Very few people know perhaps what a great humorist Vivekananda was in his lighter moments. The following is an account of a parlour meeting held in Paris to discuss religion,philosophy, spirituality etc., where he remained an aloof spectator; but you can see for yourself how aloof he was, from the following letter he wrote to his benefactor Mrs. Francis Leggett of America.
6 place des estate unis,
Paris,
3rd September, 1900.
Dear Mother,
We had a congress of cranks here in this house.
The representatives came from various countries, from India in the south, to Scotland in the north, with England and America buttressing the sides.
we were having great difficulty in electing the president, for though Dr. James (Prof. William James) was there, he was more mindful of the blisters raised on him by Mrs. Milton (probably by magnetic healing) than solution of world problems.
I proposed Joe, but she refused on the ground of non--arrival of her new gown--and went to a corner to watch the scene from a coign of vantage.
Mrs. Bull was ready, but Margot objected to this meeting being reduced to a comparative philosophy class.
When we were thus in a fix---up sprung a short, square, almost round figure from the corner, and without any ceremony declared that all difficulties will be solved, not only of electing a president but of life itself, if we all took to worshipping the Sun--God and the Moon--God. He delivered his speech in five minutes; but it took his disciple, who was present, fully three quarters of an hour to translate. In the meanwhile, the master began to draw the rugs in your parlour in a heap, with the intention, as he said, of giving us an ocular demonstration of the power of "Fire God", then and there.
At this juncture Joe interposed and insisted that she did not want a fire sacrifice in her parlour, whereupon the Indian saint looked daggers at Joe, entirely disgusted at the behavior of one he confidently believed to be a prefect convert to fire--worship.
Then Dr. James snatched a minute from nursing his blisters and declared that he would have something very interesting to speak upon Fire god and his brethren, if he were not entirely occupied with the evolution of Miltonian blisters. Moreover his great Master, Herbert Spencer, not having investigated the subject before him, he would stick to golden silence.
"Chutney is the thing", said a voice near the door. We all looked back and saw Margot. "It is Chutney", she said, "Chutney and Kali, that will remove all difficulties of life, and make it easy for us to swallow all evils and relish what is good". But she stopped all of a sudden and vehemently asserted that she was not going to speak any further, as she has been obstructed by a certain male animal in the audience in her speech. She was sure one man in the audience had his head turned towards the window and was not paying the attention proper to a lady, and though as to herself she believed in the equality if the sexes yet she wanted to know the reason of that disgusting man's want of due respect for women. Then one and all declared that they had been giving her the most undivided attention, and all above the equal right, her due, but to no purpose. Margot would have nothing to do with that horrible crowd and sat down.
Then Mrs. Bull of Boston took the floor and began to explain how all the difficulties of the world were from not understanding the true relation between the between the sexes. She said, "The only panacea was a right understanding of the proper persons, and then to find liberty in love and freedom in liberty and motherhood, brotherhood, fatherhood, Godhood, love in freedom and freedom in love, in the right holding up of the true ideal in sex".
To this the Scotch delegate vehemently objected and said that as the hunter chased the goatherd, the goatherd the shepherd, the shepherd, the shepherd the peasant, and the peasant drove the fisher into the sea, now we wanted to fish out of the deep the fisher and let him fall upon the peasant, the peasant upon the shepherd, and so on; and the web of life will be completed, and we will be happy--he was not allowed to continue his driving business long. In a second everyone was on his feet and we could only hear a confusion of voices---"Sun God and Moon God", "Chutney and Kali", "Freedom holding up right understanding,sex, motherhood", "Never, the fisherman must go back to the shore", etc. Whereupon Joe declared that she was yearning to be the hunter for the time and chase them all out of the house if they did not stop their nonsense .
Then was peace and calm restored, and I hastened to write you about it.
Yours affly,
Vivekananda.
6 place des estate unis,
Paris,
3rd September, 1900.
Dear Mother,
We had a congress of cranks here in this house.
The representatives came from various countries, from India in the south, to Scotland in the north, with England and America buttressing the sides.
we were having great difficulty in electing the president, for though Dr. James (Prof. William James) was there, he was more mindful of the blisters raised on him by Mrs. Milton (probably by magnetic healing) than solution of world problems.
I proposed Joe, but she refused on the ground of non--arrival of her new gown--and went to a corner to watch the scene from a coign of vantage.
Mrs. Bull was ready, but Margot objected to this meeting being reduced to a comparative philosophy class.
When we were thus in a fix---up sprung a short, square, almost round figure from the corner, and without any ceremony declared that all difficulties will be solved, not only of electing a president but of life itself, if we all took to worshipping the Sun--God and the Moon--God. He delivered his speech in five minutes; but it took his disciple, who was present, fully three quarters of an hour to translate. In the meanwhile, the master began to draw the rugs in your parlour in a heap, with the intention, as he said, of giving us an ocular demonstration of the power of "Fire God", then and there.
At this juncture Joe interposed and insisted that she did not want a fire sacrifice in her parlour, whereupon the Indian saint looked daggers at Joe, entirely disgusted at the behavior of one he confidently believed to be a prefect convert to fire--worship.
Then Dr. James snatched a minute from nursing his blisters and declared that he would have something very interesting to speak upon Fire god and his brethren, if he were not entirely occupied with the evolution of Miltonian blisters. Moreover his great Master, Herbert Spencer, not having investigated the subject before him, he would stick to golden silence.
"Chutney is the thing", said a voice near the door. We all looked back and saw Margot. "It is Chutney", she said, "Chutney and Kali, that will remove all difficulties of life, and make it easy for us to swallow all evils and relish what is good". But she stopped all of a sudden and vehemently asserted that she was not going to speak any further, as she has been obstructed by a certain male animal in the audience in her speech. She was sure one man in the audience had his head turned towards the window and was not paying the attention proper to a lady, and though as to herself she believed in the equality if the sexes yet she wanted to know the reason of that disgusting man's want of due respect for women. Then one and all declared that they had been giving her the most undivided attention, and all above the equal right, her due, but to no purpose. Margot would have nothing to do with that horrible crowd and sat down.
Then Mrs. Bull of Boston took the floor and began to explain how all the difficulties of the world were from not understanding the true relation between the between the sexes. She said, "The only panacea was a right understanding of the proper persons, and then to find liberty in love and freedom in liberty and motherhood, brotherhood, fatherhood, Godhood, love in freedom and freedom in love, in the right holding up of the true ideal in sex".
To this the Scotch delegate vehemently objected and said that as the hunter chased the goatherd, the goatherd the shepherd, the shepherd, the shepherd the peasant, and the peasant drove the fisher into the sea, now we wanted to fish out of the deep the fisher and let him fall upon the peasant, the peasant upon the shepherd, and so on; and the web of life will be completed, and we will be happy--he was not allowed to continue his driving business long. In a second everyone was on his feet and we could only hear a confusion of voices---"Sun God and Moon God", "Chutney and Kali", "Freedom holding up right understanding,sex, motherhood", "Never, the fisherman must go back to the shore", etc. Whereupon Joe declared that she was yearning to be the hunter for the time and chase them all out of the house if they did not stop their nonsense .
Then was peace and calm restored, and I hastened to write you about it.
Yours affly,
Vivekananda.
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