A few days after his arrival at Chicago he went to the Information Bureau of the Columbian Exposition. But his hopes received a rude shock when he came to learn from this office that the Parliament would not commence until after the first week of September, that no one would be admitted as a delegate without proper references, and that even the time for being so admitted had expired! This was a great and unexpected blow. He found that he had left India much too early, and also discovered that he should have come as a representative of some recognized organization. Then, too, his purse was gradually being emptied. A great depression came over him. He cabled to his friends in Madras for help and applied to an official religious Society to appoint him as one of its delegates, but the chief of the Society sent him a very discouraging reply.
Girding up his loins even in the face of these overwhelming odds of a discouraging situation, the Swami proceeded to Boston, which was much less expensive than Chicago. In the train from Vancouver he had made his first American friend. a rich lady from Massachusetts who struck by his noble personality and illuminating talks, gladly asked him to stay in her house. She introduced him to Professor J.H. Wright, of the Greek department in Harvard University. The Swami discussed all manner of subjects with the learned Professor for four hours. The Professor became so deeply impressed with his rare ability that he insisted that he should represent Hinduism in the Parliament, saying, “This is the only way you can be introduced to the nation at large.” The Swami explained his difficulties and said that he had no credentials. Professor Wright, recognizing his genius, said, ‘To ask you, Swami, for your credentials is like asking the sun to state its right to shine!”
The Professor wrote at once to his friend, Dr. Barrows, the Chairman of the Committee on the selection of delegates stating, .Here is a man who is more learned than all our learned professors put together.. He further presented him with a ticket to Chicago, and also gave him letters of introduction to the Committee. The Swami rejoiced at this literal manifestation of Divine Providence. But on his arrival at the Chicago train station he found to his dismay that he had lost the address of the Committee. He was lost and did not know where to go. Nobody would deign to inform a coloured man. At length, tired and helpless, he passed the chilly night in a big empty box found in the railway freightyard. In the morning he wandered from door to door for food only to meet with insults and rebuffs from the fashionable residents of the metropolis. On and on he went. At length exhausted, he sat down quietly on the roadside, determined to abide by the Will of God. At this juncture, the door of a fashionable residence opposite to him opened and a regal looking woman descended and accosted him in a soft voice in accents of culture and refinement, ‘Sir, are you a delegate to the Parliament of Religions?” The Swami told her his difficulties. The kind-hearted lady invited him into her house and promised him that after breakfast she herself would accompany him to the offices of the Parliament of Religions. The Swami was grateful beyond words to his deliverer, Mrs. George W. Hale. From now on the generous lady, her husband and children became his dearest friends.
With Mrs. Hale he called on the officers of the Parliament, gave his credentials, was gladly accepted as a delegate, and found himself lodged with the other Oriental delegates. He soon made acquaintance with many distinguished personages who were to attend the Parliament. In the grand circle of ecclesiastics that came and went in and about Chicago, he moved as one lost in rapture and in prayer to the Master whose mission he had come to fulfil in this distant part of the world. On Monday, September 11, 1893, the first session of the Parliament was opened in the great Hall of Columbus, where were seated representatives of the religious beliefs of twelve hundred millions of the human race. In the centre sat Cardinal Gibbons, the highest prelate of the Roman Catholic Church on the Western Continent. On the right and left of him were gathered the Oriental delegates - Pratap Chandra Majumdar of Bengal and Nagarkar of Bombay who were representatives of the Brahmo Samaj; Dharmapala who represented the Buddhists of Ceylon; Gandhi (a distant relation of Mahatma Gandhi) representing the Jains, and Mr. Chakravarty representing Theosophy with Mrs. Annie Besant. Among them was also seated Swami Vivekananda who, with his noble bearing, bright countenance and gorgeous apparel, drew the attention of the assembled thousands and soon became the cynosure of all eyes. It was the first time that he had to speak before such an august assembly; and as the delegates, presented one by one, had to announce themselves in public in brief speeches, the Swami let his turn go by hour after hour until the end of the day.
At length, in the late afternoon, when the Chairman insisted, the Swami rose and bowed down to Saraswati, the Goddess of Learning. His face glowed like fire. His eyes surveyed in a sweep the huge assembly before him. When he opened his lips, his speech was like a tongue of flame. Hardly had he pronounced the very simple opening words, “Sisters and Brothers of America.” when hundreds rose to their feet with deafening shouts of applause. The Parliament had gone mad - everyone cheering the Swami enthusiastically. For two minutes he attempted to speak, but the wave of wild enthusiasm created by this significant form of address prevented it. He was certainly the first to cast off the formalism of the Congress and speak to the audience in the language for which they were waiting. When silence was restored, the Swami greeted the youngest of the nations in the name of the most ancient order of monks in the world - the Vedic order of Sannyasins, and presented Hinduism as the mother of religions - a religion which had taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance. He quoted two beautiful, illustrative passages taken from the scriptures of Hinduism: “As the different streams having their sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea, so O Lord, the different paths which men take, through different tendencies, various though they may appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee.” “Whosoever comes to Me, through whatsoever form, I reach him; all men are struggling through paths which in the end lead to Me.”
It was only a short speech, but its spirit of universality, its fundamental earnestness and broadmindedness completely captivated the whole assembly. There were other Hindu delegates who stood for societies or churches or sects, but the Swami, who belonged to no sect but rather to India as a whole, proclaimed the universality of religious truths and the sameness of the Goal of all religious realizations. In the course of his illuminating addresses during the sessions of the Parliament, the Swami placed before the distinguished audience the cardinal truths of Vedanta, the universal religion of humanity.
He said: “If there is ever to be a universal religion, it must be one which will have no location in place or time; which will be infinite, like the God it will preach, and whose sun will shine upon the followers of Krishna and Christ, on saint and sinners alike; which will not be Brahminic or Buddhistic, Christian or Mohammedan, but the sum total of all these, and still have infinite space for development; which in its catholicity will find a place for every human being, from the lowest grovelling savage not far removed from the brute to the highest man towering by the virtues of his head and heart almost above humanity. It will be a religion which will have no place for persecution or intolerance in its polity, which will recognize divinity in every man and woman, and whose whole scope, whose whole force, will be centred in aiding humanity to realize its own true, divine nature. Offer such a religion and all the nations will follow you.? The Christian is not to become a Hindu or a Buddhist, nor a Hindu or a Buddhist to become a Christian. But each must assimilate the spirit of the others and yet preserve his individuality and grow according to his own law of growth.”
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