Varanasi and the magnificence of Agra and Delhi; he related to them the history of the
Moghul Emperors and the Rajput heroes, and also described the peasant's life, the
duties of a farm housewife, and the hospitality of poor villagers to wandering monks.
The teacher and his disciples saw together the sacred rivers, the dense forests, the lofty
mountains, the sun-baked plains, the hot sands of the desert, and the gravel beds of the
rivers, all of which had played their parts in the creation of Indian culture. And the
Swami told them that in India custom and culture were one. The visible manifestations
of the culture were the system of caste, the duties determined by the different stages of
life, the respect of parents as incarnate gods, the appointed hours of religious service,
the shrine used for daily worship, the chanting of the Vedas by the brahmin children,
the eating of food with the right hand and its use in worship and japa, the austerities of
Hindu widows, the kneeling in prayer of the Moslems wherever the time of prayer
might find them, and the ideal of equality practised by the followers of Mohammed.
Nivedita possessed an aggressively Occidental and intensely, English outlook. It was
not easy for her to eradicate instinctive national loyalties and strong personal likes and
dislikes. A clash between the teacher and the disciple was inevitable. Ruthlessly the
Swami crushed her pride in her English upbringing. Perhaps, at the same time, he
wanted to protect her against the passionate adoration she had for him. Nivedita
suffered bitter anguish.
The whole thing reached its climax while they were travelling together, some time
after, in the Himalayas. One day Miss MacLeod thought that Nivedita could no longer
bear the strain, and interceded kindly and gravely with the Swami. 'He listened,' Sister
Nivedita wrote later, 'and went away. At evening, however, he returned, and finding us
together on the veranda, he turned to her (Miss MacLeod) and said with the simplicity
of a child: "You were right. There must be a change. I am going away to the forests to
be alone, and when I come back I shall bring peace." Then he turned away and saw
that above us the moon was new, and a sudden exaltation came into his voice as he
said: "See, the Mohammedans think much of the new moon. Let us also, with the new
moon, begin a new life."' As he said these words, he lifted his hand and blessed his
rebellious disciple, who by this time was kneeling before him. It was assuredly a
moment of wonderful sweetness of reconciliation. That evening in meditation Nivedita
found herself gazing deep into an Infinite Good, to the recognition of which no
egotistic reasoning had led her. 'And,' she wrote, 'I understood for the first time that the
greatest teachers may destroy in us a personal relation only in order to bestow the
Impersonal Vision in its place.'
To resume our story, on March 30, 1898, the Swami left for Darjeeling, for he badly
needed a change to the cool air of the Himalayas. Hardly had he begun to feel the
improvement in his health, when he had to come down to Calcutta, where an outbreak
of plague was striking terror.
Immediately he made plans for relief work with the help of the members of the
monastery and volunteers from Calcutta.
When a brother disciple asked him where he would get funds, the Swami replied: