his body by his own will. Were the visions at the temple of Kshirbhavani a
premonition of the approaching dissolution?
When the Swami rejoined his disciples at Srinagar, he was an altogether different
person. He raised his hand in benediction and then placed some marigolds, which he
had offered to the Deity, on the head of every one of his disciples. 'No more "Hari
Om!"' he said. 'It is all "Mother" now!' Though he lived with them, the disciples saw
very little of him. For hours he would stroll in the woods beside the river, absorbed
within himself. One day he appeared before them with shaven head, dressed as the
simplest sannyasin and with a look of unapproachable austerity on his face. He
repeated his own poem 'Kali the Mother' and said, 'It all came true, every word of it;
and I have proved it, for I have hugged the form of death.'
Sister Nivedita writes: 'The physical ebb of the great experience through which he had
just passed — for even suffering becomes impossible when a given point of weariness
is reached; and similarly, the body refuses to harbour a certain intensity of the spiritual
life for an indefinite period — was leaving him, doubtless, more exhausted than he
himself suspected. All this contributed, one imagines, to a feeling that none of us knew
for how long a time we might now be parting.'
The party left Kashmir on October 11 and came down to Lahore. The Western
disciples went to Agra, Delhi, and the other principal cities of Northern India for
sightseeing, and the Swami, accompanied by his disciple Sadananda, arrived at Belur
on October 18. His brother disciples saw that he was very pallid and ill. He suffered
from suffocating attacks of asthma; when he emerged from its painful fits, his face
looked blue, like that of a drowning man. But in spite of all, he plunged headlong into
numerous activities.
On November 13, 1898, the day of the worship of Kali, the Nivedita Girls' School was
opened in Calcutta. At the end of the inaugural ceremony the Holy Mother, Sri
Ramakrishna's consort, 'prayed that the blessing of the Great Mother of the universe
might be upon the school and that the girls it should train might be ideal girls.'
Nivedita, who witnessed the ceremony with the Swamis of the Order, said: 'I cannot
imagine a grander omen than her blessing spoken over the educated Hindu
womanhood of the future.'
The dedication of the school was the beginning of Nivedita's work in India. The Swami
gave her complete freedom about the way to run it. He told her that she was free from
her collaborators if she so chose; and that she might, if she wished, give the work a
'definite religious colour' or even make it sectarian. Then he added, 'You may wish
through a sect to rise beyond all sects.'
On December 9, 1898, the Ramakrishna Monastery at Belur was formally consecrated
by the Swami with the installation of the Master's image in the chapel. The plot of
land, as already stated, had been purchased in the beginning of the year and had been
consecrated with proper religious ceremony in March that year. The Swami himself
had performed the worship on that occasion at the rented house and afterwards had