The Master as I Saw Him, is a book famous for its chronicling of intensespiritual experiences from the life of Swami Vivekananda, as noted by his disciple—Sister Nivedita.
The book is written in an easy to read fashion, such that any chapter can be opened and read without losing any continuity. Nevertheless, it has still been assigned an intermediate rating, mainly because the text pre-supposes a familiarity with Swami Vivekananda, India, her religious traditions and historical customs, which new readers having no prior basis may find difficult to understand.
It is important to remember that this book was written over a 100 years ago, and so it presents a view of India of the past - a country tremendously weakened by its deeply entrenched social and religious prejudices such as the caste system, eating of food cooked at the hands of Brahmins only, child-marriage and the low status accorded to women, especially widows.

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Contents

Authors’s Note — 5

1. Swami Vivekananda in London, 1895 — 11

2. Swami Vivekananda in London, 1896 — 19

3. The Conflict of Ideals — 30

4. Swami Vivekananda and the Order of Ramakrishna — 41

5. Wanderings in Northern India — 58

6. The Awakener of Souls — 65

7. Flashes from the Beacon-fire — 70

8. Amarnath — 76

9. Kshir Bhowani — 80

10. Calcutta and the Holy Women — 87

11. The Swami and Motherworship — 100

12. Half-way Across the World — 107

13. Glimpses of the Saints — 114

14. Past and Future in India — 119

15. On Hinduism — 124

16. Glimpses in the West — 132

17. The Swami’s Mission Considered as a Whole — 138

18. Swami Vivekananda and his Attitude to Buddha — 151

19. The Swami’s Estimate of Historic Christianity — 163

20. Woman and the People — 168

21. His Method of Training a Western Worker — 180

22. Monasticism and Marriage — 191

23. Our Master’s Relation to Psychic Phenomena So- — called — 202

24. The Swami’s Teaching About Death — 210

25. Super-consciousness — 222

26. The Passing of the Swami — 232

27. The End — 238

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’.