Tom Allan, a Scotsman, was a marine engineer, and worked as draughtsman in the Risden Iron and Locomotive Works in San Francisco. His wife Edith Allan was very ill when Swamiji first came to Oakland in 1900. It was Tom who went to attend Swamiji’s lecture after reading about it in a newspaper advert. He returned extremely excited and shared with Edith, “I have met a man who is not a man; he is a god!” When asked by Edith of what had impressed him so much he shared these two ideas. One, that good and evil are the obverse and reverse of the same coin; and you cannot have one without the other. The second idea was that “a cow cannot tell a lie and a man can, but the cow will always be a cow while a man can become divine.”
Tom Allan immediately began to give his voluntary services as usher in Swamiji’s lectures. As soon as she was slightly healthier, Edith too went to hear him. In the first week of March, Swamiji gave a series of lectures on ‘Indian ideals’ in Redmen’s Hall, Union Square, San Francisco, and it was then that Edith had the privilege of meeting him.
She described her first experience of seeing Swamiji: “When he walked in, clad in his terra-cotta robe, his face looked golden to me. He had long blue-black hair, wavy, but not curly. And his eyes, his wonderful eyes! He talked for about two hours telling us of India’s ideals and taking us with him, as it were, to his own country so that we might understand him a little and be able to comprehend even in the least the great truths he taught.”
After the lecture got over Edith was standing near the entrance waiting for Tom to count the collection. It was then that Swamiji saw her and called her, and said, “Madam, if you would like to see me privately come to the flat. No collection there, everything is free.” He, then, asked her to come the following morning at 9 o’ clock.
Edith later narrated in her memoirs : “Much of the night was spent thinking of all the questions I should ask him, as many questions had been troubling me for months and no one to whom I had gone was able to help me. On arriving at the flat next morning, I was told that the Swami was going out, so could not see anyone. I said I knew he would see me because he had told me I might come, and so I was allowed to go up the stairs and into the front sitting-room. In a little while, the Swami came into the room, dressed in his long overcoat and little round hat, chanting softly. He sat on a chair on the opposite side of the room and continued chanting softly in his incomparable way. Presently he said, ‘Well Madame!’ I could not speak but began to weep and kept on weeping as though the flood-gates had been opened. The Swami continued chanting for a while, and then said, ‘Come tomorrow about the same time.’ Thus, ended my first interview with the Blessed Swami Vivekananda, and as I went from his presence, my problems were solved though he had not asked me anything.”
At the end of the last meeting of the class at the Turk Street Flat, Edith was departing quietly when Swamiji shouted. “Madam, you come back. Go into the dining room and sit down.” When he finished saying good-bye to the others, he went in and asked her to stay for dinner. Then he began to cook and made her peel potatoes and onions. While working, he was chanting verses from the Gita and once he stopped and recited in English the sixty-first verse of the eighteenth chapter : ‘The Lord lives in the heart of every creature. He turns them round and round upon the wheel of His Maya.’ And he remarked, “You see, Madam, he has us on the wheel. What can we do?”
Later, when Swamiji was staying for a time at the ‘Home of Truth’ at Alameda, Edith had some wonderful times helping him cook. While the service was going on in the living room they would be busy in the kitchen preparing the meal. There he was jolly and informal, but she was also given many incidental lessons. One Sunday he was happily preparing a dish in the ‘Home of Truth’ kitchen, some butter splattered from a frying pan onto Edith’s dress – a new green dress that she was wearing proudly for the first time. She was bemoaning the mishap and making a great tragedy of it, while Swami continued to chant and go about his work without taking the slightest notice of the incident.
Once Swamiji and Edith walked to an Alameda store for pickles. These were kept in a big tub of brine and were ladled for customers into dishes of paper-thin wood. On the way back some brine spilled into Swamiji’s hand. Promptly and with delight he licked his fingers. “Oh Swami!” Edith cried. She was taken aback at this action which appeared to her as undignified. “Madam,” Swamiji retorted, “you always want this little outside to be so nice. That’s the trouble with you here. It is not the outside that matters, it is inside.”
Edith remembered how Swamiji could, in one sentence, electrify the audience. “Once before beginning his lecture he looked out at the audience for a moment and then said : ‘Arise, awake, and stop not till the goal is reached!’ It was like an electric shock! Marvellous!”
She also recounted about a lecture Swamiji gave at the ‘Home of Truth’ located at the California Street, of which Mrs Lydia Bell was in charge. There was a considerably big crowd and people sat up to the top of the stairs. At the end of the lecture Swamiji came down into the hall to greet the people and seeing Mrs Allan sitting on the top stairs exclaimed, “Madam! What are you doing up there among the gods?”
Edith also described the physical appearance of Swamiji : “The beauty of Swamiji nobody can imagine. His face, his hands, his feet, all were beautiful. Swami Trigunatita later said that Swamiji’s hands were far more beautiful than any woman’s. His colour would seem to change, some days darker and some days lighter, but usually there was about it what can best be described as a golden glow.”
Edith also shared an experience she had while walking on the street with Swamiji after a lecture : “All at once he seemed to me so big, as though he towered over ordinary mortals. The people on the streets looked like pygmies, and he had such a majestic presence that people stepped aside to let him pass by.” It was not merely an imagination, it was a powerful experience that gripped her at that time.
Even when Edith like thousands of others was enamoured with the great power manifested by Vivekananda, she like others, did not find easy to know what went within him. The Swami had told Edith that he disliked lecturing from the platform. “It is killing. At eight o’ clock I am to speak on love. At eight o’ clock I do not feel like love.”
Pearls of spiritual insight dropped off Swamiji’s lips every now and then. Once after being quiet for some time Swamiji said to her, “Madam, be broad-minded, always see two ways. When I am on the Heights I say ‘I am He’, and when I have a stomach-ache, I say ‘Mother, have mercy on me.’ Always see two ways.” On another occasion he said, “Learn to be the witness. If there are two dogs fighting on the street and I go out there, I get mixed up in the fight but if I stay quietly in my room. I witness the fight from the window. So learn to be the witness.” And in yet another mood : “If I consider myself greater than the ant on the ground then I am ignorant.”
While listening to Swamiji, there would be occasions when Mrs Allan exclaimed her disagreement with what he said. “I don’t think that way,” she would say. To this Swamiji used to respond very sympathetically, “Don’t you madam? Well, that’s fine.” He always had a great respect for the other person’s view.
Edith also marked the unmistakable longing within Swamiji to be free of the body. “I have to come back once more,” he told Edith. “The Master said I am to come back once more with him.” Not being able to comprehend this Edith asked, “You have to come back because Sri Ramakrishna says so?” “Souls like that have great power, madam,” he replied.
Once Edith asked Swamiji about the splendid reception when he returned to India in 1897, which she had no doubt read about in newspapers. But he was always loath to speak of honour paid to himself. “Madam, I never felt such a fool.” He longed to feel free as a wandering Sadhu in India and said “I am ashamed to have a trunk, I am a Sannyasin.”
“He was so many-sided, wonderful beyond description. All things to all men; he was all the four Yogas. Sometimes the Vedanta lion, sometimes like a child; to me he was always the patient and loving parent. Nothing was too small for his notice and interest – such love cannot be comprehended; he was always listened. He told me not to call him Swami, but to call him ‘Babaji’, as the children did in India.”
“How little we understood Swamiji!” Edith said much later. “We had no knowledge of what he really was – the mouthpiece of the Lord himself!”
All her life Edith was aware of the great Grace which she was a recipient of. She saw Swamiji as an embodiment of love. “Most people emphasize his great power, the side of him that was so awe-inspiring,” she said. “But there was this other side to him – his great love. He was like the most tender and loving mother.” And she received a great personal assurance from Swamiji for all her future life. “Before he left California he told me that if I ever get into psychic difficulty again, or any kind of trouble, to call on him and he would hear him wherever he was. I have had the occasion to take advantage of his promise many times.” For all her life, Edith always had the feeling that Swamiji could hear her wherever he was.
Tom, Edith’s husband, also had a number of interesting experiences during his time with Swamiji. Once, just before ascending the platform to give a lecture on India in San Francisco, the Swami said to Tom, who was then acting as an usher, “When I get started on the subject of India, I never know when to stop. If I go on too long, attract my attention.” Tom recorded that “he began promptly at eight o clock and when it got to be ten o’ clock we decided that I should attract his attention by swinging my watch from its chain. Standing at the back of the hall I raised my hand and swung the watch.” Swamiji quickly noticed this and remarked from the platform, “I told them to stop me at ten o’clock. They are already swinging the watch and I haven’t got started yet.” And, recounts Tom, he went right on with lecture. Since then, as long as Tom lived, he always carried and use that same old watch which he had swung that day.
There is another supremely hilarious incident that Tom mentions which should certainly make to the best Vivekananda stories. Swamiji had a lecture at 3 PM on Sunday March 25th at the Union Square in downtown San Francisco. The audience had duly taken their seats on time but the Swami was nowhere to be seen. Tom who acted a head usher at all the lectures those days, walked from the hall to the corner of the Post Street and Powell Street and searched in vain for Swamiji. Still seeing no signs of Swamiji, he returned to the hall, deeply worried. He repeated this several times. It was after four-five such rounds to the junction that he saw Swamiji walking slowly up Powell Street in his own composed and majestic rhythm. The time then was 3:30. Tom could only manage to say, “Swami don’t you know you are late? The audience has been waiting.” “Mr Allan, I am never late’, was the reply he got. “I have all the time in the world.” Tom gave a mild remonstration, “Well Swami, the audience may not feel the same as you do.”
If Tom had hoped this would make the Swami alter his leisurely pace, he was for a bigger surprise. On the way, they passed a shoe-shine stand. The Swami saw that the shoe-shiner was idle, he decided to have his shoes shined. By this time Tom was silently fidgeting, thinking of the audience and their state of mind. One can imagine how he was feeling. At last, the Swami reached the venue and got on the platform. Tom introduced him to the audience, which had more or less patiently waited for him. After many years of this incident Tom wrote in his memoirs, “It was when I introduced him at that lecture that I felt like a pigmy and saw him as an immense giant. After this experience I could never bring myself to stand beside him again, but always thereafter made my introduction from the foot of the platform.”
Tom also shared another instance where the Swamiji’s distinctive quality of unhurriedness comes across, even when it was incomprehensible to others. Swamiji delivered eight lectures at the Unitarian Church in Oakland and very often after the evening lectures he would arrive late at night to his San Francisco dwellings. It was after one such evening lecture that Tom and Reverend Mills were walking with Swamiji to the train that would take him to the Oakland mole. They were already late for the train. Tom recounted that the Reverend said, ‘Swami, we must hurry to catch the train.’ Swamiji made no change in his pace. ‘Is there not another train?’ he asked.
Once Tom jovially remarked to Swamiji : “Swami, I see you are in Alameda,” possibly referring to the light mood Swami was in – something attributed to relaxed living in Alameda. To this Swamiji replied in a matter-of-fact tone, “No Mr Allan, I am not in Alameda. Alameda is in me.” Tom was stunned on hearing this. A simple statement, but enough to reveal the perpetual mood of the great man.
Like many others, Tom used to gasp in amazement when the Swami conversed on topics with great knowledge and command far removed from spirituality. Even in many of lectures he gave deep insights from world history and civilisations. Tom shared that the Swami “once told us that he had such faith in the Divine Mother that if he had to speak on a subject that he knew absolutely nothing about, he would get on his feet, for he knew that the Mother would put the words in his mouth.”
Tom had also served as an officer in the British Army. He had a marked military bearing. Swamiji once said to him, “Mr. Allan, we are both in the same caste. We are in the military caste.” Once Tom asked Swamiji where he found his best disciples. “In England’, the Swami replied. “They are harder to get, but when you get them, you’ve got them.”
Once Swamiji told Tom, “Should you see anyone with a long, sad face, you may know that he has not got religion, but he may have stomachache.”
There was no end to deep insights which Tom received from Swamiji with regard to human nature. Once the Swami said to him : “We must see that none can be blamed for what they are doing, because they are, at this time, doing the best they can. If a child has an open razor don’t try to take it from him, but give him a red apple or a brilliant toy, and he will drop the razor. But he who puts his hand in the fire will be burned; we learn only from experience.”
The Allans remained devoted and active members of the Vedanta Society for decades. In the Vedanta circles, Tom was known as Ajay and Edith as Viraja. Their home was visited often by Swamis of the Ramakrishna Order including many visiting Swamis from India. Since these later Swamis had never seen Swamiji, it was doubtless a very special experience for them to hear about him from the Allans. These Swamis said that at their home they felt the presence of Swamiji stronger than most places.
Tom passed away in 1951. Edith had become physically incapacitated during her last years. Her funeral service was conducted at the same parlour as Tom’s. Swami Ashokananda, the Head of the Vedanta Society of North California, was recuperating at the retreat at Lake Tahoe. He had instructed that if anything happened in his absence to Mrs. Allan, the Assistant Minister, Swami Shantaswarupananda, would conduct the service.
At the service, Edith’s favourite singer sang some songs she greatly liked. Some devotees later remarked of a tremendous atmosphere in the room at that time. The presiding Swami said that he too felt as if Swamiji had come to take Edith at the moment of her departure, thus keeping with the promise he had made to her.
▶Next Chapter: Intensely Touching Lives – Frank Rhodehamel and Some Other Blessed Ones