'Go thou,' he said, 'and follow him who was born and gave his life for others five
hundred times before he attained the vision of the Buddha.'
The Swami now engaged himself in the training of Sister Nivedita along with the other
Western disciples. And certainly it was a most arduous task. They were asked to
associate intimately with the Holy Mother, the widow of Sri Ramakrishna, who at once
adopted them as her 'children.' Then the Swami would visit them almost daily to reveal
to them the deep secrets of the Indian world — its history, folklore, customs, and
traditions. Mercilessly he tried to uproot from their minds all preconceived notions and
wrong ideas about India. He wanted them to love India as she was at the present time,
with her poverty, ignorance, and backwardness, and not the India of yore, when she
had produced great philosophies, epics, dramas, and religious systems.
It was not always easy for the Western disciples to understand the religious ideals and
forms of worship of the Hindus. For instance, one day in the great Kali temple of
Calcutta, one Western lady shuddered at the sight of the blood of the goats sacrificed
before the Deity, and exclaimed, 'Why is there blood before the Goddess?' Quickly the
Swami retorted, 'Why not a little blood to complete the picture?'
The disciples had been brought up in the tradition of Protestant Christianity, in which
the Godhead was associated only with what was benign and beautiful, and Satan with
the opposite.
With a view to Hinduizing their minds, the Swami asked his Western disciples to visit
Hindu ladies at their homes and to observe their dress, food, and customs, which were
radically different from their own. Thus he put to a severe test their love for Vedanta
and India. In the West they had regarded the Swami as a prophet showing them the
path of liberation, and as a teacher of the universal religion. But in India he appeared
before them, in addition, in the role of a patriot, an indefatigable worker for the
regeneration of his motherland.
The Swami began to teach Nivedita to lose herself completely in the Indian
consciousness. She gradually adopted the food, clothes, language, and general habits of
the Hindus.
'You have to set yourself,' he said to her, 'to Hinduize your thoughts, your needs, your
conceptions, your habits. Your life, internal and external, has to become all that an
orthodox brahmin brahmacharini's ought to be. The method will come to you if you
only desire it sufficiently. But you have to forget your past and cause it to be forgotten.'
He wanted her to address the Hindus 'in terms of their own orthodoxy.'
Swami Vivekananda would not tolerate in his Western disciples any trace of
chauvinism, any patronizing attitude or stupid criticism of the Indian way of life. They
could serve India only if they loved India, and they could love India only if they knew
India, her past glories and her present problems. Thus later he took them on his trip to
Northern India, including Almora and Kashmir, and told them of the sanctity of