 years her father passed away whispering Margaret’s name to her mother, had said: ‘When God calls her, let her go. She will spread her wings…She will do great things.’

Margaret had her schooling at Halifax where she developed taste for literature due to inspiration from her Principal. She had many questions in mind. ‘Can death really destroy life? What happens to the life element during death if nothing is ever destroyed in the successive transformations?’ She used to ask her Principal :’I believe in God, but I want to understand. How did the first thing began?’ She opened the Bible and read passionately but she was not satisfied. She took book of science and with logic tried to understand it. But it was difficult at that time.

She was maturing quickly. Her expansiveness gave way to reflection. She had come to realize that religion was a vaster science even than chemistry and physics and that one had to find within oneself, by personal experience, the answer to all spiritual problems.

To help her mother, Margaret took up first job as a teacher at the age of 18 years. For her spiritual urge, she joined High Church in Keswick where she used to worship with all sincerity. With her worship of the altar cross, with the flowers, the incense, the candles, she associated the whole of Nature. In the rituals she chanted litanies, she beheld the saints and martyrs and with all that she used to find her soul filled with a deep religious longing. Margaret was learning that the more the soul develops and the more beauty it absorbs, the more insatiable it becomes for the infinite.

In 1887, she had been to an orphanage at Rugby to learn from the experiment that of poverty as to how strong were her powers of renunciation and self-sacrifice. And, after an year she felt it was a fulfilling experience which opened a wider field to her. In another experiment at Wrexham, a large mining center, where she was appointed as mistress in a secondary school, she got experience in ‘welfare work’ and found that a spacious field of action was awaiting her. To express her feelings, she started writing in newspapers. Later she helped to start a school at Wimbledon where she did her experiments on new education.
…………….contd…

The Dedicated

‘I believe that India is one, indissoluble, indivisible. National Unity is built on the common home, the common interest, and the common love.
I believe that the strength which spoke in Vedas and Upanishads, in the making of religions and empires, in the learning of scholars and the meditation of the saints, is born once more amongst us, and its name today is Nationality.
I believe that the present of India is deep-rooted in her past, and that before her shines a glorious future.
O Nationality, come thou to me as joy or sorrow, as honor or as shame! Make me thine own!’ – These are the powerful words that Sister Nivedita wrote in ‘Karmayogin’ dated 12 March 2010. How did she own up India so much?

Miss Margaret Elizabeth Noble was born at Dungannon in Ireland on Oct 28, 1867. Her father Samuel Richmond was a student of theology in the Wesleyan Church in North Ireland. He used to take Margaret whenever he conducted services or visited the poor. He died at the young age of 34 years but left a deep impression of his religious zeal on her mind. From such background, Margaret became Sister Nivedita, Nivedita of Ramakrishna – Vivekananda and dedicated her whole life for Bharat, Hindu Dharma. As a matter of fact, of her 44 years of life, she spent just 13 years in India. But her Guru, Swami Vivekananda had given her the key to the country and its people, and she had submitted herself to the austere and exacting discipline which enabled her to make use of this key. Her amazing vitality, both multiplied and channeled by that ascetism and that consecration, was such that even today there is scarcely any field – religion, pedagogy, science, art, politics, society – in which she did not leave her mark. And all the leaders of India who made the epoch from 1895 to 1914 famous, were her intimate friends. How could she do so much in just 13 years?

‘I love India as the birthplace of the highest and the best of all religions, as the country that has the grandest mountains, the Himalayas. The country where the homes are simple, where domestic happiness is most to be found, and where the women unselfishly, unobtrusively, ungrudgingly serve the dear ones from early morn to dewy eve.’ Having such vivid picturesque explanation of Bharatiya life by Sister Nivedita is all amazing. How could Nivedita became one with the soil of this nation?

She attained immortality on 13 Oct 1911. It is written on her Samadhi at Darjeeling – HERE REPOSES SISTER NIVEDITA WHO GAVE HER ALL TO INDIA. What made her to give her all to India?

NOT I, BUT THOU

Every human being, whosoever and wheresoever he may be, has an ideal of infinite power. Every human being has an ideal of infinite pleasure. Most of the works that we find around us, the activities displayed everywhere, are due to the struggle for this infinite power or this infinite pleasure. But a few quickly discover that although they are struggling for infinite power, it is not through the senses that it can be reached. They find out very soon that that infinite pleasure is not to be got through the senses, or, in other words, the senses are too limited, and the body is too limited, to express the Infinite. To manifest the Infinite through the finite is impossible, and sooner or later, man learns to give up the attempt to express the Infinite through the finite. This giving up, this renunciation of the attempt, is the background of ethics. Renunciation is the very basis upon which ethics stands. There never was an ethical code preached which had not renunciation for its basis.
Ethics always says, “Not I, but thou.” Its motto is, “Not self, but non-self.” The vain ideas of individualism, to which man clings when he is trying to find that Infinite Power or that Infinite Pleasure through the senses, have to be given up — say the laws of ethics. You have to put yourself last, and others before you. The senses say, “Myself first.” Ethics says, “I must hold myself last.” Thus, all codes of ethics are based upon this renunciation; destruction, not construction, of the individual on the material plane. That Infinite will never find expression upon the material plane, nor is it possible or thinkable.
So, man has to give up the plane of matter and rise to other spheres to seek a deeper expression of that Infinite. In this way the various ethical laws are being moulded, but all have that one central idea, eternal self-abnegation. Perfect self-annihilation is the ideal of ethics. People are startled if they are asked not to think of their individualities. They seem so very much afraid of losing what they call their individuality. At the same time, the same men would declare the highest ideals of ethics to be right, never for a moment thinking that the scope, the goal, the idea of all ethics is the destruction, and not the building up, of the individual.
…………Jnana Yoga ..The Necessity of Religion ..by Swami Vivekananda

The Ideal of Self-Confidence

The Ideal of faith in ourselves (Aatmavishwas) is of the greatest help to us. If faith in ourselves had been more extensively taught and practiced, I am sure a very large portion of the evils and miseries that we have would have vanished. Throughout the history of mankind, if any motive power has been more potent than another in the lives of all great men and women, it is that of faith in themselves. Born with the consciousness that they were to be great, they became great. Let a man go down as low as possible; there must come a time when out of sheer desperation he will take an upward curve and will learn to have faith in himself. But it is better for us that we should know it form the very first. Why should we have all these bitter experiences in order to gain faith in ourselves? We can see that all the difference between man and man is owing to the existence or non-existence of faith in himself. Faith in ourselves will do everything. I have experienced it in my own life, and am still doing so; and as I grow older that faith is becoming stronger and stronger. He is an atheist who does not believe in himself the old religions said that he was an atheist who did not believe in God. The new religion says that he is the atheist who does not believe in himself. But it is not selfish faith, because the Vedanta, again, is the doctrine of ONENESS. It means faith in all, because you are all. Love for yourselves means love for all, love for animals, love for everything, for you are all one. It is the great faith which will make the world better. I am sure of that. He is the highest man who can say with truth, ’I know all about myself.’ Do you know how much energy, how many powers, how many forces are still lurking behind that frame of yours? What scientist has known all that is in man? Millions of years have passed since man first came here, and yet but one infinitesimal part of his powers has been manifested. Therefore, you must not say that you are weak. How do you know what possibilities lie behind that degradation on the surface? You know but little of that which is within you. For behind you is the ocean of infinite power and blessedness.

‘This Atman is first to be heard of.’ Hear day and night that you are that Soul. Repeat it to yourselves day and night till it enters into your very veins, till it tingles in every drop of blood, till it is in your flesh and bone. Let the whole body be full of that one Ideal, ‘I am the birthless, the deathless, the blissful, the omniscient, the omnipotent, ever-glorious Soul.’ Think on it day and night; think on it till it becomes part and parcel of your life. Meditate upon it, and out of that will come work.

………………Swami Vivekananda in Practical Vedanta

Dwa Suparna ..

Two birds of beautiful plumage, inseparable companions, sat upon the same tree, one on the top and one below. The beautiful bird below was eating the fruits of the tree, sweet and bitter, one moment a sweet one and another a bitter. The moment he ate a bitter fruit, he was sorry, but after a while he ate another and when it too was bitter, he looked up and saw the other bird who ate neither the sweet nor the bitter, but was calm and majestic, immersed in his own glory. And then the poor lower bird forgot and went on eating the sweet and bitter fruits again, until at last he ate one that was extremely bitter; and then he stopped again and once more looked up at the glorious bird above. Then he came nearer and nearer to the other bird; and when he had come near enough, rays of light shone upon him and enveloped him, and he saw he was transformed into the higher bird. He became calm, majestic, free, and found that there had been but one bird all the time on the tree. The lower bird was but the reflection of the one above. So we are in reality one with the Lord, but the reflection makes us seem many, as when the one sun reflects in a million dew-drops and seems a million tiny suns. The reflection must vanish if we are to identify ourselves with our real nature which is divine. The universe itself can never be the limit of our satisfaction. That is why the miser gathers more and more money, that is why the robber robs, the sinner sins, that is why you are learning philosophy. All have one purpose. There is no other purpose in life, save to reach this freedom. Consciously or unconsciously, we are all striving for perfection. Every being must attain to it…..(Swamiji on What is Religion)

Swami Vivekananda was forerunner of time!

Swami Vivekananda was a rare leader of pre-independence days with a positive view of India. While India struggled under the yoke of slavery, he alone said that India has a bright future. When no one hoped that India would ever be rich and great again, he alone said that the ancient Mother Bharat has awakened once more, sitting on Her throne rejuvenated, more glorious than ever!

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