Swami Vivekananda

Ida Ansell in her reminiscences recalled the first impression of Swamiji that she and her friends had when they met him in February 1900: We were startled and astonished at what we heard, amazed and enraptured at the swami’s appearance. He was surely a Mahatma or a divine being, more than human. No one had ever been so sublimely eloquent or so deliciously humorous, such an entrancing storyteller, or such a perfect mimic. 32 ❊ ❊ ❊ The whole universe is a tremendous case of unity in variety. There is only one mass of mind. Different states of that mind have different names. They are different little whirlpools in this ocean of mind. We are universal and individual at the same time. . . . In reality this unity is never broken. . . . We always know truth, only our reading of truth is mistaken at times. (CW [1984] 1:504-5)