A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

"Be""22 MY MASTER.words of a nmn who can put his personality into themtake effect, but he must have tremendous pel sdnality. Allteaching is giving and taking, the teacher gives and thetaught receives, Imt the one must have something to give,and the other must be open to receive.This man came to live near (alcutta, the capitalofIndia, til,- most important university town in our country,which was sending out sceptics and materialists by thehundreds every year, yet the great men from the differentuniv.-rsities used to come and listen to him. I heard ofthis man, and I went to hoar him. He looked just likean ordinary man, with nothing remarkable about him.MM] tlie most simple language, and I thought, "Canthis man be a great teacher?" 1 creptnear to him andrisked him the question which I had been asking others allmy life : "Doyou believe in God, Sir?" "Ye.-." lie replied,"Canyou prove it, Sir?"Yes." "JIow?"Becaii>.- Isee Him just as ] see you here, only in a much intenserThat. impressed me at once. For the first timeI had found a man who dared to say that lie saw (lod, thatreligion was areality, to be felt, to be sensed in arinfinitely more intense way than we can sense the world.n to come near that man, day after day vand Iactually saw that religion could be given. One touch, *oneglance, can make a whole life change. I had read aboutBuddha and Christ and Mahommed, about all thosedifferent luminaries of ancient times, how they wouldstand up and say, thou whole,"and the man becamewhole. I now found it to be true, and when 1 myself sawthis man. all scepticism was brushed aside. It would bedone, and niy Master used to "say Religio^ can be:given and taken more tangibly, more really than anythingelse in the world." Be, therefore, spiritual first ;have