Swami Vivekananda and the beginnings of Vedanta Society

Swami Vivekananda was the chief architect of establishing the Vedic culture and Vedanta Society in the West. His lectures at the world’s parliament of religions in Chicago in 1893 were revolutionary and the turning point in the Western inertest in Hindu philosophy. This is a very short book that narrates the odyssey of Swami Vivekananda after his arrival at the Chicago conference and his soul searching renderings of his wisdom.  

He addressed the gatherings as “sisters and brothers of America” and his lectures touched the deepest chord of their heart by stressing the kinship and human understanding at the spiritual level. He championed the idea of understanding, respect and coexistence of all faiths in peace and harmony. He asked everyone to accept all religions are true and believe in universal toleration. His delivery of Hindu wisdom through the Vedanta philosophy touched every soul at the conference. His principal message was that an individual is only a mortal body but made of a divine soul, a spirit, pure, immortal and the master of matter and mind. The goal of a human is to find his inner soul and become one with it by manifesting the inner divinity thorough thought and action.  

He pointed out that from the spiritual flights of the  Vedanta philosophy which are echoed by the current understanding of laws of physics to the ideas of deity worship with its multifarious mythology, the agnosticism of the Buddhism and the atheism of Jainism all have a place in Hinduism. There is no polytheism in India; the worshippers apply their attributes of God to the images. It is worshipped in different names, different deities and different images but there is only one God. Hindus use an external symbol when they pray and worship so that they can focus on it mentally.

During famine in India, thousands died but Christian missionaries started erecting churches giving them false hopes that Christianism helps them find salvation. How does that please God?  Anyone who hopes that the unity will come by the triumph of one religion over the others; to him I say, “Do I wish that the Christian would become a Hindu? God forbid. Do I wish that the Hindu or Buddhist would be come a Christian? God forbid.” He continued; the question is not one’s conversion, but one must assimilate the spirit of the others and preserve his individuality. If anybody dreams of the exclusive survival of his own religion and the destruction of the others, then I pity him from the bottom of my heart.

The day after his lecture newspapers said of him as the greatest figure and the best speaker of the parliament. Harvard University professor J.H. Wright once told Swami Vivekananda (referring to Vivekananda’s lack of registration for the conference) that “to ask you, Swami, for credentials is like asking the sun to state the right to shine.” Professor Wright once wrote to chairman of the selection committee “here is a man who is more learned than all our professors put together.”

1. Chicago Addresses, Swami Vivekananda, Advaita Ashrama; Twenty-Second Impression edition (1992)