If one does not take the standard of reason, there cannot be any true judgment, even in the case of religions. Our guardian against mistake is negative—the voice of reason. All religion is going beyond reason, but reason is the only guide to get there. Faith is the ultimate step. If nothing remains, thank God you have escaped a superstition!

Swami Vivekananda’s Appeal for America

If any people in the world might embrace reason and reject traditional hierarchies with God as king and man as subject, it would be Americans, Vivekananda thought. You are all kings in this country. So with the religion of Vedanta. But he understood the huge challenge ahead. Vedanta called upon Americans to form new attitudes and habits based on questioning sacred texts and instead seeking truth within; faith would be based on ideals and not personalities.

It does not teach the old idea of God at all. All these must go. Again, the senses must go. He is principle, not person. Does spirit live only in heaven? We are all spirit. Why is it we do not realize it? What makes you different from me? Body and nothing else.

Vivekananda never said, "Sisters and brothers of America"

Forget the body and all is spirit. They help a little, just a little. But the chief knowledge is that of your own nature. You must become conscious of the Infinite nature within. Then your bondages will burst. We falsely see the world as many not one, as matter not spirit. This is because of what Vedanta terms Maya, a beguiling apparitional ignorance that limits consciousness and projects a veil over the reality of Advaita Oneness or non-dualism. Until we come to this non-dualistic understanding of truth, Vivekananda said, the presence of good and evil and all other dualities in the world would always remain a difficult and perplexing issue.

Vivekananda knew as well as anyone just how difficult it is to go beyond the phantasm of Maya and achieve realization of Oneness. As a young man he had, at first, openly ridiculed the non-dualist teachings of Sri Ramakrishna. To his American audiences, he was blunt about the truth as he knew it. That is the tremendous illusion. It has to go. He proclaimed the hopeful message that a time would come for everyone when they would realize their Divinity for it is their very nature.

Vivekananda had tremendous faith in the power of the knowledge expounded in the Vedanta to transform humankind. Knowledge will remove all misery. Knowledge will make us free. But is it possible? I do not know. Not within thousands of years. The old superstitions must run out. His new synthesis was part of a thread woven into the future.

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Perhaps this is why Vivekananda, like his Master, never rejected any other religion and heartily encouraged new ones. Or is it still a continuous revelation going on? From the time he stepped foot on American soil, Vivekananda set out to reconcile Eastern thought and Western science. Most likely his first opportunity came immediately after the Parliament in Chicago when he was honored at a reception that included the top scientists of the day.

Trip To America

Vivekananda believed that science and Vedanta were parallel and complementary paths to discovering ultimate truth. In my opinion, this must be so, and I am also of opinion that the sooner it is done the better. Vivekananda understood that the science of his day was exploring only the external, physical world while Vedanta had already conquered the internal.

Nonetheless, neither one should conflict with the other.

Both, he explained, were based on the direct experience and authority of the individual and rational thought. He knew the truth of Vedanta; he believed Western science could prove the same truths.

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He wrote in a letter to his disciple E. I clearly see their perfect unison with modern science, and the elucidation of the one will be followed by that of the other. I intend to write a book later on in the form of questions and answers. In a way it is, because it makes morality a vital point, and science does not. He believed that when they did, they would discover that logic, reason, and intellectual knowledge were insufficient to reveal the truth.

Only then would they see the need for moral and spiritual discipline as a prerequisite in their research. To test his concept of the convergence of Vedanta and science, Vivekananda sought out the top scientists of the day, including Nikola Tesla, Professor Herman von Helmholz, Sir William Thompson Lord Kelvin , and others. Thanks to Einstein, the inaccurate separation between time and space would be erased, while mass and energy would be proved to be equivalent.

Modern physics has proved that nothing in this Universe is as it appears to be—that it is all a kind of illusion, just as Vivekananda predicted.


  • Swami Vivekananda and Hinduism in America.
  • Nothing Personal (A Suspense Novel)?
  • OPEN TO OPINION;
  • Ardor!

The objective Universe as perceived through the senses with data delivered to those senses amplified by sophisticated tools and machines defies all notions of common sense. A picture has only length and breadth, and the painter copies nature in her cheating by artificially giving the appearance of depth. No two people see the same world.

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA -- Wise Vedanta Teacher For All Time

The highest knowledge will show that there is no motion, no change in anything; that the very idea of it is all Maya. Mundane labor could thus be transformed into a tool of spiritual practice. Every birth is painful. We must get out of materialism … The struggle is all the worship there is. The rest is mere shadow. Parliament of the World's Religions. Retrieved 18 December Bhuyan 1 January Messiah of Resurgent India.

The Rise of India: Its Transformation from Poverty to Prosperity. Retrieved 27 December Archived from the original PDF on 4 November S Banhatti 1 January Diamond Pocket Books P Ltd. Retrieved 19 December Archived from the original on 28 September Retrieved 28 September Addresses at The Parliament of Religionse at Wikipedia's sister projects. Arise, awake, and stop not till the goal is reached Atmano mokshartham jagat hitaya cha Bahujana sukhaya bahujana hitaya cha. Shuddhananda Virajananda Swarupananda Paramananda. WikiProject Commons Wikiquote Wikisource texts.

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Vivekananda in Chicago in A World Congress was organised in to commemorate th birth anniversary of Vivekananda. Teachings and philosophy Teachings and philosophy Vivekananda and meditation Influence and legacy of Vivekananda Neo-Vedanta. The tenth speaker at the opening was another Indian — BB Nagarkar again representing the Brahmo Samaj and he in his speech said that he came from the city of Bombay — the first city of the British Empire.

From this then we can safely conclude that this third Indian speaker at the opening ceremony was indeed a Hindu.

The 18th speaker was Virchand R Ghandi whose opening lines were: I represent Jainism, a faith older than Buddhism, similar to it in its ethics, but different from it in its psychology, and professed by 1,, of India's most peaceful and law-abiding citizens. I thank you in the name of the most ancient order of monks in the world: Four other speakers followed in the opening session.

After this Vivekananda is next reported to have spoken on the theme of brotherhood when he recounted the old parable about a frog in the well and how he thinks that is the biggest body of water around. I am sitting in my own little well and thinking that the whole world is my little well.

Trip to America

The Christian sits in his little well and thinks the whole world is his well. The Mohammedan sits in his little well and thinks that is the whole world. I have to thank you America for the great attempt you are making to break down the barriers of this little world of ours, and hope that, in the future, the Lord will help you to accomplish your purpose.

The penultimate speech of Vivekananda that is listed in this book quotes him speaking on the theme of oneness of all living beings. Help and not fight, assimilation and not destruction, harmony and peace and not dissension. There is no doubt that Vivekananda made some powerful speeches in Chicago, so did the other Indians, and nowhere in the page book, is there any mention of "Sisters and brothers of America" by Vivekananda. After years have passed it would be difficult to figure out who first started this myth that Vivekananda said those lines.

But we must remember that the Swami was a missionary and he had a mission to accomplish. It is certainly sad that a century of haziness has obliterated the names and words of the other six Indians who too spoke at the Parliament of Religion, who too held high their beliefs and the ethos of their country, who too made an impact, some of them arguably a lot bigger one than Vivekananda. But it is marketing that often dictates success between one product that is popular from an equally good or possibly better product that failed the advertising test.