wrote to Turiyananda: 'My body and mind are broken down; I need rest badly. In
addition there is not a single person on whom I can depend; on the other hand, as long
as I live, all will be very selfish, depending upon me for everything.' In Egypt the
Swami had seemed to be turning the last pages of his life-experience. One of the party
later remarked, 'How tired and world-weary he seemed!' Nivedita, who had had the
opportunity of observing him closely during his second trip to the West, writes:
The outstanding impression made by the Swami's bearing during all these months of
European and American life, was one of almost complete indifference to his
surroundings. Current estimates of value left him entirely unaffected. He was never in
any way startled or incredulous under success, being too deeply convinced of the
greatness of the Power that worked through him, to be surprised by it. But neither was
he unnerved by external failure. Both victory and defeat would come and go. He was
their witness....He moved fearless and unhesitant through the luxury of the West. As
determinedly as I had seen him in India, dressed in the two garments of simple folk,
sitting on the floor and eating with his fingers, so, equally without doubt or shrinking,
was his acceptance of the complexity of the means of living in America or France.
Monk and king, he said, were the obverse and reverse of a single medal. From the use
of the best to the renunciation of all was but one step. India had thrown all her prestige
in the past round poverty. Some prestige was in the future to be cast round wealth.
For some time the Swami had been trying to disentangle himself from the
responsibilities of work. He had already transferred the property of the Belur Math
from his own name to the Trustees of the organization. On August 25, 1900, he had
written to Nivedita from Paris:
Now, I am free, as I have kept no power or authority or position for me in the work. I
also have resigned the Presidentship of the Ramakrishna Mission. The Math etc.
belong now to the immediate disciples of Ramakrishna except myself. The
Presidentship is now Brahmananda's — next it will fall on Premananda etc., in turn. I
am so glad a whole load is off me. Now I am happy.... I no longer represent anybody,
nor am I responsible to anybody. As to my friends, I had a morbid sense of obligation.
I have thought well and find I owe nothing to anybody — if anything. I have given my
best energies, unto death almost, and received only hectoring and mischief-making and
botheration&....
Your letter indicates that I am jealous of your new friends. You must know once for all
I am born without jealousy, without avarice, without the desire to rule& #151;
whatever other vices I may be born with. I never directed you before; now, after I am
nobody in the work, I have no direction whatever. I only know this much: So long as
you serve 'Mother' with a whole heart, She will be your guide.
I never had any jealousy about what friends you made. I never criticized my brethren
for mixing up in anything. Only I do believe the Western people have the peculiarity of