Book Recommendation: ‘The Master As I Saw Him’
- mainakmajumdar9
- 15 minutes ago
- 5 min read
( The Original Article Was Published in My Substack Page: https://majumdarbookreviews.substack.com/ )
There are moments in a life rare, divine moments, when something unseen brushes against the soul. It comes quietly, without warning, without reason. A whisper more than a word. A pull more than a thought. And it says, almost tenderly: “This is where your journey begins.”
For Margaret Elizabeth Noble, that whisper came on October, 1895 in London. The room was plain, the kind of room where no one expects miracles. A few chairs, strangers murmuring, the soft shuffle of coats and shoes. But there, amid the ordinary, the extraordinary unfolded. A monk from India — Swami Vivekananda — stood before them, his presence as still as the eye of a storm. His eyes carried the calm of oceans and the depth of something eternal. His voice deliberate, measured and yet vast, filled the room with a quiet certainty that seemed to silence, time itself.
He spoke not of religion, but of awakening. Of the divinity sleeping within each human heart. Of the light that lies buried beneath fear and forgetfulness.
And something inside Margaret stirred something ancient, like a memory she didn’t know she carried. It was as if she had waited all her life to hear those words. As if her heart, tired of searching through faith and intellect and good works, finally found its home.
That day, her world changed. The way dawn changes the night, silently, completely.
They say that when the student is ready, the teacher appears. For Margaret, he had appeared — not as a scholar or saint, but as a mirror. Through him, she saw what she truly was.
In Vivekananda’s eyes, she wasn’t just a curious listener. She was a soul on the edge of surrender.
And so, She left her homeland, her family, the life she had built. She crossed seas not out of adventure, but devotion. Calcutta, gave her a new name — Nivedita, “the Dedicated One.” She would live up to that name with every breath.
Her first days in India were wrapped in humility and wonder. She met Sri Sarada Devi, the Holy Mother, a meeting so gentle, so profound, that it seemed less an encounter and more a recognition. Nivedita would later say that to meet the Mother was to meet purity itself; unspoken, unpretending, eternal.
Then came her mission; a mission born not from duty, but from love: to serve the women of India. To teach them not only letters and numbers, but dignity, strength and the quiet power of belief.
She walked through Calcutta’s narrow lanes where suffering during those times had long made its home. Where hope had grown faint. And she whispered courage into the corners where despair had settled. Her school in Calcutta was small, built not with riches but with faith. She taught girls that learning was not just for the mind — it was nourishment for the soul.
Every child who passed through her hands carried a spark of her dream — that one day, India would rise again, guided by its awakened daughters.
If Swami Vivekananda was the sun — fierce, radiant, unyielding, Sister Nivedita was the moon. She did not blaze; she reflected. She took his light and carried it to the quiet corners where it was needed most.
And when the Master left this world, she did not crumble. She did not retreat. Her grief was deep, yes, but it became the foundation of her purpose. She wrote The Master As I Saw Him, not as a biography, but as respect to her divine teacher.
After reading the same, it felt like stepping into a temple at dusk, when the lamps flicker and the air hums with prayer. Her words do not worship him; they unveil him — the teacher who was human and divine, tender, distant yet intimately near. Through her writings, we see not only Vivekananda, but the possibility of such divinity within ourselves.
Her life — Margaret’s life, Nivedita’s life was a story of surrender. And surrender, she taught, is not weakness. It is strength, the strength to let go of everything known and trust what cannot yet be seen.
She did not know what awaited her in India, only that her soul had been called. And so she obeyed.
In that obedience, she found freedom. In that sacrifice, joy. In that service, eternity.
But her path was not easy. The world rarely spares those who love it too much. She faced illness, isolation, criticism. She worked through pain, through exhaustion, through the long hours of faith tested by fatigue. Yet she stood beside India, not as a foreigner, but as a daughter.
She reminded everyone she met and all of us still through her work, that the power to change the world begins not in revolutions, but in the awakening of the heart.
Near the end of her book, she wrote:
“May God grant that this living presence of our Master, of which death itself had not had power to rob us, become never, to us his disciples, as a thing to be remembered, but remain with us always in its actuality, even unto the end!”
Every time I read The Master As I Saw Him, I feel that promise flicker to life, that gentle reminder that the soul’s journey is not measured in distance, but in surrender. That meaning is not found in grand gestures, but in quiet acts of love and faith.
We live in an age that searches endlessly for purpose, for peace, for something to fill the silence. But the answer has never changed. It is found in the act of giving oneself to something greater than the self.
For Nivedita, that something was India.
And somewhere, beyond the dust and noise of our daily lives, I like to think Sister Nivedita still walks — quiet as moonlight, unbroken by death, whispering courage into those who still dare to love without condition.
“Here reposes Sister Nivedita, who gave her all to India.”
(An inscription on her memorial in Darjeeling, India)
Her spirit still walks not in monuments or marble, but in the unseen places where love for service labors quietly, asking nothing in return.
***
If I were to rate the book, ‘The Master As I Saw Him’ by Sister Nivedita, I would give it 9 out of 10 for its ability to evoke devotion and introspection in equal measure.
(Please note: These are my personal thoughts based on reading this book. Your views, facts and opinions after reading the book may differ. Feel free to comment if you believe any facts in this article should be reconsidered and re-examined. Thank you once again for pointing it out.)
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Thanks and regards,
Mainak Majumdar, Book Critic
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