Epistles (fourth series)

Marie Halboister

XCIV
To Marie Halboster
Almora,
2nd June, 1897.
Dear Marie {Halboister},
I begin here my promised big chatty letter with the best intention as to its growth, and if it fails, it will be owing to your own Karma. I am sure you are enjoying splendid health. I have been very, very bad indeed; now recovering a bit--hope to recover very soon.
What about the work in London? I am afraid it is going to pieces. Do you now and then visit London? Hasn't Sturdy got a new baby?
The plains of India are blazing now. I cannot bear it. So I am here in this hill station--a bit cooler than the plains.
I am living in a beautiful garden belonging to a merchant of Almora--a garden abutting several miles of mountains and forests. Night before last a leopard came here and took away a goat from the flock kept in this garden. It was a frightful din the servants made and the barking of the big Tibet watchdogs. These dogs are kept chained at a distance all night since I am here, so that they may not disturb my sleep with their deep barks. The leopard thus found his opportunity and got a decent meal, perhaps, after weeks. May it do much good to him!
Do you remember Miss Muller? She has come here for a few days and was rather frightened when she heard of the leopard incident. The demand for tanned skins in London seems very great, and that is playing havoc with our leopards and tigers more than anything else.
As I am writing to you, before me, reflecting the afternoon's flow, stand long, long lines of huge snow peaks. They are about twenty miles as the crow flies from here, and forty through the circuitous mountain roads.
I hope your translations have been well received in the Countess's paper. I had a great mind and very good opportunity of coming over to England this Jubilee season with some of our Princes, but my physicians would not allow me to venture into work so soon. For going to Europe means work, isn't it? No work, no bread.
Here the yellow cloth is sufficient, and I would have food enough. Anyhow I am taking a much desired rest, hope it will do me good.
How are you going on with your work? With joy or sorrow? Don't you like to have a good rest, say for some years, and no work? Sleep, eat, and exercise; exercise, eat, and sleep--that is what I am going to do some months yet. Mr. Goodwin is with me. You ought to have seen him in his Indian clothes. I am very soon going to shave his head and make a full-blown monk of him.
Are you still practising some of the Yogas? Do you find any benefit from them? I learn that Mr. Martin is dead. How is Mrs. Martin--do you see her now and then?
Do you know Miss Noble? Do you ever see her? Here my letter comes to an end, as a huge dust storm is blowing over me, and it is impossible to write. It is all your Karma, dear Marie, for I intended to write so many wonderful things and tell you such fine stories; but I will have to keep them for the future, and you will have to wait.
Ever yours in the Lord,
Vivekananda.

 

IC
To Marie Halboister
Almora,
25th July, 1897.
My Dear Marie {Halboister},
I have time, will, and opportunity now to clear my promise. So my letter begins. I have been very weak for some time, and with that and other things my visit to England this Jubilee season had to be postponed.
I was very sorry at first not to be able to meet my nice and very dear friends once more, but Karma cannot be avoided, and I had to rest contented with my Himalayas. It is a sorry exchange, after all; for the beauty of the living spirit shining through the human face is far more pleasurable than any amount of material beauty.
Is not the soul the Light of the world?
The work in London had to go slow--for various reasons, and last though not the least was l'argent, mon amie ! When I am there l'argent comes in somehow, to keep the mare going. Now everybody shrugs his shoulder. I must come again and try my best to revive the work.
I am having a good deal of riding and exercise, but I had to drink a lot of skimmed milk per prescription of the doctors, with the result that I am more to the front than back! I am always a forward man though--but do not want to be too prominent just now, and I have given up drinking milk.
I am glad to learn that you are eating your meals with good appetite.
Do you know Miss Margaret Noble of Wimbledon? She is working hard for me. Do correspond with her if you can, and you help me a good deal there. Her address is, Brantwood, Worple Road, Wimbledon.
So you saw my little friend Miss Orchard and you liked her too--good. I have great hopes for her. And how I should like to be retired from life's activities entirely when I am very old, and hear the world ringing with the names of my dear, dear young friends like yourself and Miss Orchard etc.!
By and by, I am glad to find that I am aging fast, my hair is turning grey. "Silver threads among the gold"--I mean black--are coming in fast.
It is bad for a preacher to be young, don't you think so? I do, as I did all my life. People have more confidence in an old man, and it looks more venerable. Yet the old rogues are the worst rogues in the world, isn't it? The world has its code of judgment which, alas, is very different from that of truth's.
So your "Universal Religion" has been rejected by the Revue de deux Mondes . Never mind, try again some other paper. Once the ice is broken, you get in at a quick rate, I am sure. And I am so glad that you love the work: it will make its way, I have no doubt of it. Our ideas have a future, ma chere Marie--and it will be realised soon.
I think this letter will meet you in Paris--your beautiful Paris--and I hope you will write me lots about French journalism and the coming "World's Fair" there.
I am so glad that you have been helped by Vedanta and Yoga. I am unfortunately sometimes like the circus clown who makes others laugh, himself miserable!
You are naturally of a buoyant temperament. Nothing seems to touch you. And you are moreover a very prudent girl, inasmuch as you have scrupulously kept yourself away from "love" and all its nonsense. So you see you have made your good Karma and planted the seed of your lifelong well-being. Our difficulty in life is that we are guided by the present and not by the future. What gives us a little pleasure now drags us on to follow it, with the result that we always buy a mass of pain in the future for a little pleasure in the present.
I wish I had nobody to love, and I were an orphan in my childhood. The greatest misery in my life has been my own people--my brothers and sisters and mother etc. Relatives are like deadly clogs to one's progress, and is it not a wonder that people will still go on to find new ones by marriage !!!
He who is alone is happy. Do good to all, like everyone, but do not love anyone. It is a bondage, and bondage brings only misery. Live alone in your mind--that is happiness. To have nobody to care for and never minding who cares for one is the way to be free.
I envy so much your frame of mind--quiet, gentle, light, yet deep and free . You are already free, Marie, free already--you are Jivanmukta. I am more of a woman than a man, you are more of a man than woman. I am always dragging other's pain into me--for nothing, without being able to do any good to anybody--just as women, if they have no children, bestow all their love upon a cat!!!
Do you think this has any spirituality in it? Nonsense, it is all material nervous bondage --that is what it is. O! to get rid of the thraldom of the flesh!
Your friend Mrs. Martin very kindly sends me copies of her magazine every month--but Sturdy's thermometer is now below zero, it seems. He seems to be greatly disappointed with my non-arrival in England this summer. What could I do?
We have started two Maths (monasteries) here, one in Calcutta, the other in Madras. The Calcutta Math (a wretched rented house) was awfully shaken in the late earthquake.
We have got in a number of boys, and they are in training; also we have opened famine relief in several places and the work is going on apace. We will try to start similar centres in different places in India.
In a few days I am going down to the plains and from thence go to the Western parts of the mountains. When it is cooler in the plains, I will make a lecture tour all over and see what work can be done.
Here I cannot find any more time to write--so many people are waiting--so here I stop, dear Marie, wishing you all joy and happiness.
May you never be lured by flesh is the constant prayer of--
Ever yours in the Lord,
Vivekananda.

 

CXXXIX
To Miss Marie Halboister
C/o Miss Noble,
21A High Street, Wimbledon.
August, 1899.
My Dear Marie {Halboister},
I am in London again. This time not busy, not hustling about but quietly settled down in a corner--waiting to start for the U.S. America on the first opportunity. My friends are nearly all out of London in the country and elsewhere, and my health not sufficiently strong.
So you are happy in the midst of your lakes and gardens and seclusion in Canada. I am glad, so glad to know that you are up again on top of the tide. May you remain there for ever!
You could not finish the Raja-Yoga translation yet--all right, there is no hurry. Time and opportunity must come if it is to be done you know, otherwise we vainly strive.
Canada must be beautiful now, with its short but vigorous summer, and very healthy.
I expect to be in New York in a few weeks, and don't know what next. I hope to come back to England next spring.
I fervently wish no misery ever came near anyone; yet it is that alone that gives us an insight into the depths of our lives, does it not?
In our moments of anguish, gates barred for ever seem to open and let in many a flood of light.
We learn as we grow. Alas! we cannot use our knowledge here. The moment we seem to learn, we are hurried off the stage. And this is Maya!
This toy world would not be here, this play could not go on, if we were knowing players. We must play blindfolded. Some of us have taken the part of the rogue of the play, some heroic--never mind, it is all play. This is the only consolation. There are demons and lions and tigers and what not on the stage, but they are all muzzled. They snap but cannot bite. The world cannot touch our souls. If you want, even if the body be torn and bleeding, you may enjoy the greatest peace in your mind.
And the way to that is to attain hopelessness. Do you know that? Not the imbecile attitude of despair, but the contempt of the conqueror for things he has attained, for things he struggled for and then throws aside as beneath his worth.
This hopelessness, desirelessness, aimlessness, is just the harmony with nature. In nature there is no harmony, no reason, no sequence; it was chaos before, it is so still.
The lowest man is in consonance with nature in his earthy-headness; the higthest the same in the fullness of knowledge. All three aimless, drifting, hopeless--all three happy.
You want a chatty letter, don't you? I have not much to chat about. Mr. Sturdy came last two days. He goes home in Wales tomorrow.
I have to book my passage for N.Y. in a day or two.
None of my old friends have I seen yet except Miss Souter and Max Gysic, who are in London. They have been very kind, as they always were.
I have no news to give you, as I know nothing of London yet. I don't know where Gertrude Orchard is, else would have written to her. Miss Kate Steel is also away. She is coming on Thursday or Saturday.
I had an invitation to stay in Paris with a friend, a very well-educated Frenchman, but I could not go this time. I hope another time to live with him some days.
I expect to see some of our old friends and say good day to them.
I hope to see you in America sure. Either I may unexpectedly turn up in Ottawa in my peregrinations or you come to N.Y.
Good-bye, all luck be yours.
Ever yours in the Lord,
Vivekananda.

 

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