Chapter (অধ্যায়): EPISTLES PAGE-68Page: 68 of 537
care I who takes it? "He who doeth the will of my Father," is my own. . . .
My name should not be made prominent; it is my ideas that I want to see realised. The disciples of all the prophets have always inextricably mixed up the ideas of the Master with the person, and at last killed the ideas for the person. The disciples of Shri Ramakrishna must guard against doing the same thing. Work for the idea, not the person. The Lord bless you.
Yours ever with blessings,
Vivekananda
XXXI
Brooklyn
20th January, 1895
(Written to Mrs. Ole Bull whom Swamiji called "Dhira Mata", the "Steady Mother" on the occasion of the loss of her father )
. . . I had a premonition of your father's giving up the old body and it is not my custom to write to anyone when a wave of would-be inharmonious Maya strikes him. But these are the great turning points in life, and I know that you are unmoved. The surface of the sea rises and sinks alternately, but to the observant soul-the child of light-each sinking reveals more and more of the depth and of the beds of pearls and coral at the bottom. Coming and going is all pure delusion. The soul never comes nor goes. Where is the place to which it shall go when all space is in the soul ? When shall be the time for entering and departing when all time is in the soul ? The earth moves, causing the illusion of the movement of the sun; but the sun does not move. So Prakriti, or Maya, or Nature, is moving, changing, unfolding veil after veil, turning over leaf after leaf of this grand book-while the witnessing soul drinks in knowledge, unmoved, unchanged. All souls that ever have been, are, or shall