Alibag - 23.01.11 and 23.01.12 With Swamiji and the seagulls

Dear Atmiyas, going away tomorrow for almost 10 days to Chitrakoot, Prayag, Kashi and Bodhgaya with my mother and Sanika's mother. So won't be able to take you all en route with Swamiji.... again Away from Him but always with Him..!!!

Let me share something with all of you. Last year on 23rd i was invited  in Alibag to lecture on Swamiji. While crossing the ocean by jetty i had taken snaps of Seagulls and the date was 23.01.11.

On 20th my Sharyans office staff had been to Alibag for Picnic to hotel Radisson. Others went by jetty where as I and my colleague went by car as we had some work and also returned by car on 22nd so the Jetty journey was missed by me. But here comes the wonderful part of it - On 21st morning i & Sangita (my room partner) went for a walk. While returning i saw a school and just went in. Told the teacher in charge that i would love to tell stories of Swamiji to children, can? It was a Zilla Parishad school at Gondhalpada. She said due to cold weather few students are absent but around 92 students were present and the school would leave half day as it was a Saturday. 

I was very happy and reached the school at 9.25am. What an experience i had while telling these kids of 1st to 7th grades. Their eager & innocent faces still linger in my mind. This happened to be my 11th in the series of 150 lectures. One of the lady officer had come to visit and sat through out the lecture. She said Zilla Parishad had a 2 day workshop at a village near Alibag and can i come to speak? Girls & boys from many Zilla Parishad schools were to come. I accepted the invitation though it was after we returned from picnic.

Folks, guess what? Here i was travelling again on 23rd of January 2012 to speak at Veshvi village in Alibag and while returning was clicking my favourite seagulls! There was no clue absolutely one day before and no reason to travel to Alibag by jetty at all. Isn't this too curious enough to think about?

There were 230 students, majority 170 were girls and i was happy to tell them about Swamiji. How He would have loved to see the girls from remote parts taking eduction! There were many more teachers and the Zilla Parishad officers. They have invited me to many more schools to speak on Swamiji. Then i realised that now it is not only 'my singular mission' to cover 150 schools and colleges but here i could see the Divine Hand working behind.........Swamiji will take care of it!

So friends, see you probably after 8th February now...

It is a Sin to call Men Sinners-The Divine Essence is in all Men, Undivided and Eternal.

 It is very curious! i am not able to move away from the Parliament! As though some magic happens as i read through these pages - as if the Parliament opens new doors and i get stuck again. today i was reading and came accross Sir Hiram Maxim, Bishop Keane, Reverend H.R.Haweis, a critic Lucy Monroe and many more........But now let's see what Mr. Williams Ernest Hocking has to say -

"... We all carry about with us unsolved problems of adjustment to this many - angled world - without formulating questions, we are living quests, unless by some rare chance our philosophy of life is entirely settled. And to meet some person may resolve a quest wholly without his knowledge; it may be simply mode of being that brings the release.

 This was in some measure the story of my first encounter with Swami Vivekananda, though I was only one of an immense audience.... I was a casual visitor at the Fair, just turning twenty, interested in a dozen exhibits on the Midway.... But aside from all this, I had a quietly rankling problem of my own.

I had been reading Herbert Spencer, all I could get of his works.... I was convinced by him;... but it was somehow a vital injury to think of man as of the animals.- birth, growth, mating, death - and nothing more - finis. I had had my religion - methodism - an experience of conversion with a strange enlightenment which gave me three days of what felt like a new vision of things, strangely lifted up; Spencer had explained that all away as an emotional flurry - the world must be faced with a steady objective eye. The Christian cosmology was fancy.

 But still, Christianity was not the only religion. There were to be speakers from other traditions. They might have some insight that would relieve the tension. I would go for an hour and listen. I didn't know the program. It happened to be Vivekananda's period.

... He spoke not as arguing from a tradition, or from a book, but as from an experience and certitude of his own. I do not recall the steps of his address. But there was a passage toward the end, in which I can still hear the ring of his voice, and feel the silence of the crowd - almost as if shocked. The audience was well - mixed, but could be taken as one in assuming that there had been a "Fall of man" resulting in a state of "original sin," such that "All men have sinned and come short of the glory of. " But what is the speaker saying? I hear his emphatic rebuke:

             "Call men sinners??

             It is a SIN to call men sinners!"

 ... Through the silence I felt something like a gasp running through the hall as the audience waited for the affirmation which must follow this blow.* What his following words were, I cannot recall with the same verbal clarity: they carried the message that in all men there is that divine essence, undivided and eternal: reality is One, and that One, which is Brahman, constitutes the central being of each one of us.

 For me, this doctrine was a startling departure from anything which my scientific psychology could then recognize. One must live with these ideas and consider how one's inner experience could entertain them. But what I could feel and understand was that this man was speaking from what he knew, not from what he had been told. He was well aware of the books; but he was more immediately aware of his own experience and his own status in the world; and what he said would have to be taken into account in any final world - view. I began to realize that Spencer could not be allowed the last word. And furthermore, that this religious experience of mine, which Spencer would dismiss as a psychological flurry, was very akin to the grounds of Vivekananda's own certitude."

Prince of Gentlemen in the Orange Garb

I wish to move out of Chicago and travel with Swamiji to the midwest but as i read and re-read i come across certtain facts which hold my attention and does not allow me to move further.

Some of the Newspaper reports and a memoir is a must to read......

Northampton Daily Herald of 11th April, 1894 -

                     "At the Parliament of Religions Vivekananda was not allowed to speak until the close of the programme, the purpose being to make the people stay until the end of the session. On a warm day when some prosy professor talked too long, and people would leave the hall by hundreds, it only needed the announcement that Vivekananda would give a short address before the benediction was pronounced to hold the vast audience intact, and thousands would wait for hours to hear a fifteen minutes talk from this remarkable man."

Just His appearance on the platform would save a dull session. The talks given by Dwivedi and Dharmapala wwere also hair-raising but were dry & not at all to ignite the soul hence were not alarming to the Christian ministry. But the enthusiastic reception which Swamiji was given from the very beginning was a matter of serious concern. This instigated the Christain delegates to attack Hinduism openly on September 19th when Swamiji was to read his paper.

On September 20th, the Chicago Inter Ocean tells us -

                  "Great crowds of people, the most of whom werre women, pressed around the doors leading to the hall of Columbus, an hour before the time stated for opening the afterrnoon session, for it had been announced that Swami Vivekananda, the popular Hindu Monk, who looks so much like McCullough's Othello, was to speak. Ladies, ladies everywhere filled the great auditorium."

There are similar quotes by othe newspapers saying -

                  'From the day the wonderful Professor delivered his speech, which was followed by other addresses, he was followed by a crowd wherever he went. In going in and coming out of tyhe building, he was beset by hundreds of women who almost fought with each other for a chance to get near him, and shake his hand.'

But it was not only women who were responsive to Swamiji's thought and presence. Among many men who remembered His paper on Hinduism was William Ernest Hocking a young student who later beame a well known philosopher. He wrote about his experience a few years later in his "Recollections of Swami Vivekananda".

What he wrote cannot be cut short hence i shall tell tomorrow because it is so so very inspiring.

Away from Swamiji, still with Him all the time.

It is really really late this month. Right from 1st January the Kalpataru day till today haven't been to blog hence away from Swamiji. But is it true, can i ever move away from Him who is my sole life support?

Today i came from Nashik as my one lecture got cancelled but yesterday i completed my 10th lecture on Swamiji in Dindori Taluka in Nashik District. I could reach almost 1100 students yesterday from agegroup 10yrs to 20yrs and their teachers and professors who might be of any agegroup.

Oh, let me tell you my Sankalpa (resolution) my dear Atmiyas. Next year i.e. 2013 is Swamiji's 150th birth centenary year and hence i decided to speak on Him at 150 places. So from 1st i was busy with Mumbai Marathon prepartions, my lectures in Jawhar (Thane district) on 11th & 12th and then Nashik on 17th & 18th.

Speaking about Him on 12th  is always an enthralling experience. This time i purposely chose the interior tribal region of Thane district. I feel happy to speak, to tell Swamiji's life to the innocent boys and girrls who are so receptive, eager and welcoming. They speak through their eyes and ttheir faces lit up when they hear of His greatness. Oh, what a joy!

Let me tell you more about it tomorrow.