Swami Vivekananda's Hand X-Ray

Swamiji’s palm impression appeared in the book Language of the Hand by Cheiro. Cheiro was a famous palmist in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. No doubt, one of Swamiji’s wealthy friends in New York took him to Cheiro to have his palm read. We have been trying to locate Language of the Hand, which is out of print, to check for details that Cheiro might have given about the line tracing of Swamiji’s palm. So far we have been unable to find the book. When Swamiji was young he and other boys would try to foretell the future by reading each other’s palms. “Naren was the chief palmist of them all. He told them that he would be a monk: there was no mistake about it. ‘See!’ he would say triumphantly, ‘there is the sure sign of a sannyasi.’ And he would point out certain lines on his hand which an old man had once told him were characteristic of the tendency to monkhood.” ❊ ❊ ❊ We must plunge heart and soul and body into the work. And until we be ready to sacrifice everything else to one Idea and to one alone, we never, never, will see the light. Those that want to help mankind must take their own pleasure and pain, name and fame, and all sorts of interests, and make a bundle of them and throw them into the sea, and then come to the Lord. This is what all Masters said and did. (CW [1978] 6:301-302)