Dr. Lewis Janes invited the Swami to give a series of lectures on the Hindu religion
before the Brooklyn Ethical Association. On the evening of December 31, 1894, he
gave his first lecture, and according to the report of the Brooklyn Standard, the
enthusiastic audience, consisting of doctors and lawyers and judges and teachers,
remained spellbound by his eloquent defence of the religion of India. They all
acknowledged that Vivekananda was even greater than his fame. At the end of the
meeting they made an insistent demand for regular classes in Brooklyn, to which the
Swami agreed. A series of class meetings was held and several public lectures were
given at the Pouch Mansion, where the Ethical Association held its meetings. These
lectures constituted the beginning of the permanent work in America which the Swami
secretly desired.
Soon after, several poor but earnest students rented for the Swami some unfurnished
rooms in a poor section of New York City. He lived in one of them. An ordinary room
on the second floor of the lodging-house was used for the lectures and classes. The
Swami when conducting the meetings sat on the floor, while the ever more numerous
auditors seated themselves as best they could, utilizing the marble-topped dresser, the
arms of the sofa, and even the corner wash-stand. The door was left open and the
overflow filled the hall and sat on the stairs. The Swami, like a typical religious teacher
in India, felt himself in his own element. The students, forgetting all the
inconveniences, hung upon every word uttered from the teacher's deep personal
experiences or his wide range of knowledge.
The lectures, given every morning and several evenings a week, were free. The rent
was paid by the voluntary subscriptions of the students, and the deficit was met by the
Swami himself, through the money he earned by giving secular lectures on India. Soon
the meeting-place had to be removed downstairs to occupy an entire parlour floor.
He began to instruct several chosen disciples in jnana-yoga in order to clarify their
intellects regarding the subtle truths of Vedanta, and also in raja-yoga to teach them the
science of self-control, concentration, and meditation. He was immensely happy with
the result of his concentrated work. He enjoined upon these students to follow strict
disciplines regarding food, choosing only the simplest. The necessity of chastity was
emphasized, and they were warned against psychic and occult power. At the same time
he broadened their intellectual horizon through the teachings of Vedantic universality.
Daily he meditated with the serious students. Often he would lose all bodily
consciousness and, like Sri Ramakrishna, had to be brought back to the knowledge of
the world through the repetition of certain holy words that he had taught his disciples.
It was sometime about June 1895 when Swami Vivekananda finished writing his
famous book Raja-Yoga, which attracted the attention of the Harvard philosopher
William James and was later to rouse the enthusiasm of Tolstoy. The book is a
translation of Patanjali's Yoga aphorisms, the Swami adding his own explanations; the
introductory chapters written by him are especially illuminating. Patanjali expounded,
through these aphorisms, the philosophy of Yoga, the main purpose of which is to
show the way of the soul's attaining freedom from the bondage of matter. Various