Vedanta’s Introduced to the West
Shubha Bala, associate producer
Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) is known for being one of the first people to bring the message of Hinduism to the West. He was a disciple of Sri Ramakrishna, and a follower of Vedanta. I recently picked up Vedanta: Voice of Freedom, a compilation of Swami Vivekananda’s speeches, that I had read when I was a teenager.
The book touches on many aspects of Vedanta. For example, he explains that there are three variations among Vedantists: dualists, qualified nondualists, and Advaitists. He explains that Advaitists believe God is “both the material and the efficient cause of the universe”:
“Sometimes a sick man lying on his bed may hear a tap on the door. He gets up and opens it and finds no one there. He goes back to bed, and again he hears a tap. He gets up and opens the door. Nobody is there. At last he finds that it was his own heartbeat, which he fancied was a knock at the door.
Thus man, after this vain search for various gods outside himself, completes the circle and comes back to the point from which he started-the human soul. And he finds that the God whom he was searching for in hill and dale, whom he was seeking in every brook, in ever temple, in churches and heavens, that God whom he was even imagining as sitting in heaven and ruling the world, is his own Self. I am He, and He is I. None but I was God, and this little I never existed.”
Later in the book he reinforces this explanation with another image:
“When Vedanta says that you and I are God, it does not mean the Personal God. To take an example: Out of a mass of clay a huge elephant of clay is manufactured, and out of the same clay a little clay mouse is made. Would the clay mouse ever be able to become the clay elephant? But put them both in water and they are both clay. As clay they are both one, but as mouse and elephant there will be an eternal difference between them. The Infinite, the Impersonal, is like the clay in the example.”
Swami Vivekananda’s house in London, now a heritage building (photo: Shubha Bala)
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