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.

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