One day Harinath arrived at Dakshineswar when the Master was having his dinner. He saw that a number of bowls containing various cooked items were placed before him. Harinath thought that this kind of luxurious eating was unbecoming to a holy man. The Master said at once: “Well, the tendency of my mind is always towards the Infinite. It is by such rajasic devices that I hold it down to the lower planes. Otherwise I could not talk with you.” Harinath was dumbfounded.
Similar Incident from the Life of Swami Vivekananda
Miss Waldo herself told me of this experience as her own. Romain Rolland tells it of another disciple. Both can be true. The incident could easily repeat itself.
Miss Waldo had had wide experience of teachers. She had sat at the feet of many during her long pursuit of truth, but sooner or later they had all fallen short in some way. Now the fear was in her heart that this new Hindu Swami might prove wanting. She was always watching for a sign of weakness. It came. She and the Swami were together in a New York drawing-room. The New York Swami Vivekananda knew was very different from the New York of today. The streets then were lined with monotonous blocks of brown stone houses, one so completely like every other that a visiting artist of note once asked: “How do you know when you are at home? You could as well be in the house next door.”
Each of these narrow, but deep houses held on the first floor a long narrow drawing-room, with high folding-doors at one end, two large windows at the other, and between them a mirror reaching from floor to ceiling. This mirror seemed to fascinate the Swami. He stood before it again and again, gazing at himself intently. In between he walked up and down the room, lost in thought. Miss Waldo’s eyes followed him anxiously. “Now the bubble is going to burst,” she thought. “He is full of personal vanity.” Suddenly he turned to her and said: “Ellen, it is the strangest thing, I cannot remember how I look. I look and look at myself in the glass, but the moment I turn away I forget completely what I look like.”