carried on his shoulder the copper vessel containing the Master's sacred relics. While
bearing it he said to a disciple: 'The Master once told me, "I will go and live wherever
you take me, carrying me on your shoulder, be it under a tree or in the humblest
cottage." With faith in that gracious promise I myself am now carrying him to the site
of our future Math. Know for certain, my boy, that so long as his name inspires his
followers with the ideal of purity, holiness, and charity for all men, even so long shall
he, the Master, sanctify this place with his presence.'
Of the glorious future he saw for the monastery the Swami said: 'It will be a centre in
which will be recognized and practised a grand harmony of all creeds and faiths as
exemplified in the life of Sri Ramakrishna, and religion in its universal aspect, alone,
will be preached. And from this centre of universal toleration will go forth the shining
message of goodwill, peace, and harmony to deluge the whole world.' He warned all of
the danger of sectarianism's creeping in if they became careless.
After the ceremony, he addressed the assembled monks, brahmacharins, and lay
devotees as follows: 'Do you all, my brothers, pray to the Lord with all your heart and
soul that He, the Divine Incarnation of the age, may bless this place with his hallowed
presence for ever and ever, and make it a unique centre, a holy land, of harmony of
different religions and sects, for the good of the many, for the happiness of the many.'
Swami Vivekananda was in an ecstatic mood. He had accomplished the great task of
finding a permanent place on which to build a temple for the Master, with a monastery
for his brother disciples and the monks of the future that should serve as the
headquarters of the Ramakrishna Order for the propagation of Sri Ramakrishna's
teachings. He felt as if the heavy responsibility that he had carried on his shoulders for
the past twelve years had been lifted. He wanted the monastery at Belur to be a
finished university where Indian mystical wisdom and Western practical science would
be taught side by side. And he spoke of the threefold activities of the monastery:
annadana, the gift of food; vidyadana, the gift of intellectual knowledge; and
jnanadana, the gift of spiritual wisdom. These three, properly balanced, would, in the
Swami's opinion, make a complete man. The inmates of the monastery, through
unselfish service of men, would purify their minds and thus qualify themselves for the
supreme knowledge of Brahman.
Swami Vivekananda in his vivid imagination saw the different sections of the
monastery allotted to different functions — the free kitchen for the distribution of food
to the hungry, the university for the imparting of knowledge, the quarters for devotees
from Europe and America, and so forth and so on. The spiritual ideals emanating from
the Belur Math, he once said to Miss MacLeod, would influence the thought-currents
of the world for eleven hundred years.
'All these visions are rising before me' — these were his very words.
The ceremony over, the sacred vessel was brought back to the rented house by his
disciple Sarat Chandra Chakravarty, as the Swami did not want to carry back the
Master from the monastery where he had just installed him.