A meaningful encounter with Swami Vivekananda in Chicago
By Anu Prabhala, Maryland.

With everything unfolding in our nation and across the world, I found myself longing—almost aching—for a message of unity. I have never encountered that idea expressed more beautifully or more boldly than in Swami Vivekananda’s address at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893.

What he offered was not a soft call for tolerance, but a radical reimagining of unity itself: unity across religions, yes—but also between science and philosophy, reason and faith, intellect and intuition. His words dissolved borders we insist on keeping rigid—between belief systems, nations, even between what we call perfection and imperfection—revealing them instead as expressions of a single, indivisible truth.

At the heart of his message was a simple yet demanding idea: happiness does not arise from narrowing identity, but from expanding it. As Vivekananda put it, “Happiness comes best from universal consciousness.” And to reach that expansiveness, he insisted, we must loosen our grip on the anxious, isolated self: “To gain universal individuality, this miserable little-person individuality must go.”

More than a century later, the address endures—not only for its philosophical clarity, but for its quiet poetry and moral courage.

Photo: Swami Vivekananda in Chicago, 1893 (handwritten words say, “one infinite pure and holy—beyond thought beyond qualities I bow down to thee”). Credit: The Art Institute of Chicago.

When Two Worlds Quietly Merged:
I felt the full weight of that courage standing in Fullerton Hall at the Art Institute of Chicago, where Swami Vivekananda delivered his world-altering address—just one floor below George Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, one of my favorite paintings of all time. In that moment, two long-standing currents of my life converged: my love of art, particularly French painting, and my grounding in Vedanta, a philosophy that feels like a pair of well-worn jeans: real, practical, comforting, and quietly accepting.

Art and philosophy, France and India, my adopted country and my birthplace—under one roof, they did not compete. They conversed.

That is what happens, I have learned, when we allow the world to shape us: the Self expands to make room for more of humanity, not less.

Humble Rooms, World-Altering Ideas:
The room itself was modest—neither grand nor theatrical. Its restraint felt fitting. History reminds us repeatedly that transformative ideas rarely announce themselves with spectacle. Mahatma Gandhi, a failed lawyer, reshaped a nation. Franz Kafka, an anxious bureaucrat, altered world literature. John Harrison, a self-taught carpenter, solved the longitude problem that changed navigation forever.

Photo: Fullerton Hall’s podium, where Swami Vivekananda delivered his address in 1893.

And Swami Vivekananda—a nearly penniless, 30-year-old monk from India—arrived in America after a long sea voyage to speak at what was then a radical gathering: a Western, Christian, male-dominated Parliament of Religions. His courage lay not just in showing up, but in declaring—without apology—that no single tradition owned the truth.

As he told the audience plainly, “If anyone here hopes that his unity will come by the triumph of any one of the religions and the destruction of the others, to him I say, ‘Brother, yours is an impossible hope.’”

Plurality as Sacred Truth:
For Swami Vivekananda, the universe’s beauty lay precisely in its plurality—in many paths converging toward one reality. He captured this vision with enduring grace:

“As the different streams, having their sources in different places, all mingle their waters in the sea… so the different paths which men take all lead to Thee.”

In a world increasingly fractured by certainty and fear, his tone feels almost maternal—firm, reassuring, deeply confident in the human spirit. From his very first words—“Brothers and sisters of America”—he transformed a formal assembly into a human family, drawing a standing ovation that lasted nearly two minutes.

Unity, for him, was not sentimental. It was a moral necessity.

He explained this idea through an image as simple as it was profound: a seed planted in the earth. Surrounded by soil, air, and water, the seed does not become any one of them. It grows according to its own law—assimilating what it needs while remaining true to its nature. So too, he argued, with religion, each tradition must grow in its own way, enriched by others, yet never erased by them. It was this insistence on growth and individuality rather than imitation that gave his words such enduring force.

A Childhood Trained in Coexistence:
His message resonated deeply with my own upbringing in Dadar Parsi Colony in Mumbai, where a Zoroastrian agiary, Hindu temples, and a mosque existed within a few hundred feet of one another. You prayed to your own gods, and then, as children, we came together to play. Coexistence required no explanation.

That innocence was shaken during the Hindu–Muslim riots of the 1990s, when curfews confined us indoors for weeks and fear fractured neighborhoods that had once lived generously with difference. It was my first encounter with how easily love for the divine can be manipulated into division.

That is why Vivekananda’s message feels so urgent today. He reminded the world that faith is not defined by labels, but by a deeply human plea for meaning, reassurance, and strength in moments of vulnerability. Faith, in that sense, speaks a universal language.

He said, “So long as there is such a thing as weakness in the human heart, so long as there is a cry going out of the heart of man in his very weakness, there shall be a faith in God.”

What he seemed to suggest was that true faith is not defined by religious labels at all, but by a deeply human plea—for meaning, for strength, for reassurance in moments of vulnerability. In that sense, faith speaks a universal language, capable of being heard by many names. 

Not Belief, but Becoming:
Vivekananda also offered a quiet corrective: religion, he argued, is not about struggling to believe doctrines, but about realizing truth—about being and becoming. What mattered was not the form of God one worshipped, but the character one cultivated. Did faith enlarge the heart? Did it make room for others? Did it foster harmony?

In his vision, religion was not about believing in God. It was about becoming more fully human—again and again, with tolerance and acceptance at the center of the effort.

Perhaps that is why his words endure. In a fractured world, Vivekananda reminds us that unity is not an idea to defend, but a way of being to practice—and that only through a serene soul can we truly see the beauty of the world, and our place within it.

Let us learn to see beauty in unity. It is the only way humanity sustains itself.

Meaningfully yours,
Anu Prabhala

PS: Swami Vivekananda delivered a series of six speeches between September 11 -27, 1893 at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago. Read a transcript of all six speeches here. Here’s an audio recording of his first speech (~28 minutes) delivered on September 11th, 1893.

Bio: Anu Prabhala is a senior consulting writer at the World Bank and a former French instructor who has spent her career working with nonprofit organizations in international development. Inspired by Vedanta, her personal writing explores travel and cross-cultural encounters as pathways to understanding beauty, wisdom, and our shared humanity.

This article, reprinted with permission from Anu’s Substack, Imperfectly Perfect, is part of a chapter from her forthcoming travel memoir, Imperfectly Perfect: Love Letters to the World | A Travel Memoir of Beauty, Scars, and the Human Spirit. To stay informed on the publication of the book, you can subscribe to Anu’s Substack at https://imperfectlyperfect.substack.com/subscribe (Subscription is free; choose “no pledge”). 

By Nasiruddin Hamid, Qadian, Punjab, India.

In the 19th century, on a pleasant afternoon in August, in the serene mountains of Kashmir, Abdul Kareem, 65, and his grandson, Abdul Rahim, were watching their goats and sheep graze on the lush green mountain grass. The air was fresh and crisp, filled with the scent of wildflowers and pine trees. A gentle breeze swept across the hills, rustling the leaves and bringing a cool relief from the warmth of the sun. They were both leaning on a large, smooth rock, resting beneath the shade of tall trees, with the distant hills providing a protective embrace. The sound of the breeze and the peaceful bleating of the goats and sheep made the scene feel timeless.

Abdul Rahim, who was around 15 years old, began the conversation in gentle voice.

“Baba (grandfather/ father), are we Muslims?”

“Yes, dear, why?” answered Abdul Kareem.

“Are we the best people in the world just because we are Muslims?” asked Abdul Rahim.

“I don’t know, son,” replied Abdul Kareem.

“Why don’t you know, Baba? Our master, Molana Sadiq, says we are superior to all human beings. We rule the world, and after this life, we will go to heaven because we are true followers of the Prophet. Others will go to hell because they don’t worship Allah as we do,” said Abdul Rahim.

“I don’t know about being superior, son,” said Abdul Kareem.

“Did Molana Sahib (sir) lie to us then?” asked Rahim.

“No, son. Actually, Molana Sahib doesn’t truly know Almighty God. That’s why he says those inappropriate things about God,” said Abdul Kareem.

“How so? Please tell me, Baba Jan (dear grandfather),” said Rahim.

“Son, Allah doesn’t work the way we say or believe. He is far superior to what we think. He made this world according to His plans and will, but humans have degraded Him according to their own greed and desires. Every Molana (Maulana, a Muslim religious leader), Padri (a Christian priest), or Pandit (a Hindu scholar) claims that their religion is the true one, and others will go to hell. But they use God’s name only to serve their own selfish interests. They have turned God into a figure to scare innocent people. The truth is, God is not as horrible as they make Him out to be. We don’t know God or His ways. It is His will that He made some people beautiful and others not, some rich and others poor, some healthy and others sick. We cannot have complete knowledge of Him. That’s why we create stories about Him based on our own desires. Allah (God, in Islam) is for everyone, whether we believe in Him or deny Him. He doesn’t care about religions; He cares about humanity. People who love and care for humanity are the true believers of God, and they will be rewarded in this world and the next, if there is one. So, my son, just be a good human and respect everyone if you really want to succeed in life,” said Abdul Kareem.

The cool breeze continued to swirl around them, carrying the smell of the mountains as the sun began to dip behind the hills, casting long shadows across the grass. After saying this, both sat in silence, contemplating the words of wisdom, until dusk settled in. Then, they gathered their sheep and goats, and made their way back home, the rhythmic bleating of the flock echoing through the quiet, peaceful valley.

By Nasiruddin Hamid, Qadian, Punjab, India.