One Hundred Years After Swami Vivekananda's Visit To Chicago: A New Perspective
Speech delivered at the Ramakrishna Mission, New Delhi on February 7, 1993

by

LEX HIXON
A well known American author

I am speaking to you with the heart of a pilgrim, not with the mind of a scholar.
In 1965, my wife and I received mantra diksha from Swami Nikhilananda, who was a direct spiritual child of Sarada Devi. May be the mantra she gave him, he gave to me. I never asked. But that is how close we feel to the Mother of the Universe as the beautiful, gentle presence of Sri Sarada, who is Mahasaraswati in human form. We know that she and Sri Ramakrishna were the same Reality, the same soul, the same infinte Light manifesting through two bodies. Hardly any time has passed since the beginning of this manifestation at Dakshineswar. Lord Buddha, Lord Christ and the other great divine manifestations in the history of humanity lived thousands of years ago. Yet we are standing in the immediate presence of their transmission, within two or three generations. We are so close that it’s hard for us to speak about the reality of Sri Ramakrishna and Sri Sarada. We do not know enough about them yet. Such manifestations take hundreds of years to unfold and to become clear. Swami Vivekananda once said to Swami Saradananda, “You send some notes to Max Muller and encourage him to write a book about Sri Ramakrishna.” Swami Saradananda replied: ”But Swamiji, why don’t you do it? It’s more appropriate that you should write about our Master.” Vivekananda responded: “I’m too close. I’m at the very root of the tree. You, Sarat, are in the branches. You can give your notes to this Western scholar.” We are all too close to know or to speak.

It has been 100 years since Swamiji came to Chicago, and, we must add, 50 years since the translation and publication of Sri Ramakrishna’s Gospel in the West. These are two immensely important anniversaries, and they are coming at the same time. When Swamiji visited the West, he did not even speak about Sri Ramakrishna or Sri Sarada or Mahakali. When he returned to India, some of his brother swamis complained, “Brother, you preached Vedanta in the West, but you didn’t mention our Master.” And Vivekananda, with his usual confidence and fiery temperament, responded: ”Let them understand Vivekanada first.” Before he passed out of this world, Swamiji remarked on that last day, “If there were another Vivekananda, only he would know what this Vivekananda has done.”

So the 100 years since Chicago have been for us to assimilate -- for India and world culture to assimilate -- Swamiji’s preparatory teachings. Divine Mother gave Vivekananda such a subtle and complex task. During Sri Ramakrishna’s last illness, after he poured all Mother’s powers into Swami Vivekanada, he exclaimed: “Now I’m simply a faqir, a poor faqir with no possessions.” Swamiji then took on a tremendous responsibility. He was to build up the Indian people with a sense of nationhood, a sense of pride and originality that colonialism had sapped. But at the same time, when he went to America, Swamiji was acting on the international scene. He was proclaiming that nationalism of any kind could not be the final solution. In fact in the Madras lecture when he returned to his country after visiting America, he plainly stated that no solution could emerge from a national basis, only from an international basis. But first one must have a national basis. What a subtle task! In the West, and even in India, Vivekananda is known mostly as a patriot, as an Indian nationalist. Even India has not absorbed the truly international perspective of Swamiji. He was not interested in elevating races or religions or creeds or nations. He was interested in removing these barriers, these imaginary separations. Because that is what his Master, Sri Ramakrishna, did. Sri Ramakrishna removed all barriers between paths, creeds, genders, nations, persons and traditions. He subtly removed these mere conventions. Remember when Sarada Devi was a small girl. She was being married, and some local person offered jewelry for the ceremony. Sarada Devi’s family was too poor to possess the ornate traditional jewelry that a bride had to wear. The man demanded all the bangles back again immediately. Sarada was five years old. Her mother-in-law began to take them from her and she began to weep. Sri Ramakrishna said, “No, let her first go to sleep.” Then he removed all these ornaments without her knowing. With this gentleness and subtlety, Sri Ramakrishna removed all the barriers and boundaries from humanity, from the globe, without our knowing it. It may take hundreds of years for us to awaken to this fact.

We now hear not just visionaries but political leaders speaking about a new world order and a global civilization. Sri Ramakrishna has prepared the way for that. He has completed the basic spiritual work for that. But the working out, in a social context, of spiritual realization takes centuries. The modern world is more accelerated than the ancient world. There is more communication, more technology and development, so in the next hundred years we may actually see the emerging of a global civilization that is seamless, that is whole, that does not have any fundamental divisions. Sri Ramakrishna and Sri Sarada have opened this universal age.
This does not mean that religious traditions will lose their integrity. It does not mean that nations will lose their national culture. Quite the opposite. Everyone will develop their own creativity, their own uniqueness, but the overall picture will be one of harmony, sharing mutual inspiration. We cannot call this the vision of Swami Vivekananda, because it’s a reality which has been brought into being by Sri Ramakrishna. The Master gave to his beloved Naren the responsibility to prepare the ground for this to manifest. After a hundred years, we can clearly see that the ground has been prepared.

I was reading the Calcutta paper some days ago about the centenary anniversary of Kirpal Singh, the noble spiritual teacher who travelled all over the world and brought together members of many different religions for discussion. We should not think that this effort of creating a global civilization is just going forward through Swami Vivekananda. He opened the way and many noble individuals from many sacred and secular traditions have been carrying on this work over the last hundred years.

If we look at the world today, at least at what’s on the surface, we see turbulence, factionalism and division. But underneath, we sense that people are no longer willing to accept this fragmentation as a way of being. For instance, just as an example, in modern Germany there are some right wing fascists who persecute foreigners. German citizens have risen up and have demonstrated in great numbers that they are no longer prepared to accept this. We know the disaster that happened earlier in this century from that very kind of movement in Germany, but this time the people will not accept it. The people have been awakened. There has been a global awakening. I think I can say without offending anyone that Sri Ramakrishna and Sri Sarada are behind this global awakening. But it has not been carried on by Sri Ramakrisna’s disciples alone. This awakening has been furthered by many, many individuals from India and from other places who have opened the way for global consciousness.

What is the new perspective that we have after 100 years? As I said earlier, 100 years is barely enough time to begin to get a sense of the vastness and the radical quality of what Sri Ramakrishna brought to the world and what Swamiji has been preparing us for. It’s like traveling to the Himalayas -- when you enter the foothills, you can no longer see the snow-capped mountains. But there’s a certain point when you can see the snow-capped mountaiins again. They seem deceptively near, but you keep traveling, traveling, traveling. It takes a long time to get there. So maybe after 100 years, we have arrived at the point where we can see the magnitude of Sri Ramakrishna and Sri Sarada for the world. But we have many more miles to travel over difficult paths.

We do not claim anything. We don’t want to become sectarians who insist that our guru is the satguru in charge of the entire world process. We know too many people who think that way exclusively. In the case of Sri Ramakrishna, we feel that he is the sarva dharma swarupa, the essence of all dharmas. This is not exclusive. As Sri Ramakrishna says, the only guru is akhanda satchidananda, indivisible being, consciousness and bliss. That guru alone is operating through all dharmas, through all sacred traditions. and the awakening that proceeds uniquely from each one. We should not forget that an entire world religion emerged on this planet during the time that Sri Ramakrishna was here -- the Bahai faith, born in Iran during the middle of the niineteenth century. Many thousands of their people went through martyrdom in order to establish liberal spiritual ideals in the heart of Shiite Islamic culture. Sri Ramakrishna would never want us to be narrow, to assume that his lila at Dakshineswar contained everything, that nothing else of spiritual significance was happening or will happen on the planet. That is simply not true. The lila at Dakshineswar was the event that signalled a vast movement in the consciousness of humanity, which is being expressed through local saints and sages everywhere, through cultural leaders everywhere. What happened in Dakshineswar was a secret symbol, because Sri Ramakrisna was the manifestation of sattva guna. He announced: “When the people of Calcutta start talking about me, I am going to disappear. When I become the focus of attention, I will disappear.” Which is precisely what he did.

What we see at Dakshineswar is a small glimpse of a vast movement in the consciousness of humanity. Every nation and every religion has a responsibility to carry on that work of unification. We never feel that the whole world is going to worship Sri Ramakrishna. Sri Ramakrishna himself would not even like to be mentioned. He would say, “Why attribute it to me? The Mother does everything.” If there are liberal renewals in the various world religions, Sri Ramakrishna would

attribute them to the Mother, to Divine Reality itself.
Swami Vivekananda said that a yogi could retire into a cave in the Himalayas, simply think true thoughts, and energy of the those thoughts would penetrate the walls of the cave, would enter into the hearts of people and would change the world. Many of the great world leaders that we’ve seen during the last hundred years never read the works of Swami Vivekananda, never even heard the name of Swami Vivekananda, but his thoughts have entered their hearts. His thoughts have entered the stream of human consciousness. We do not have to claim credit for him. We do not need to have members of all religious and cultural traditions saying, “Yes, we owe it all to Swami Vivekananda.” This would be totally inappropriate. Allow Mother, allow Divine Reality, to unfold the world, to unfold the new harmonious humanity and the global humanitarian civilization.

One hundred years after Swami Vivekananda, I find myself standing here in front of you in Vivekananda Hall, New Delhi, addressing you as my sisters and brothers, just as he addressed the Americans in Chicago as sisters and brothers. One difference is that I am not presenting the science of Vedanta, as he did in the West, I am presenting Sri Ramakrishna. I am coming here on pilgrimage, bearing the book which I’ve written, called Great Swan: Meetings with Ramakrishna, which is a dramatic retelling of various accounts in The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. This is the new perspective. Swamiji brought the science of Vedanta in preparation, but after 100 years, what the world needs now is the Mother of the Universe, the conscious manifestation of the Mother, through Sri Ramakrishna, through Sri Sarada. The science of Vedanta is like the breast of Shiva. Upon the platform, the Divine Mother is dancing. I’m not well informed about the East, but in the West, at least, the women’s movement is the largest movement. Everyone is being drawn to the teaching of God as Mother. The danger one has in India is assuming, “We have Rama, we have Krishna, why do we need Ramakrishna? Why should we adopt this Bengali speciality of Mahakali when we have our own local forms of the Mother?” But you have to remember that Sri Ramakrishna and Sri Mahakali are not a limited cultural form. She is Reality Itself. And She is Sri Ramakrishna’s ishtadevata. We cannot conceal that. We cannot honestly say, “Sri Ramakrishna was just a Vedantin; all he practiced was aham bramasmi.” No. He was and is a manifestation of Mahakali, who is the Goddess of Advaita. She is the Goddess of nondual wisdom. That is why Mayavati, the ashram of advaita vedanta established by Vivekananda, happens to be located in a place where Mahamaya was worshipped. The Mother is discovered everywhere. Vivekananda dedicated Mayavati to the most purely noncultural expression of advaita -- as I think Swamiji might have put it, without any cultural trappings. But it just so happens that the Mother Sevier and her husband found that beautiful place where the great Goddesss Mahamaya was worshipped.
We never have to force the ideal of Mother on anyone. It will spontaneously rise up inside them. We never force the ideal of Ramakrishna. Sri Ramakrishna recounts in the Gospel that Sri Ram came to certain sages in his kingdom, and they said, “O Rama, we worship God as aum, so we have no desire for any Divine incarnation.” Rama went away, pleased with their impersonal worship. Nothing about Sri Ramakrishna’s manifestation needs to be forced on humanity or needs to be proclaimed in a dogmatic manner. His manifestation is basically the inspiration of Mother, the inspiration of God as feminine. This mystic femininity will rise up spontaneously during the next hundred years. This is the subject which will be discussed when it is 200 years since Chicago. Mother is going to manifest in many forms and in many subtle ways.

I don’t know if anyone here knows much about Islam. When you visit Medina, the holy city where the tomb of the prophet is located, the tomb of Fatima is nearby. There is even greater devotion and intensity of prayer and grace experienced around her tomb than around his tomb. So the mystery of the feminine is manifest secretly inside the hearts of all traditions. Mother never needs to be brought from the outside. Sri Ramakrishna was a worshipper of Divine Mother. Now is the time for us in the West and you here in India to proclaim the Mother as the path to global civilization. Up to this point, we have mainly proclaimed Swamiji. That was preparing the ground, and it was made somewhat easy, because Swamiji spoke in such universal terms. He presented the Vedanta as quite rational. It seemed to be in harmony with the scientific mood of the modern world. Maybe some of you are thinking, “Isn’t this going to be a backward step, suddenly to proclaim Mahakali, suddenly to present Sri Ramakrishna, this ecstatic, mysterious manifestation of the Mother?” You may be wondering: “How is this going to reach the minds of modern people?” We do not have to figure out how it is going to happen. It is simply going to happen. People will feel the universality of the Mother -- whether they are Muslim or Sikh or Christian. They will feel that their truth, their reality, their tradition is being affirmed, because the Mother is the Mother of all Her children. She does not make any distinctions among Her children. The whole world is going to feel that tender touch of the Mother. Civilization is going to receive that blessed touch of the Mother. When someone is giving the talk, “Two hundred years since Chicago,” the world will have accepted the Divine Mother. As Sri Sarada Devi revealed: “This time the Master has taught the world the most powerful name -- Ma.” Mother is the most transforming name for the Divine. Just as Sri Chaitanya awakened Bengal into the ecstasy of love, this time the whole world will be awakened into love without boundaries. That is the promise of Sri Ramakrishna in his own words. We must take him seriously. But this awakening to the feminine will not be brought about by any kind of propaganda. One time Keshab Sen said to Sri Ramakrishna, “O Paramahamsa, I would like to spread your message all over the world. I would like to write about your harmony of religions in all the journals, because it will bring world peace.” World peace is what we are interested in primarily now. Keshab Sen was right, that the presence of Sri Ramakrishna on this earth is going to bring world peace. It is already in the process of bringing world peace, even though the dream of this century is a terrible spectacle of war and oppression. When one sweeps vigorously with a broom, at first there are clouds of dust, but afterward the house is clean. Sri Ramakrishna answered Keshab firmly: “My dear, you don’t have to write about this place. Not even the weight of a thousand Himalayan mountain ranges could suppress this truth that is being manifested here at Dakshineswar.” There is great joy in this act. We need not leave this hall tonight with a sense of having to bring about some revolution. This wonderful, gentle, yet supremely powerful presence of the Mother is already permeating the world, has always permeated the world. Now, as complete human beings, we must awaken to the Mother. Humanity as a whole will recognize Sri Ramakrishna as the messenger of the Mother.

Not everyone has to accept the Dakshineswar avatara. Dr. Sarkar brought his son to meet Sri Ramakrishna, and after some discussion, Sri Ramakrishna said, “I see that the son also does not accept the notion of avatara, like the father.” They were humanists. They felt that no human being could be Divine Reality itself. And Sri Ramakrishna reassured Dr. Sarkar: “It doesn’t make any difference whether your son accepts the doctrine of avatara. He’s a delicious mango. A good mango tree doesn’t produce bad mangoes.” The mystery of avatara, or Divine Descent, is a secret inner intuition for those of us who are initiated. It is not a creed. We cannot insist that people believe Sri Ramakrishna is an avatar, because he never insisted.. When you receive the initiation, you feel this mystery inwardly. As the years go on in one’s sadhana, one feels more and more clearly that Sri Ramakrishna’s nature is boundless. This is what my teacher, Swami Nikhilananda, told me about the direct disciples. They explained to him: “We didn’t think Sri Ramakrishna was an avatar when we were with him. We were having a beautiful time. Only later, when we entered into strong sadhana and tapasya, when we spent months and years alone in constant mantrajapa, then we began to realize who the Master is.” So the mystery of Divine Descent is not meant to be a doctrine. This is not like a church, where everyone who joins the church has to believe the same thing. Indian spirituality is very free, and Sri Ramakrishna was the absolute embodiment of spiritual freedom. He gave everyone the freedom and power to pursue Truth along his or her own unique path. This freedom and power simply are Mahakali. Sri Ramakrishna simply is that Mother Reality. He had a vision once that his photograph would be venerated in many homes all over the world. We will see this in the next hundred years. Sri Ramakrishna’s photograph will be gracing and blessing the homes of people from completely different religious traditions and people of no religious tradition. In the modern world, we will see the phenomenon of many people of good will, who have great intelligence and great spiritual love for humanity, who are not involved in religious traditions. This should not concern us. Mother works just as well for people outside of religious traditions as for those inside of religious traditions. We are going to see, in the next century, a vast recognition of Sri Ramakrishna as the messenger of universal harmony, as the messenger of the Mother. One of the disciples said to him, “Master, you are God incarnate.” He responded instantly: “Don’t ever say a foolish thing like that again. Suppose the owner of a large estate, the powerful matriarch, wants to invite everyone there to a feast. She sends a small boy, who says, ‘My mother is inviting everyone. Please come.’ Everyone respects the boy and listens to him only because the words of the matriarch are coming through that boy.” Sri Ramakrishna continued: “I am that child, and the words of Divine Mother are coming through me.”

Those words of the Mother have to be heard directly in the heart. That invitation has to be accepted consciously by humanity. It is already being accepted. Of course we retain a sense of making personal effort into making this ashrama as beautiful as it is. But this effort should be made spontaneously and with joy, without any sense that we have to bring into being a new civilization. Mother is bringing this civilization into being. We should attribute it to Her by using the name Ma, which does not belong to Bengal. It belongs to every place, every culture, it belongs to humanity. Is there a child anywhere in this world that does not say somehting like Ma, Ma, Ma when crying out for its mother? This Mother belongs to all humanity. It is not a sectarian division of any kind. When Sri Ramakrishna is acknowledged as the messenger of the Mother, that will be the next step. But without Swami Vivekananda working for a hundred years, let’s say in his subtle body, the world would not have been ready to accept the Mother and to proclaim the Mother. People might have made Mother Reality into another religion, another empire. But Sri Ramakrishna has signalled the end of division, the end of conflicting religions and empires. All that is essentially over with. Now simply the harmony of the Mother must reign, and give free reign to the spiritual creativity of every human being.

It’s very interesting that Gorbachev said to the Pope in their historic meeting in Rome, “You know that in our country we have Christians, Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, and we feel that all of them should have the spiritual freedom to pursue their affairs, their lives, their life of prayer, and we feel that the government of state has to guarantee them the freedom.” Isn’t it an amazing remark, coming from what was an anti-religious, totalitarian state? India also has that responsibility to continue to nurture freedom and spiritual creativity in her peoples. As more grace pours into the world from the Divine Mother, more responsiblility comes to world leaders and to each of us. This is a responsibility to receive, to open up, to be receptive, to clear away any sense of division or otherness. I was fortunate enough to make the hajj to Mecca and Medina. As you know, Sri Ramakrishna accomplished his Islamic sadhana. If someone receives the Ramakrishna mantra, they receive all the fruits of his sadhanas. Perhaps these fruits do not manifest externally for everyone, but for me it happened that way. I went to those noble cities in Arabia out of love for Sri Ramakrishna and repeating, as he received from his Sufi master Govinda Rai, the Allah mantra, repeating the glorious name of Allah. I never discussed with anyone that I was a devotee of Sri Ramakrishna, a devotee of Sri Kali. I didn’t need to raise that issue, because I felt completely at home in Islam, completely loved and accepted, greeting my brothers and sisters in Islam as I would greet my brothers and sisters in Christianity or Buddhism. This might be difficult to do in an ancient country like India, where the religious and cultural divisions are quite strong, but since I took birth in America, I have had the freedom to manifest love and devotion in many different religious communities. Sri Ramakrishna once said, while talking to his Divine Mother in ecstasy, “O Mother, how I long to prostrate with sincere Muslims in their mosques. How I long to pray with devout Christians in their churches. But if I display too much freedom, then every community will become angry at me and I might not be able to enter Your temple again, O blissful Kali. So take me secretly into the heart of all humanity and allow me to pray with everyone night and day.”

Gradually there will be more and more friendship between the religious communities. India herself has always produced grreat saints and mystics who freely cross over all religious boundaries. They never felt bound by religious convention and no one ever got angry at them. The people accepted them and revered them. The Indian people have always thought it wonderful that their sages honour different traditions. Sri Ramakrishna embodied the Indian spirit itself, the spirit of inclusiveness which we can talk about as brahmajnana or as the realization of Mother, the awakening to Ma, Ma, Ma. The mahavakya of the Ramakrishna Upanishad is Ma, Ma, Ma. My prayer is that all humanity, which is already repeating Ma, Ma, in one way or another, will become conscious of that Mother Reality and will attribute that message to Sri Ramakrishna. If one is going to benefit spiritually from a teaching, it is very important to attribute it to the correct source. It is very important that the Master’s beautiful form, which was photographed, as well as his spiritual presence and teaching become widely known across the world. Why? Simply so people can say, “Yes, that was the messenger of the Mother. That was the messenger who brought the name Ma, Ma, Ma which everyone can repeat no matter what their tradition is, no matter what they believe.” The instinctive spiritual core of humanity is Ma, Ma, Ma. This is the Tantric form of Advaita. The reasonings of Advaita Vedanta do not penetrate one’s entire being. It is a very difficult effort to experience that one Reality in every moment through Vedantic reasoning. But if one knows this mahavakya, this great affirmation Ma, Ma, Ma, the fragrance of the Ramakrishna Upanishad, the Upanishad of modern times, and proclaims it fearlessly and openly without forcing, then one experiences the Truth that is manifesting through Dakshineswar. Thank you.



“Stand up, be bold, be strong. Take the whole responsibility on your own shoulders, and know that you are the creator of your own destiny. All the strength and succour you want is within yourselves.”

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA

RAMAKRISHNA PHOTOGRAPH

“Ramakrishna had a vision once that this photograph of him would be adored and appreciated in houses all over the world - that his humble Bengali form would be used by the Divine Mother to bring Her energy and Her delight to a kind of global civilization. There’s a beautiful reproduction of the original negative of this photograph on the cover of Great Swan, quite dark but very radiant - the first time in a hundred years of the Ramakrishna order and Ramakrishna publishing that this picture of him in high absorption, in samadhi, has ever appeared on the front of a publication. That was the decision of Shambhala, it was not my decision. So I consider that the cover of Great Swan is at least as important as the contents of the book.' - Lex Hixon