anyone, except that he had been granted the grace of Amarnath, the Lord of
Immortality, not to die until he himself willed it.
The effect of the experience shattered his nerves. When he emerged from the grotto,
there was a clot of blood in his left eye; his heart was dilated and never regained its
normal condition. For days he spoke of nothing but Siva. He said: 'The image was the
Lord Himself. It was all worship there. I have never seen anything so beautiful, so
inspiring.'
On August 8 the party arrived at Srinagar, where they remained until September 30.
During this period the Swami felt an intense desire for meditation and solitude. The
Maharaja of Kashmir treated him with the utmost respect and wanted him to choose a
tract of land for the establishment of a monastery and a Sanskrit college. The land was
selected and the proposal sent to the British Resident for approval. But the British
Agent refused to grant the land. The Swami accepted the whole thing philosophically.
A month later his devotion was directed to Kali, the Divine Mother, whom
Ramakrishna had called affectionately 'my Mother.'
A unique symbol of the Godhead, Kali represents the totality of the universe: creation
and destruction, life and death, good and evil, pain and pleasure, and all the pairs of
opposites. She seems to be black when viewed from a distance, like the water of the
ocean; but to the intimate observer She is without colour, being one with Brahman,
whose creative energy She represents.
In one aspect She appears terrible, with a garland of human skulls, a girdle of human
hands, her tongue dripping blood, a decapitated human head in one hand and a shining
sword in the other, surrounded by jackals that haunt the cremation ground — a
veritable picture of terror. The other side is benign and gracious, ready to confer upon
Her devotees the boon of immortality. She reels as if drunk: who could have created
this mad world except in a fit of drunkenness? Kali stands on the bosom of Her Divine
Consort, Siva, the symbol of Brahman; for Kali, or Nature, cannot work unless
energized by the touch of the Absolute. And in reality Brahman and Kali, the Absolute
and Its Creative Energy, are identical, like fire and its power to burn.
The Hindu mind does not make a sweepingly moralistic distinction between good and
evil. Both are facts of the phenomenal world and are perceived to exist when maya
hides the Absolute, which is beyond good and evil. Ramakrishna emphasized the
benign aspect of the Divine Mother Kali and propitiated Her to obtain the vision of the
Absolute. Swami Vivekananda suddenly felt the appeal of Her destructive side. But is
there really any difference between the process of creation and destruction? Is not the
one without the other an illusion of the mind?
Vivekananda realized that the Divine Mother is omnipresent. Wherever he turned, he
was conscious of the presence of the Mother, 'as if She were a person in the room.' He
felt that it was She 'whose hands are clasped with my own and who leads me as though
I were a child.' It was touching to see him worship the four-year-old daughter of his