How Thoreau's Walden Pond Mixed with the Ganges and Yoga Came to America with Swami Vivekananda

Reflections on Water
We have come far from that early winter morning when Thoreau saw men
cutting the ice of Walden Pond into blocks to be shipped to India.
Those waters returned with Swami Vivekananda when he arrived at the
World Parliament of Religions in 1893, bringing the Sanatana Dharma from
India to America. When he addressed the delegates of forty-five religions and
seven thousand people, beginning with the words, “Sisters and brothers of
America,” it marked a turning point in history. As he later said in his talk at the
Parliament:
“The star arose in the East; it traveled steadily towards the West,
sometimes dimmed and sometimes effulgent, till it made a circuit of
the world, and now it is again rising on the very horizon of the East,
the borders of the Sanpo, a thousand fold more effulgent than it ever
was before.”
– Swami Vivekananda, Parliament of Religions, September 1893
With his arrival, the first Vedantic God-Realizer appeared in America.
Coming from the oldest civilization on earth, he brought with him a new way of
thinking about religion. God was not someone merely to believe in or doubt.
God was to be Realized and in Advaita Vedanta, Realization is not of a God
apart . . . there is neither one God, nor many Gods, there is only God.
The East India Company originally came to India for “quiet trade” with the
continent. Through decades of fabulous profits, they established their own army
and began to run the country as their private business after the Battle of Plassey
in 1757. One hundred years later in 1857, with the failure of the Company to
suppress a nationwide revolt, the British army was sent in. Queen Victoria
dissolved the East India Company, and the English turned from businessmen
into conquerors. India was transformed into the “Raj,” the largest and richest
colony of England. This ever intensifying influence of western-Christian
89