The Story of swamiji's pilgrimage to Ksheer Bhavani continued...
About this time, he had taken his boat away from our vicinity, and only a young Brahmo doctor, who was also living in
Kashmir that summer, and whose kindness and devotion to him were beyond all praise, was allowed to know where he was, and
to enquire about his daily needs. The next evening the doctor went, as usual, but finding him lost in thought, retired without
speaking, and the following day, September the thirtieth,1898 he had gone, leaving word that he was not to be followed, to Kshir Bhowani,
the coloured springs. He was away, from that day till October the sixth,1898.
In the afternoon of that day we saw him coming back to us, up the river. He stood in front of the dunga, grasping with one hand the
bamboo roof-pole, and with the other holding yellow flowers. He entered our houseboat, a transfigured presence, and silently passed
from one to another blessing us, and putting the marigolds on our heads. "I offered them to Mother," he said at last, as he ended by
handing the garland to one of us. Then he sat down. "No more 'Hari Om !' It is all 'Mother,' now !" he said, with a smile. We
all sat silent. Had we tried to speak, we should have failed, so tense was the spot, with something that stilled thought. He
opened his lips again. "All my patriotism is gone. Everything is gone. Now it's only 'Mother Mother !'
"I have been very wrong," he saidsimply, after another pause. "Mother said to me 'What, even if unbelievers should
enter My temples, and defile My images ! What is that to you ? Do you protect ME ? Or do I protect you ?' So there is no more
patriotism. I am only a little child !"
Then he spoke on indifferent matters, about the departure for Calcutta, which he desired to make at once, with a word or two
as to the experience of physical ill into which his perplexities of mind had translated themselves, throughout the past week. "I
may not tell you more now : it is not in order," he said gently, adding, before he left us, "But spiritually, spiritually, I was not
bound down !"
We saw very little of the Swami, during the next few days. Before breakfast the next morning, indeed, two of us were with
him on the river-bank for a moment, when, seeing the barber, he said "All this must go !" and left us, to come out again half-an-hour
later, without a hair. Somehow, in ways and words that could scarcely be recounted, came to us now and then a detail of that
austerity, by which, in the past week, such illumination had come. We could picture the fasting ; the offering of milk and rice
and almonds daily, in the spring ; and the morning worship of a Brahmin pundit's little daughter, as Uma Kumari the Divine
Virgin ; the whole, meanwhile, in such a passion of self-renunciation, that not one wave of reaction could be found in his conscious-
ness for any injury, however great.
A man came one day to ask a question, and the Swami, in monastic dress and with shaven head, happened to enter. "Ought
one to seek an opportunity of death, in defence of right, or ought one to take the lesson of the Gita, and learn never to
react ?" was the problem put to him. "I am for no reaction," said the Swami, speaking slowly, and with a long pause. Then he
added " for Sannyasins. Self-defence for the householder !"
The mood seemed to grow upon him, and deepen. He spoke of this time once, as 'a crisis in his life.' Again, he called him-
self a child, seated on the lap of the Mother, and being caressed. And the thought came to us, unspoken, that these Her kisses might
make themselves known to mind and nerves
as anguish, yet be welcomed with rapture of recognition. Did he not say "There could be bliss in torture"
As soon as it could be arranged, we left for Baramulla, which we reached on Tuesday evening, October the eleventh. It had
been settled that he would go on to Lahore the following afternoon, while we waited some days longer. On the way down the
river, we saw very little of him. He was almost entirely silent, and took long walks by the riverside alone, rarely even entering our
houseboat for a moment. His health had been completely broken, by the labours of his return to India ; and the physical ebb of
the great experience through which he had just passed for even suffering becomes impossible, when a given point of weariness is
reached ; and similarly, the body refuses to harbour a certain intensity of the spiritual life for an indefinite period ! was leaving
him, doubtless, more exhausted than he himself suspected. All this contributed, one imagines, to a feeling that none of us knew for
how long a time we might now be parting, and it was this thought, perhaps, that brought him to say goodbye on Wednesday morning,
as we finished breakfast, and made him stay to talk.Hour after hour went by, that morning, and it is easier to tell of the general
impression created, than to build it up again detail by detail. We who listened, seemed to be carried into an innermost sanctuary.
Sometimes he would sing and translate some
snatch or other of devotional poetry, always to the Mother. And it was always Kali, with Her foot on the heart of Her worshipper,
Who grew clearer to our minds ; though he dwelt much, and over and over again, on the thought of the Mother, seated in the market-
place of this world, playing amongst the players ; flying Her own kite, and in a hundred thousand cutting the strings of
only one or two."Scattering plagues and sorrows," he
quoted from his own verses, "Dancing mad with joy, Come, Oh Mother, come ! For Terror is Thy name !
Death is in Thy breath. And every shaking step Destroys a world for e'er" "It all came true, every word of it," he
interrupted himself to say."Who dares misery love. Dance in Destruction's dance, And hug the form of death,
To him the Mother does indeed come". "I have proved it. For I have hugged the
form of Death !"
He spoke of the future. There was nothing to be desired, but the life of the wanderer, in silence and nudity, on the banks
of the Ganges. He would have nothing. "Swamiji" was dead and gone. Who was he, that he should feel responsible for teach-
ing the world ? It was all fuss and vanity. The Mother had no need of him, but only he of Her. Even work, when one had seen
this, was nothing but illusion. There was no way but love. If people sinned against us, we must love them till it
was impossible for them to resist it. That was all. Yet, as I write the words, I know well that I can give no idea of the vastness
of which all this was utterance,as if no blow, to any in the world, could pass and leave our Master's heart untouched ; as if no
pain, even to that of death, could elicit anything but love and blessing.
The Master As I Saw Him-Sister Nivedita
continued...