SWAMIJI – the influence of the Calvinist Scottish Church during his BA degree,

DEUSSEN-NIETZSCHE correspondence. ‘Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, all owe much to ancient Indian thought.’ Armoury de Riencourt – historian, in his book, ‘The Soul of India’. Honeyglen Publishing, UK. 1986.

BACKGROUND –

The influence of the Scottish Church College, for Swamiji’s 3 years to earn a BA degree, is largely not recognised even by Swamiji himself. Swamiji said he would like to throw his degree in the Ganges! But he was indelibly marked. Here, even he was deluded!! 

All his teachers at this college were Scottish Protestant/Calvinist missionaries. Just consider the background of his rector, William Hastie, 1842-1903. William Hastie, Swamiji’s English and Divinity teacher, was the first to translate Kant into English. Swamiji talks of being a rationalist and one should reason things through. Several of his lectures carry the title, ‘The Science of … ‘. Hastie had a lecture, ‘The Science of Christianity’.

[Although the Scots use the word Presbytarian, the founder of their beliefs was John Knox, 1514-1572, a misogynist and an aggressive Calvinist, having studied under John Calvin, 1509-1564, in Geneva].

With Hastie’s recommendation, Swamiji had read bits of and mentions: Kant (1724-1804), Mill (1806-1873), Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), Schopenhauer (1788-1860), Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), Thomas Paine (1737-1809), then Aristotle, Socrates and Plato. These modern ‘Free-thinkers’ had made break-throughs and influenced Western thought, attitudes, and behaviour. The Greek ‘Free-thinkers’ gave Swamiji his feeling for Western logic. He loved and carried when an itinerant, ‘The Imitation of Christ’ by Thomas á Kempis and he translated it into Bengali. Hastie will have mentioned this book.

Hastie, fluent in German at 17, self-taught. A miner’s son.

William Hastie was a genius and Swamiji carried much from him (not least his exceptional English usage). Hastie was a stand-in teacher of the younger classes as a 12 yr old – his teachers realising how gifted he was. At 14 he received a salary as a regular teacher of lower classes. This salary paid for his higher education – a foreman’s pay at the local mine was not enough. He was fluent in German at 17, self-taught. His mother loved him to read Rückert poems to her in English from the German, in the evenings when she was mending clothes (there were 6 children). He earns a BA degree at Edinburgh university before going on to do his Divinity degree – he wanted to become a protestant minister and university lecturer. He was an examiner later for the Divinity degree (setting the exams and marking). He also attended the law degree course for 4 years but decided not to sit the exams. He was to later act as his own lawyer in a case in the Edinburgh courts where he sued the Scottish Church, which he won.

Fluent in Dutch to discuss Calvinist theology with the Dutch professors.

He became fluent in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, French and Dutch. He lives in Holland, boarding for one winter with a family to achieve Dutch fluency. This is to debate with Calvinist Dutch Philosophy Professors. The watered-down Lutheran professors were not quite the same (nor were Anglican). But he studied on some 5 occasions for odd terms at those German universities which had the famous philosophy departments. Here he could discuss deeper questions with the professors of philosophy, they were the students of Schopenhauer, Hegel, and other ‘greats’. Once asked by a fellow student, who had attended philosophy courses at the same universities, how ‘poor’ a certain professor was, he replied, ‘But the beer there, in the ‘Keller’, was excellent’!

Such is from supreme holiness.

Hastie was so broad minded that, with his totally rational approach to religion, he could still visit the charismatic idolater Ramakrishna at the Dakshineswar temple outside Kolkata (when he was rector at the college). Ramakrishna’s asceticism and frequent ecstasies in holy rapture will have struck Hastie. From this visit, he brought back to an English class the advice: ‘This trance cannot be seen often today, but if you go to Ramakrishna at the temple, you will see it. Such is from supreme holiness’. Hastie had felt Ramakrishna’s spiritual power. The class was on Wordsworth’s usage of the word ‘trance’ in his poem, ‘The Ruined Cottage’. This persuaded Swamiji to visit Ramakrishna at his temple.

The three years at the Scottish College opened up the West’s windows to Swamiji, this then expanded till his grasp of Westen culture and literature became vast – in his last years he memorised the entire Encyclopedia Britannica’s 12 volumes! 

And he was open to the West’s material/social advances with a deep interest, (electricity, medical advances, visited apprenticeship schools, prisons, etc) but was highly critical of the need for material gain (false values) – arguing that this gain increased the means which just increased the want.

However, Swamiji was a contradiction! In the West he preached a rational approach where you might keep parts of your culture/religion but you changed key values, changed attitude, dropping any ritual. Whereas, when in the East (at the Belur Monastery) he was a different person.

‘But, Swamiji,’ someone said in distress, ‘you said just the opposite yesterday.’ ‘Yes, that was yesterday.’ He would reply, if at all. Neither did he try to reconcile the two points of view or make any explanation. Christine Greenstidel.

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Deussen-Nietzsche correspondence

Kiel’s Sanskrit Professor Paul Deussen (1845-1919) and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) were close friends from high school (gymnasium: 16-19 yrs) and the University of Bonn (1 yr). Then Duessen goes to Berlin University and Nietzsche follows his favourite professor to Leipzig University. Nietzsche had read Sanskrit since his student days (did a thesis using a Sanskrit teaching). A genius, he was a full professor of Classical Philology in Basel at 24. Deussen and Nietzsche walked from Nietzsche’s home in Lutzen, near Leipzig, to Deussen’s near Bonn, 400km over several days. This producing a Nietzsche piece on the freedom of being in the countryside.  They may have corresponded about Deussen’s first book on Indian philosophy which had come out, ‘The System of Vedanta’ – 1883. The second was, ‘The Sutras of Vedanta’ – 1887. 

Nietzsche: ‘Only you are able to build the bridge over which you alone must cross the stream of life.’ – Pure Vedanta.

The Nietzsche-Deussen correspondence faltered after some time, long before before Swamiji arrived in Europe. Nietzsche had suffered a mental collapse and a stroke while in Turin (1889). He never recovered. Swamiji travels to Kiel to meet Deussen in 1895.

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Deussen-Swamiji discussions

In 1895, Swamiji and Prof Deussen had four weeks together which will have vastly improved Deussen’s understanding of Vedanta and the Forest Books. When Swamiji visited Paul Deussen at Kiel University he was in Kiel for just 3 days, but Prof Deussen, in order to keep up the discussions, decided to travel with Swamiji all the way back to London, including Swamiji’s days as a tourist in Bremen, Berlin and Amsterdam. Swamiji was touring with the Seviers. Deussen will have contributed to the tour party as a guide and German interpreter. He was fluent in English, enjoying with his wife, holidays in the UK. 

Prof Deussen had found a walking Vedanta gold mine! So he followed Swamiji around for those 4 weeks. 9-Sept to 12-Oct. This will have contributed to his later books on Vedanta. All this when Deussen’s autumn term had started at the university. The students started term without any professor at all, but had a far greater professor on his return. 

In 1911, Prof Deussen founded the Schopenhauer (1748-1860) Society in Berlin (now in Frankfurt). Nietzsche was now dead but certainly would have been mentioned. In 1904 Prof Deussen, with his wife and daughter, visited India, for a tour.

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Another Sanskrit professor enters the Swamiji plot! 

Prof Max Müller (1823-1900) Oxford, prof of Comparative Eastern Philology. Swamiji visits him the next spring, 28 May 1896 (he’s 73). They had had much previous correspondence so it was a deep meeting, as beautifully described by Swamiji – a lot about Ramakrishna. In 1898, Prof Müller was to publish the first book in English about Ramakrishna, largely on information provided by Swamiji. 

At the end of the visit, as the professor made to join Swamiji for the walk to the train station, Swamiji said he knew the way, it wasn’t necessary. ‘Oh yes it is! It is not every day one meets a disciple of Ramakrishna!’ Certainly Prof Müller will have felt Swamiji’s fragrant energies flowing!

Further – Prof Müller had correspondence with William Hastie, Professor of Divinity at Glasgow University. Prof Hastie, having lived in Kolkata, 1879-1884,  as the college rector teaching Swamiji, could have discussed much with Prof Müller. Prof Hastie had visited Ramakrishna at his temple (outside Kolkata) and Prof Müller would have appreciated any description of the emotions one experienced when in Ramakrishna’s company (the flow of those fragrant energies!). 

Professors on meeting Swamiji feel his fragrant energies – one follows him around for 4 more weeks and one follows him to the train station.

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