About the Class

Complete Works

Discussion - SV & Universality

Syllabus

Western Works

Discussion - Vedanta in the West

This 10 volume set contains talks and writings of Swami Vivekananda while in the west. As such, they form an important aid to students of his thought, especially in regards to how his ideas can be made practical in western culture.

In the lectures contained in this volume Swami Vivekananda lays the logical foundation for a dynamic and inclusive universal religion. He argues the necessity of total freedom while offering a coherent metaphysics and psychology on which much of contemporary transpersonal psychology is built. This model feeds into all the remaining books of the series. For Swami Vivekananda, the religions of the world are all prototypes of transcendental Reality, doors through which our feelings and wills can open out into the Infinite, and the Infinite can in turn, express itself through us. This is the grand view of spirituality that Swami Vivekananda has reawakened for our modern world.

In this volume, Swami Vivekananda builds on the truth of the same divinity manifesting within all religions, and how it emerges in the process of spiritual development. We're given a vision of religion based on strength and rational understanding, a spirituality open to all the laws and processes manifesting through the sciences as well as through the scope and depth of every religion. His ideas are based on an all-inclusive Vedic spirituality which sees all of our intellectual and spiritual endowments as energized by divine Spirit, an approach supported by the insights of the Vedanta philosophy.

Karma Yoga. In achieving spiritual freedom through everyday activity, the aim is to progressively remove attachments by learning the art of remaining balanced in success and failure. In our everyday lives, we're driven into the external world by one thought after another, generally contaminated by strong likes and dislikes. But when action is done without addictive expectations, we free up psychic energy. As an instrument of God, or by remaining in the present moment, action becomes elevated. Eventually our mind rises above its likes and dislikes as consciousness calms down and rests in inner peace. Spirit is everywhere and a calm mind inevitably perceives this higher Reality.

Bhakti Yoga. In transforming the mind through the power of love, the aim is to develop a larger devotion by grounding our emotions in a relationship with the loving God of the universe. According to the Vedanta, this "loving God" is the Absolute, seen alive and responsive in and through the whole creation. Thus, a deep love and affection can flow between the Lord and us as we intensify our affection. A rapport is established. Christs and Krishnas, the prophets and saints of every religion and country are but ongoing manifestations of the same universal love and beauty.

Raja Yoga. In arousing the power within, the challenge is to free up consciousness from the external world by collecting and focusing attention on an object, person, holy word, or concept. Eventually, attention or concentration matures into a state of meditation. Through deeper meditations on higher ideals, we arouse our inner spiritual power. The more centered and open our acts of concentration, and the larger our thoughts and feelings, the more our consciousness is able to intuit an ultimate Truth, within and without. Eventually, a state of uninterrupted absorption occurs in which we are able to discern higher Reality as our core Self.

Raja Yoga. This volume contains the Sutras of Patanjali. But the theme is the same as Part I. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali are one of the six darshanas of Hindu or Vedic schools and, alongside the Bhagavad Gita and Hatha Yoga Pradipika, are a milestone in the history of Yoga. The book is a set of 195 aphorisms (sutras), which are short, terse phrases designed to be easy to memorize. Though brief, the Yoga Sutras are an enormously influential work that is just as relevant for yoga philosophy and practice today as it was when it was written.

To understand the work's title, it is necessary to consider the meanings of its two component words. The Sanskrit word Yoga, as used by Patanjali, refers to a state of mind where thoughts and feelings are held in check. Sutra means "thread". This is a reference to the thread of a Japa mala, upon which (figuratively speaking) the yoga aphorisms that make up the work's content are strung like beads. For that reason the title is sometimes rendered in English as the Yoga Aphorisms.

Jnana Yoga. In awakening consciousness through higher understanding, this practice is geared to those who choose to see all of the matter and energy as qualified expressions of one singular Transcendent Reality. In the tradition of philosophers and sages, we're asked to discriminate between what is real (the Absolute) and what is unreal (this changing world). Through affirmations of the underlying Reality, along with the practice of detachment, this world of seemingly rigid outlines gradually weakens. Eventually, an omnipresent, ever free, immortal Truth is directly intuited within everything and behind everything.

Maya as a philosophical concept is found throughout the religious literature of India. This model states that there is a fundamental act of misperception to which every being is subject. As a result , a creature labors under confusing ideas about the surrounding world and itself. We're always superimposing our relative perceptions and understandings onto an absolute, spiritual condition. The analogy given is in the late afternoon wherein we might see a rope and imagine it to be a snake or see a tree stump and imagine it to be someone we know. This discovery of mental irresolution with a resulting compensation and psychic projection is a prime contribution that Freud and his contemporaries gave to the world. The idea is that if psychic energy is denied and repressed, the mind becomes energetically projective in a more confining way. Shankara, the 7th Century philosopher of India, took this process of projection to a collective level. For him, every being is ignoring divine Reality and projecting incomplete interpretations onto It through this basic dynamic of maya. Swami Vivekananda interjects an evolutionary model into the process, showing how the hidden destination to which the healing of all of our irresolution and confusion is ultimately headed is an open, holistic perception of Reality, free of compulsivity and distortion. This, in effect, summarizes Vedic psychology and philosophy.

There has always been an ongoing dispute between the realists and the idealists as to what is ultimate and fundamental. The realists see matter as absolute, whereas the idealists see mind as absolute. Swami Vivekananda sees both mind and matter as aspects of a larger reality. The human soul is not separate from other souls, but is an expression of one singular, spiritual Ocean out of which the whole of creation arises. Our problem is that we are clinging to the waves rather than opening out and resting in the Ocean or Source Itself. This is all explained in the ancient Sankhyan model of perception and evolution, which Swami Vivekananda empowers with the philosophy of non-dualism. Among other things, Vivekananda puts the traditional Sankhyan idea of the gunas into a familiar psychological context: tamas being attraction, rajas being aversion, and sattva being balance. Almost a century earlier, George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, the German philosopher framed this dynamic as thesis or status quo (tamas), antithesis or breaking free,(rajas), and synthesis or ongoing levels of integration (sattva). In light of Swami Vivekananda's message, the Vedic position gives this process a higher evolutionary direction, that direction being an experience of a spiritual Reality that is omnipresent and ever-free.

From where does life come? Does an external God quicken creation into existence or is there a life potential abiding within creation itself? Traditionally, theologians tell us that an external God is the source of all this vitality. In some mysterious way, God creates the universe out of nothing. The scientific response to these unscientific ideas is "evolution." Nature has a potential existing within itself that's causing higher and higher life forms to manifest. The Vedic position interjects a spiritual dimension into it, adding that a primary "involution" always has to precede an evolution. As Swami Vivekananda puts it: The seed is the father of the tree, but another tree was itself the father of the seed. This larger model says that the seed in the material world is spiritual potential. The whole evolutionary process isn't driven by the material world of external stimuli and everyday experiences, but by the presence of an infinite, undivided and unchanging Reality that resides within and behind the surface of everything. This is what is gradually expressing and ultimately manifesting as our Christs, Buddhas, sages and saints.