The Master As I Saw Him: The Master As I Saw Him: An Intimate Account of a Spiritual Guru

Sister Nivedita, born Margaret Elizabeth Noble, was a Scots-Irish social worker, author, teacher and disciple of Swami Vivekananda. She met Vivekananda in 1895 in London when she was thirty years old, and this courageous daughter of the West, sailed thousands of miles across to Calcutta, India, (present-day Kolkata) in 1898. She took to monasticism. Swami Vivekananda gave her the name Nivedita (meaning “Dedicated to God”) when he initiated her into the vow of Brahmacharya on March 25, 1898. She was closelyassociated with the newly established Ramakrishna Mission. However because of her active contribution in the field of Indian Nationalism, she had to publicly dissociate herself from the activities of the Mission on the insistence of the then president Swami Brahmananda. She was very close toSarada Devi, the spiritual consort of Sri Ramakrishna and one of the major influences behind Ramakrishna Mission; and also with all brother disciples of Swami Vivekananda. She came to assist Swami Vivekananda in his work of setting up an educational institution for women in India. Nivedita died at dawn on October 13, 1911, when she was just forty-three, in Roy Villa Darjeeling. Her epitaph aptly reads: ‘Here reposes Sister Nivedita who gave her all to India’.