The World’s Parliament of Religions 1893

The World’s Parliament of Religions: An Illustrated and Popular Story of the World’s First Parliament of Religions, John Henry Barrows, editor. The Parliament Publishing Company, Chicago. First edition, 1893. Two good hardcover volumes totaling 1600 pages. Former college library book. A different owner stamped or signed for each respective volume, and volume II’s cover has a darker shade of blue. No dustjacket. Dozens of fascinating images. Significant wear on both volume covers. Tanned pages with no marks or stains. Weak binding in volume II.

The World’s Parliament of Religions includes the inaugural speech in the West of Swami Vivekananda, one of the foremost disciples of Sri Ramakrishna. “When [Swami] Vivekananda addressed the audience as ‘sisters and brothers of America,’ there arose a peal of applause that lasted for several minutes” (p 101). One account not recorded in the proceedings stated that he received a standing ovation for two minutes following his short talk. He also wrote a paper titled “Hinduism” (pp 968-78).

Vivekananda knew Paramahansa Yogananda had reincarnated at the time of the 1893 parliament. In Autobiography of a Yogi, Sri Yogananda includes the story of one of his disciples, Mr. E. E. Dickinson, who experienced “a dazzling multicolored light” on three occasions: when he almost drowned as a young boy and saw a vision of a man; as a teenager, passing Swami Vivekananda, the man in his vision, on a Chicago street in 1893; and receiving a Christmas present from his guru decades later that Vivekanda had prophesied. Yogacharya Dickinson’s remarkable story is in the chapter “I Return to the West.” What he forgot to tell his guru was that when he met Vivekananda, the first thing the swami said to him was “Young man, I want you to stay out of the water!”