Swami Vivekananda set foot for the first time in the Bay Area of Northern California on 22nd Feb 1900, alighting from a Southern Pacific train at Oakland mole.
Alice Hansborough, who, as planned in advance, had come a week earlier, and was there at the train station to meet him. They together boarded a ferryboard for the twenty-minute trip across the Bay to San Francisco, and then to their place of residence on the Pine Street. This was another ‘Home of Truth’ institution, managed by Mr and Mrs Aspinall. The Swami stayed there only for about ten days or so. This building is no more there but on its site now stands the St Francis Memorial Hospital. Swamiji spent the next three months in Northern California, and a major portion of this time in San Francisco.
However, due to the major earthquake and subsequent fire that struck the city in 1906, most buildings where Swamiji stayed or lectured are no longer there. San Francisco is almost a city rebuilt after this great disaster.
Upon reaching San Francisco, Swamiji gave his first lecture the very next day – on February 23 – at the Golden Gate Hall. It was organized by Alice herself. She had discussed with Swamiji before coming to the Bay Area that they would organize the work independently, and for this reason, she had fixed this lecture notwithstanding the offer from Reverend Mills of hosting and managing the Swami’s entire tour in the Bay Area. The Golden Gate Hall was a beautiful brick building built and located on the south side of Sutter Street. About this lecture Alice recalled, “I remember that Swamiji was seated down in the front row in the audience before the lecture began, and when I went to sit by him, he made a sign to ask how many I thought there were. When I estimated one hundred and fifty, he wrote in the palm of one hand with his finger 100 as his estimate. He did not say anything, but he seemed disappointed.”
The title of this lecture was “The Ideal of a Universal Religion” and even though the attendance was not as per the Swamiji’s expectations it heralded his tremendously prolific period of preaching his message in this part of the Golden State. The Swami would go on to give not less than 60 lectures and classes in the three months to follow. Who could have thought that he was visiting America for the second time primarily with the purpose of repairing his health.
The Swami’s work in Oakland, where he never stayed but travelled from the other side of the Bay, started with his lecture on February 25th at the Unitarian Lecture, and continued till April 2nd. In all, he delivered eight lectures at the Unitarian Church, two as a part of the Congress of Religions at the Church, and remaining six as a part of two series of three lectures each. Reverend Dr. Mills, the Minister of the Church, had heard Swami Vivekananda at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago. He himself admitted that the experience had a significant impact on him. “This man altered my life,” he was to say to Alice. He had become markedly liberal in his religious attitudes, often to the consternation of his peers.
The background of the invitation by Dr. Mills is interesting. The Reverend had organised a Congress of Religions in Oakland which was chiefly a local affair. He had invited a Buddhist representative but due to some reason the speaker dropped out not long before the event. The Reverend came to know that Swami Vivekananda was in California at that time, and hence wrote to him, extending the invitation to the Congress.
Swamiji’s first lecture at the Unitarian Church in Oakland was on Sunday evening, 25th February and titled ‘Claims of Vedantism’. It was well advertised in the Oakland papers and thus, when he stepped in at the venue he had a crowd of more than two thousand people patiently waiting for him. The main auditorium and the adjoining hall – the Wendte Hall, were both opened to accommodate the crowd. This was the case in most of his lectures at the Unitarian Church. Even the press reported for one particular lecture that ‘people went to the church before 6 o’ clock and waited over an hour for the door to open. It was estimated that at least 500 were turned away for want to standing room.’
A lecture which caused a lot of stir in the local press of Oakland was the one Swamiji delivered on March 7th, titled ‘Laws of Life and Death.’ The Oakland ‘Enquirer’ came up with a caption ‘KEEP OUT OF HEAVEN’, stating that ‘How to get rid of this birth and death – not how to go to heaven, but how one can stop going to heaven – this is the object of the search of the Hindoo.’
One young man of 24, who used to sing in the choir of the Unitarian Church at Oakland gave out his reminiscences of Swamiji no less than sixty years later, at the age of 84. “He was so outstanding,” the gentleman recalled, “in the portrayal of his religion that none of the speakers could compare with him. They would have made a very poor showing if they had been called upon to speak after the Swami. The Swami presented a philosophy that was so simple and was presented from such a beautiful viewpoint that people were eager to hear more. He had a remarkable command of English and his lectures were full of colourful metaphors. I was present after some of the lectures when others spoke to him. He was very approachable. He would be surrounded by many people who wanted to speak to him, so we younger people did not get very close to him. I talked to many of the people who had attended his lectures. All were deeply impressed by the simplicity of his philosophy and by the richness and beauty of his English.”
The Unitarian Church in Oakland, is one of the few buildings extant in the Bay Area, where Swamiji not just visited but undertook extensive labours in the final leg of his mission as a World Teacher. The place is therefore very special and a must-visit for all inspired and fascinated by this extraordinary man. Due to the efforts of one Reverend Arnold Crompton, a permanent inscription on a bronze plaque has been installed.
At the end of the lecture ‘Way to Salvation’, delivered on March 12th, at the Unitarian Church, the Swami told his audiences to come the following night to a lecture at the Washington Hall in San Francisco when he would speak on ‘The Mind: Its Powers and Possibilities’. “Come to hear me,” he said. “I shall have something to say to you. I shall do a little bomb-throwing. He then glanced smilingly over the audience and then with a wave of his hand added, “Come on! It will do you good.”
The Washington Hall in San Francisco was full the next day, March 13th, and surely a large crowd had crossed the Bay from Oakland in great anticipation of ‘bomb-throwing’. In the audience were two sisters, Sarah and Rebecca Fox, who later recounted :
“In the first half of it he flayed his listeners for their licentiousness, and in the second half he poured out his affection upon them. As a practice to develop purity, he expounded the theory of looking upon every woman as one’s mother. He said, ‘Oh, yes, this is a theory. I stand up here to tell you about this beautiful theory; but when I think of my own mother I know that to me she is different to any other woman. There is a difference. We cannot deny it. But we see this difference because we think of ourselves as bodies. This theory is to be fully realized in meditation. These truths are first to be heard, then to be meditated upon.
“He stressed the idea of chastity as a means of strengthening the mind, and purity for the house-holder as well as for the monk. He told of a Hindu boy who had been in America for some time and was suffering from ill health. The boy had told Swamiji that the Indian theory of chastity must be wrong because the doctors here had advised him against it. Swamiji said, ‘I told him to go back to India and listen to the teachings of his ancestors who had practiced chastity for thousands of years. Your doctors in this country who hold that chastity is against the laws of nature , don’t know what you are taking about. You don’t know the meaning of the word purity. You are beasts! Beasts! I say, with the morals of a tomcat, if that is the best you have to say on the subject!’ Here he glanced defiantly over the audience, challenging the opposition by his very glance. No voice was raised, though there were several physicians present.”
Of his early lectures in the Bay Area we also have the reminiscences of a lady by name of Christina Albers, who, after three decades of hearing Swamiji, placed on record her reflections. She described her first glimpse of the Swami as follows:
“The Swami arrived some twenty minutes before the lecture and was engaged in conversation with some friends. I sat at a short distance from him and was very deeply interested, for I felt he was one who had something to give to me. The conversation was of the ordinary nature, and yet I felt a peculiar force emanating from him. His health was poor at the time, and when he rose to go to the platform, it seemed an effort on his part. He walked with a heavy gait. I noticed that his eyelids were swollen, and he looked like one who suffers pain. He stood for a while in silence before he spoke, and I saw a change. His countenance brightened, and I thought his very features were different now. He began to speak, and there was a transformation. The soul-force of the great man became visible. I felt the tremendous force of his speech — words that were felt more than they were heard. I was drawn into a sea of being, of feelings of a higher existence, from which it seemed almost like pain to emerge when the lecture was finished. And then those eyes, how wonderful! They were like shooting stars —lights shooting forth from them in constant flashes. Over thirty years have elapsed since the day, but the memory of it is ever green in my heart and will remain so. His years on earth were not many.”
Miss Albers concluded her memoir by saying that “one single man changed the current of thought of half the globe.”
▶Next Chapter: At Turk Street, San Francisco