Her name was Miss Josephile Macleod. Everybody fondly called her “Joe”. She was born and brought up in the lap of luxury and opulence. Her kith and kin were liberal and forward looking. Therefore, she led an independent life, choosing to “love and serve” others. She was a maverick connected to many well known personalities across the globe. But, a magic transformation occurred in her as soon as she came in contact with Swami Vivekananda. She first saw him in New York in 1895, while he was giving a parlour talk.
His words penetrated into her heart with immediate effect. She said, “whatever he uttered was to me truth”. She felt she was “in eternity” and that realisation “never altered”. Speaking about her maiden experience of listening to Swamiji, she later described a vision she had: “Subject of the talk was the Gita … When Swamiji started speaking … I lifted my eyes and saw with these very eyes Krishna himself standing there and I stared and stared … I saw only the figure, and all else vanished.”
The experience stirred her, leaving an indelible mark on her mind. “From that moment life had a different import”, she wrote in her reminiscences. She believed she had a rebirth on that day. So, she counted her age from then for the rest of her life. She thought she “found her own soul” that day. Describing Swamiji’s impact on her she said: “It seems as if all my life dated from that event. As if I’d fulfilled the mission I was born for ~ recognition of the new Buddha.”
She listened to Swamiji’s talks and lectures for a few years tirelessly with enormous enthusiasm. In her view, “It was because Swamiji was new and fresh every day that he held one!” Swamiji saw she was deeply spiritual and highly susceptible to Vedantic teachings. He, accordingly, taught her in their light: “Always remember, you are incidentally an American and a woman, but al ways a child of God.” Discerning her intrinsic character, he proclai med, “She is pure as purity, loving as love itself”. As a follower hers was an absolute loyalty to Swamiji, and his an unbreachable trust in her. He said: “She’s my good luck … When she is with me, everything goes well … I can do nothing without her”.
Swamiji relied on Joe for her “tact and quiet way”. He thought she could “wield a kingdom”. On the other hand, Joe saw Swamiji as a limitless personality. She said: “The thing that held me in Swamiji was his unlimitedness. I never could touch the bottom ~ or top ~ or sides. The amazing size of him! Oh, such natures make one so free”. She was in awe, observing him once during a lecture on “Jesus of Nazareth”, “when he seemed to radiate a white light from head to foot”. She said: “I was so impressed with this obvious halo that I did not speak to him on the way back for fear of interrupting … Suddenly he said to me, ‘I know how it is done’.
“I said how what is done?’ ‘How they make mulligatawny soup (he ate it before coming to the lecture). They put a bay leaf in it’, he told me. That utter lack of self-consciousness, of self-importance was perhaps one of his outstanding characteristics”. She was fit to become his disciple. But, she would say “They were disciples, whereas I was never anything but a friend”. Maybe, she used to say this to mean her closeness with Swamiji.
It, nevertheless, created confusion whether or not she was formally initiated by Swamiji. Contrarily, in her research work on Swamiji in the West, Marie Louise Burke wrote: “She, too, became, it can be said, his disciple, for while often emphasised in later years that she was his friend, not disciple, in her own reminiscences she speaks of some early spiritual instruction she received from him and of an experience she had as a result of following it; one also knows that he gave her a mantra”.
In any case, be cause of her exceptional maturity, Swamiji let her be friendly, with the prospect of her being substantially useful. She asked Swamiji, “Swami, how can I best help you?” Swamiji answered “Love India”. She saw the greatness of India in Swamiji and her love for him as her pathfinder was total. She therefore didn’t have the least difficulty in loving India dearly, although she had never visited the country until then. She loved India working for Swamiji which was, she knew, for the cause of India. Joe visited India regularly, even after Swamiji’s demise, with the resolution of doing it “until the end”. She said: “I haven’t renunciation, but I’ve freedom. Freedom to see and help India to grow ~ that’s my job and how I love it”.
She thought Swamiji give her freedom spiritually. She spoke about its conviction thus: “It is the Truth I saw in Swamiji that has set me free. … It was to set me free that Swamiji came, that was as much part of his mission …” Joe was a frontline worker of Swamiji abroad. Not she alone, her sister Betty as well as Betty’s spo use Francis were also there to as sist Swamiji to start a centre in New York, which was the first of its kind in the West. Besides, Joe worked hard to get Swamiji’s lectures published in the form of books. She took care of myriad other things for making Swamiji’s mission fruitful. Swamiji returned to India in 1897.
Joe was also eager to come and wrote to him, “Shall I come to India?” His reply was: “Yes, come, if you want filth and degradation and po verty and many loin cloths talking religion. Don’t come if you want anything else. We cannot bear one more criticism”. Swamiji co – uld af ford to be curt with her. She was aware that he wanted her to know the existing reality in India in distinct terms.
She appreciated such answers with no mincing words from him on crucial questions related to her life and work for him. She came to India in 1898, saw Sarada Devi, travelled with Swamiji to many places and learnt a lot. Meanwhile, the land for Belur Math was purchased and a monestary was established on it, in which Swamiji stated living. Soon, Betty and Francis arrived. They bought a house adjoining the Math and stayed in it with Joe, in order to be near Swamiji. Joe had many urgent discussions with Swamiji during this time on the work. When she came for the second time, one day he quite unexpectedly spoke to her about his approaching death.
She wrote: “I was standing in Swamiji’s bedroom … and he said to me, ‘I shall never see forty’. I, knowing he was thirty-nine, said to him, ‘But Swamiji, Buddha did not do his great work until between forty and eighty’. But he said ‘I delivered my message and I must go’. I asked, ‘Why go?’ and he said ‘The shadow of a big tree will not let the smaller trees grow up. I must go, I must go to make room’.” In another conversation he told her, “I haven’t a penny to myself. I have given away everything that has ever been given to me”.
She said: “I will give you fifty dollars a month as long as you live”. He said after a little thought: “Can I live on that?” She replied” “Yes”. She knew she was the only person to whom he could say it frankly, for she would not misunderstand him. She would be able to see that he didn’t want to be a burden on the organisation for his livelihood. She gave him two hundred dollars then and there to meet his expenses for four months, “but before the four months were passed he had gone”. Returning, she wrote a letter in April 1902, in which she said, “I swim or sink with you”.
The ans wer to it never came. Instead, she received a cable, “Swami attained nirvana”, dated 4 July 1902. The news drowned her in a sea of sorrow. Swamiji’s loss weighed on her heart unbearably. She wrote afterward: “For days I was stunned. I never answered it (the cable). And then the desolation that seemed to fill my life made me weep for years and it was only after I read Meterlink who said, ‘If you have been greatly influenced by anyone, prove it by your life, and not by your tears’, I never wept again…” For a long time Joe didn’t come to India after Swamiji’s passing.
But when she came she was full of joy, witnessing that “instead of India being a place of desolation all India was alive with Swamiji’s ideas”. She said, “Since that time I am going frequently”. Then onwards, she was a guardian angel to the monks of the Ramakrishna Mission. For crises she was there to save and protect the work done by them. Otherwise, she, like an ambassador, indefatigably travelled all over the world to spread Swamiji’s universal message, as a result of which, many world thinkers became seriously interested about Swamiji. Swamiji’s influence on Joe was cathartic.
He was the warp and woof in everything of her life. She learnt from him how to love India and be free. In her advanced age she recapitulated her unqualified faith in Swamiji and India saying: “I feel that Swamiji is a Rock for us to stand upon. That was his function in my life, not worship, nor glory, but a steadiness under one’s feet! At last I’m free. It’s so curious to feel free, not needed any more in the West, but all my characteristics ~ in India”.
(The writer is associated with Ramakrishna Mission Ashrama, Narendrapur)