Chapter (অধ্যায়): II THE SWAMI VIVEKANANDA IN LONDON – 1896 PAGE-22Page: 22 of 336
like a thunder-bolt. Awake, awake, great souls! The world is burning in misery. Can you sleep?"
I remember how new to myself at that time was this Indian idea that it was character that made a truth tell, the love expressed that made aid successful, the degree of concentration behind a saying that gave it force and constituted its power. Thus the text 'Consider the lilies, how they grow,' holds us, said the Swami, not by the spell of its beauty, but by the depth of renunciation that speaks in it.
Was this true? I felt that the question might be tested by experience, and after some time I came to the conclusion that it was. A quiet word, from a mind that put thought behind language, carried immediate weight, when the same utterance from the careless, would pass by unheeded. I do not know a stronger instance of this fact than a certain saying that is recorded of the Caliph Ali. Many have heard, and none surely without emotion, the words of the Lion of Islam, “Thy place in life is seeking after thee. Therefore be thou at rest from seeking after it!” But never, until we relate them to the speaker, four times passed over in the succession to the Caliphate, never until we know how the man's whole life throbs through them, are we able to explain the extraordinary power of these simple sentences.
I found also that an utterance consciously directed to the mind, instead of merely to the hearing, of the listener, evoked more response than the opposite.