IN MOTHER’S WORDS: “One must do some work. Through work alone can one remove the bondage of work,

not by avoiding work. Total detachment comes later on. One should not be without work even for a moment.”

Dedicated to Holy Mother Winter 2000, Volume 6, Issue 2

Sri Sarada Society Notes

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A SIGNIFICANT MEETING: SISTER NIVEDITA AND HOLY MOTHER

Adapted from a talk given in Calcutta by Pravrajika Ajayaprana ofthe Ramakrishna Sarada Vedanta Society of NSW, Australia, onNovember 16, 1998 on the occasion of the Nivedita Centenary.

The Holy Mother was Primal Energy Concentrate, theFirst Principle, or to use the words of the Jesuit philosopherMarcilio Ficino, “ the Unchanging, a Single Stillness” —the “Point of Singularity,” to use the terminology of mod-ern science. On that Point was Holy Mother, remainingever stationed and poised in perfect equilibrium, the pointwhere infinity and eternity coalesce into one homogeneousentity. Our duty today is to tap that en-ergy, get close to that universal heart, be-come enlivened, rejuvenated, and thus be-come ready to plunge into life’s whirlpoolwith renewed zest and vigor. SisterNivedita did just that. She has shown,through her meeting with the greatMother, her observations, and emergentactions, how we should launch this schemeand work it out.

Ebullient, energetic, beaming with freshideas about education and social service, andfired with zeal, inspiration and vision, MissMargaret Noble was dedicated to spiritualideas from early in life. Her intellect was keen and clear, sharp-ened on the battlefields of the debating societies of the SesameClub in London. The Irish lady, after coming in contact withher Master, Swami Vivekananda, was chastened, chiselled andmodelled into “Nivedita, the Dedicated,” ready to be offeredat the altar of Universal Energy.

The meeting was not between two women hailing fromthe two ends of the earth. Neither was it between the an-cient and the modern, nor between spirituality and mate-rialism. It was a communion between the infinite, univer-sal heart and the individual heart pulsating within the in-side of the common man, of each of us. Language was nobarrier in this communication, where heart spoke to heart.Differences in caste, class, culture, country or color couldnot place any obstruction in the path of the free flow of

unsolicited universal love and energy into the heart of theexpectant and fully-prepared recipient.

Sister Nivedita wrote: “In Holy Mother one sees real-ized that wisdom and sweetness to which the simplest ofwomen can attain. And yet to myself the stateliness of hercourtesy and her great open mind are almost as wonderfulas her saintliness. I have never known her hesitate in giv-ing utterance to large and generous judgement, howevernew and complex might be the question put before her...She rises to the height of every situation. . . With unerring

intuition she goes straight to the heart ofthe matter, and sets the questioner in thetrue attitude to the difficulty.”

Through her words and example, Sis-ter Nivedita pointed out the uniquenessof Mother's great power. She had the keen-ness to penetrate though the veil and getconnected to the silent dynamo that theHoly Mother was. Nivedita representstruly and fully the natural temperamentin each of us, especially the women of thecurrent age of the West and of the East.Like her, we need to equip ourselves withall the qualities of truth, unselfishness,

purity, service-mindedness and a spiritual outlook andplunge into action.

Let us remember the Holy Mother’s assurance that Sheis always behind us. Our duty is to remember that we havea Mother, that is our part of the contract. Once we do this,She will play her part. Feel her delicate hand placed on ourshoulder, say the left, and just try to experience a gentlepressure whenever we feel helpless. Love will flow, solacewill flow; succor, strength, courage, vitality and the reas-surance of fearlessness will flow steadily and freely and fillus to the brim. Let us plunge forward, drawing inspirationfrom the mighty Nivedita, and invoking the grace of HolyMother, to make our life a blessing to ourselves, the wholeworld and to humanity in general, thus stamp a mark onhistory, as Swamiji wants us to.

WHO WE ARE: Sri Sarada Society is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the furtherance

of Holy Mother’s inspiration in the West, particularly as it manifests through women.

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ENTERING THE UNIVERSEOF SWAMIJI’S COMMENTARY

We invited Sister Gayatriprana of the Vedanta Society of NorthernCalifornia to share something of the sense of adventure and discov-ery which no doubt accompanies an exploration of SwamiVivekananda’s commentaries. The fruit of her study, “SWAMI VIVE-KANANDA ON THE VEDAS AND UPANISHADS”, is currently being re-leased via the Internet by Jay Lakhani of the Vivekananda Centre,London, at http://www.vivekananda.co.uk/veda.htm.

Strangely enough, I had not really thought in a connectedway about my personal responses to the work, nor am I surehow “personal” what I have to say will seem. There is no doubt,of course, that over the fourteen years I worked on the project,my vision of Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Vedanta has expandedand deepened immensely. How could it not have, sitting as Iwas, like a tube-worm feeding on the nutrients pouring fromthe thermal vents of Vedanta?

I began my serious study of Swami Vivekananda’sthought with a compilation of his commentaries on theBhagavad Gita. Having struggled for 19 years previouslyto find an English translation of the Gita that I felt wasthoroughly authentic, I suddenly realized that Swami Vive-kananda, a fully realized Vedantin, spoke perfect Englishand had used that language to express his insights into theVedantic texts. It took me six years to put together his in-terpretation of the Gita. I was not disappointed in what Idiscovered. On the contrary, I was bowled over by the di-rectness and freshness of his approach, and amazed at hismastery of English in expressing nuances and depths ofmeaning, found in none of the 35 English translations Ihad gone through before taking up the Gita compilation.Whatever he touched was not only illumined in itself, butfrom it a whole universe of interrelated meanings and con-nections opened out, like a shimmering network stretch-ing out, it seemed, into infinity.

In tackling the Upanishads I began to enter more fullyinto the inner core of Vedanta. As I began to pull the ma-terials together, there could be no thought of a method or asystem or an interpretation. I was simply sucked into a blackhole through which I passed, typing away in the garagemorning after morning, in a sort of daze. I realized I hadgotten myself into something that was compiling me, ratherthan the other way around! What one might call, in In-dian English, a different experience!

The first hints of any kind of sequence or order camewhen I focused especially on the four mahavakyas or greatsayings: “Thou art That,” “I am Brahman,” “This Self isBrahman,” and “Brahman is Intelligence (or Conscious-ness).” The great medieval systematizer of Vedanta, SriShankaracharya, had pinpointed these from the Upanishads

and held them to be the core of Vedantic belief. As I en-tered more and more into their voluminous ramifications,it seemed to me that there was a sort of empirical sequencebetween these four statements about the divinity of theuniverse: “thou” puts the divine outside; “I” brings it within;“The Self ” carries it to a more universal, metaphysical level,while the Intelligence of Brahman Itself is the connectingfactor between the previous three. Each of these four rela-tionships is, you might say, a different mode of the divine.

As I worked through Swami Vivekananda’s translationsand commentaries on these four great sayings, I began tofeel that, corresponding to each saying there is whole uni-verse of experience and meaning, which is totally coloredby the mode of the saying. It was as if these mantras wereall coming together in closely related constellations whichspanned four different levels of experience. Moreover, I laterrealized that in Swamiji’s commentaries a fifth dimensionis also present, and indeed, pervades all the other four. That wasthe relationship. Whatever exists, without exception, is Brahman.This idea takes concrete form in such mantras as,

“Thou are the man, Thou art the woman,Thou art the girl, Thou art the boy.Thou art the old man, tottering on a stick.Thou art the young man walking in the prideof his strength.Thou art all that.”

To this Swamiji added, “Such a wonderful living God whois the only fact of existence.”

With its characteristic thoroughness, Vedanta has, I believe,brought out this and other archetypal patterns of the humanmind more clearly, perhaps, than any other religious or philo-sophical system and systematized them in the four traditionalgreat sayings. However, by emphasizing the mantra All this isverily Brahman, Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Vedanta hasbrought a new approach, applying the core truth of Vedanta,not only to spiritual (i.e. subjective) realms, but also to theobjective facts of experience, what we have thus far called theworld of science. The development of this approach expandsthe traditional relationships with Reality to include the accep-tance of the universe Itself as Spirit. As and when we look oneverything, without exception, as Spirit, we shall see, not onlythe intrinsic divinity of what we see, but how, as a direct mani-festation of Spirit, they interrelate with everything else. Spiritis interacting with, transforming, realizing, evolving into Spirit;and, finally just being Itself. There is no fundamental separa-tion at any level. No doubt, as we think now, all this is verystrange. Perhaps that is why the commentaries seemed so muchlike “black holes” when I first encountered them.

Where this odyssey will go from here is a big question, butthis much I can say: So far, it’s been quite a ride! d

HOW TO CONTACT US: Sri Sarada Society, P.O. Box 38116, Albany, New York 12203, PHONE (518) 869-6088

FAX (518) 869-6084, E-MAIL info@srisarada.org, HOLY MOTHER’S WEB SITE http://www.srisarada.org/

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The following is from a talk given by Pravrajika Vivekaprana ofSri Sarada Math, New Delhi, during her visit to La Paloma, Uru-guay, this September, following her six-week stay in the United States.The full transcript of the talk was sent to us by Caroline Giorgi.

Q: How does one become free?Whatever I have understood I can share with you.

Advaita Vedanta tries to show me I am already free. In-stead of thinking that I am not free, and I have to becomefree, what makes more sense to me is that I am alreadyfree. I just do not know about it. Supposing it was true Iam not free or that I have to become free —Would it evenbe possible to become free? I would say that the idea ofliving free is what appeals to me most. When I look at myown experience, I realize that it is vanishing every moment.It is a question of whether I wish to hold on to the memoryof my experience and feel bound by it and become rigid orwhether I will let it go as the time and the moment passesand feel free all the time.

It reminds me of a story. A guru and a disciple are sit-ting on the bank of a river. It is winter and something blackis floating in the river. The disciple says, “Should I go andbring this blanket? It is going to be a very cold winter andwe will be needing it.” And the guru says, “If you like.” Itwas a black thing, so the guru says “if you please, if youwant to.” So the disciple jumps into the river and in a shorttime there is shouting, “Guruji! Guruji! Help me!” So theguru says, “What’s the problem? Why don’t you come out?Why don’t you bring the blanket?” And the disciple says,“The blanket won’t let me go!” It was a black bear.

So think of freedom like that. I want to catch hold ofsomething, that is my rigidity, and when I catch hold of it,it doesn’t let me go. So it is a very strange state of humanexistence that we do not like to pass through life as if on ajourney. It is as if we want to get hold of these things thatmark the distance on a highway, and catch hold of themand just remain there, not realizing that we are on a jour-ney, not seeing the movement of our own mind that doesnot stop, cannot stop, and instead of flowing with themovement, somehow we have the mental capacity to feelourselves to be bound.

I am not speaking about detachment or renunciation, Iam speaking about going with the flow in the sense of en-joying each moment, giving whatever is to be given, expe-riencing whatever is to be experienced. Not to see the dy-namic nature of my own mind is bondage. I accept theidea that as experience, I am dynamic, tremendously dy-namic and as the experiencer, the mind itself is very dy-

Pravrajika Vivekaprana

WE ARE ALREADY FREEnamic, so there is no rigidity in me. To accept the idea thatthere is no rigidity in me, is freedom. That is as much as Ihave understood. Of course, there are books which say aperson who is detached does not feel the duality. However,I feel that this concept implies the dynamic nature of hu-man existence. And this dynamism has to be accepted asvery real rather than describing it as an illusion. Our expe-rience is vanishing all the time, therefore don't be attached.A positive kind of understanding is that our nature is tre-mendously dynamic, you are dynamic, your experience isdynamic, therefore simply let go and accept it as it is.

Q: And why are we trying to catch every movement?Fear. It is a very deep fear. A deep fear which makes us

see our freedom partially in space/time and we are scaredof losing it and don’t realize it is my awareness that is mak-ing the play possible. I see and there is play. I don’t see andthere is no play. So that I am the basic freedom that isbeing projected outside myself through experience. Wesomehow think of experience as coming from outside,whereas actually this is not possible. Outside my participa-tion there is no experience. So why do we feel this fear? Itis because we don’t realize our own freedom to begin with.That I am free. I am free all the time because I give rise toexperience. It is not experience that gives rise to me. It’svery subtle, I know. But this is the only way the humanmind can really understand it...

SI am very happy you have raised the question of free-

dom. We need to get back this simplicity. I am free. No-body ever bound me, nobody can bind me. Nothing canbind me. If I want to feel bound after that, nobody canstop me. It surprises me tremendously that we have theseancient sages in the Upanishads telling us directly, “Youare free” and “You are nothing but joy, existence, conscious-ness” and I say, “Oh no! I am not that!”. . .

I often think that the greatest disease of this Age is tofeel depressed, helpless, and in despair. And supposingsomebody says, “All right, come, I’ll take you out of thisdepression.” But you pull in the other direction with somuch energy that you can’t be pulled out (of depression).So are you powerful or powerless?

Don’t feel helpless. Never say “I am helpless.” The greatestsin in this Age is to say “I am weak.” Swamiji says in one of hislectures that the greatest sin is to call a man a sinner. So if youwant to worship a God in this Age, the God is Swami Vive-kananda. In our imaginary theories, he is called the incarna-tion of man and he has given the message that you are free.Just accept it. If you don’t want to accept it, what is the alter-native? So many masks, millions of masks all around, whichare trying to say, “Look at me. I am this mask. I am not free.”

Sri Sarada SocietyP.O. Box 38116, Albany, New York 12203

NONPROF. ORG.U S POSTAGEPAIDPERMIT NO. 971ALBANY, NY

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EDITORIAL STAFF: Joan Shack, Hema Iyer, Janet Walker, and Jayanti PRODUCTION/LAYOUT: Jayanti

advanced professionally, her spiritual life was making greatstrides. As a result she decided to dedicate herself com-pletely to Vedanta by serving her guru and all who came tohim for spiritual instruction.

Judy made three pilgrimages to India. During one visitshe was blessed to live at Sri Sarada Math for 18 months.

As Judy’s life drew to a close her contributions did notgo unnoticed. In a letter dated September 29, 1999, writ-ten within four months of her death, ␣ SwamiTathagatananda, minister of the Vedanta Society of NewYork, wrote,

“I am extremely sorry to know about your gradual deterio-ration of health. It is extremely painful for most of us whoknow you for so many years to accept this fact. But there isone great consolation for you and for us: that you at the primeof your youth devoted your talent and energy for Vedanta...

Your exemplary life, your passion for spiritual development,your ability to control your lower self at the height of youryouth— are they not a signal achievement in your life thatwill endure and ennoble your character and inspire others?So-called ordinary life, in spite of its glamour and enticement,that captivates every single mind, could not dare to invadeyour inner sanctuary, which was pure and unswerving...

“Perhaps God’s dream was fulfilled through you to cre-ate a noble example of sincere devotion before society. Therich legacy of your devotion will ever enkindle others, willinspire many, and human culture will be sweetened by hav-ing your dedicated life as perfume does to a person. Thatbeing over, the purpose of your life is also over.”

In his eulogy to Judith, the Swami drew this compari-son, “To me she was something like a lighthouse seen acci-dentally by passengers sailing on a storm-tossed ocean whoare expecting death at any moment.”

A GUIDING LIGHTWe are thankful for Usha Gulati’s assistance in continuing our se-ries on women who have helped in shaping Vedanta in America. Inrecalling her friend, Judith Savadge, Usha writes, “Judy lived forTruth...Her guru inspired her to live a well-disciplined life, full ofcompassion and helpfulness to all including myself. I truly foundspiritual sisterhood in her. I only knew her for nine years, but I feellike I have known her forever. She inspired many devotees to de-velop their inner life as she developed her own.”

On the morning of January 8, 2000, Judith Ann Savadgepassed quietly away surrounded by members of her family.Her twin sister Barbara chanted from the Gita. Anothersister, Debra, had been singing hymns. It is difficult toimagine a more perfect closure to a life dedicated to ser-vice and spiritual commitment.

Judy’s spiritual journey found expression through hernatural desire and willingness to serve. Judy was born inNew York City. After majoring in psychology at GrinnellCollege, she worked for New Jersey Psychiatric Institute,teaching emotionally disturbed children. She later movedto Chicago to work as a counselor at Bettheheim’s Ortho-genic School, where she taught autistic children. In Chi-cago she became an active civil rights volunteer and workedfor open housing.

The move to Chicago was significant and life-changing.Continuing her service-oriented career, Judy got her mas-ters degree in psychology from the Illinois Institute of Tech-nology, and became a rehabilitation counselor at its Psy-chiatric Institute. By this time, however, she had met SwamiBhasyananda, the late minister of the Vivekananda VedantaSociety, Chicago. With the teachings of Vedanta now be-fore her, Judy embraced them without hesitation. As Judy