PRACTICAL VEDANTA

VEDANTA :: FOUNDATION OF HINDUISM

DHARMA/SPIRITUALITY – OUTCOME OF
REVELATION
1. Where then, the question arises, where is the common centre to which all these widely
diverging radii converge? Where is the common basis upon which all these seemingly
hopeless contradictions rest?
2. The Hindus have received their religion through revelation, the Vedas. They hold that the
Vedas are without beginning and without end.
3. By the Vedas no books are meant. They mean the accumulated treasury of spiritual laws
discovered by different persons in different times.
4. Just as the law of gravitation existed before its discovery, and would exist if all humanity
forgot it, so is it with the laws that govern the spiritual world.
5. The moral, ethical, and spiritual relations between soul and soul and between individual
spirits and the Father of all spirits, were there before their discovery, and would remain even
if we forgot them.
➢The discoverers of these laws are called Rishis, and we
honour them as perfected beings.
➢ Some of the very greatest of them were women.
➢ The Vedas teach us that creation is without beginning or
end. Science is said to have proved that the sum total of
cosmic energy is always the same.
➢Then, if there was a time when nothing existed, where was
all this manifested energy? Some say it was in a potential
form in God.
•The idea of a body. Am I, then, nothing but a combination of material substances? The Vedas
declare, ‘No.’ I am a spirit living in a body. I am not the body. The body will die, but I shall not die.
• Here I am in this body; it will fall, but I shall go on living. I had also a past. The soul was not
created, for creation means a combination which means a certain future dissolution. If then the
soul was created, it must die.
•A Hindu believes that he is a spirit. Him the sword cannot pierce —him the fire cannot burn —
him the water cannot melt — him the air cannot dry. The Hindu believes that every soul is a
circle whose circumference is nowhere, but whose centre is located in the body, and that death
means the change of this centre from body to body.
•Nor is the soul bound by the conditions of matter. In its very essence, it is free, unbounded, holy,
pure, and perfect. But somehow or other it finds itself tied down to matter, and thinks of itself as
matter.
Practical Vedanta S1:: Life giving
a) “Shankara left this Advaita Philosophy in the hills and forests, while of I have come
to bring it out of those places and scatter it broadcast before the workaday world
and society. The lion roar of Advaita must resound in every health and home, in
meadows and groves, over hills and plains”, proclaims Swami Vivekananda.
b) Swamiji’s new approach of presenting Vedanta for the modern age is unique. He
tried boldly to teach Advaita to everybody irrespective of caste, creed, race, religion.
c) Swamiji said: “Conceptions of the Vedanta must come out, must remain not only in
the forest, not only in the cave, but they must come out to work at the bar and the
bench, in the pulpit, and in the cottage of the poor man, with the fisherman that are
catching fish, and with the students that are studying.”
 Practical Vedanta S2 : Invoking Divinity
➢The essence of the Vedanta is the assertion of the divinity of man. The spirit in man is always pure and perfect.
It is eternal. Swami Vivekananda’s words, is that “Each soul is potentially divine. The goal is to manifest this
divinity within by controlling nature: external and internal. Do this either by work, or worship, or psychic
control, or philosophy – by one, or more, or all of these – and be free, this is whole of religion. Doctrains, or
dogmas or rituals, or books, or temples, or forms are but secondary details.”
➢The new approach not only declares that a human individual is divine, but also has daring faith in that divinity.
Practical Vedanta is not just a philosophy but it is a guideline for robust living for being divine and also fully
human.
➢The central ideal of Vedanta is oneness. According to Swamiji “There are no two in anything, no two lives.
There is but one life, one world, one Existence, every thing is that one, the difference is in degree and not in
kind”.
➢It is the same life that pulsates through all beings, from Brahma to the Amoeba, the difference is only in the
degree of manifestation. We must not look down with contempt on others but we should respect them.
According to Swamiji “Vedanta can be carried into our everyday life, the city life, the country life, the national
life, and the home life of every nation.”
➢A religion that cannot be put into practice, that cannot help man wherever he may be, is not of much use and
value.
Practical Vedanta S3 : Oneness
The central ideal of Vedanta is oneness. According to Swamiji “There are no two in anything, no
two lives. There is but one life, one world, one Existence, every thing is that one, the difference
is in degree and not in kind”.

It is the same life that pulsates through all beings, from Brahma to the amoeba, the difference is
only in the degree of manifestation. We must not look down with contempt on others but we
should respect them. According to Swamiji “Vedanta can be carried into our everyday life, the
city life, the country life, the national life, and the home life of every nation.”

A religion that cannot be put into practice, that cannot help man wherever he may be, is not of
much use and value.
 Practical Vedanta : Nothing Outside all
Inside
➢The Vedanta admits that there are no two entities – only one exists. Only one entity is experienced at a time as
changeless substratum or as changing attributes.
➢It is illustrated with the help of the analogy of rope and snake. The rope stands for spirit or changelessness and
the snake for the body or change. When the snake is seen the rope would have vanished and when the rope is
seen the snake would have vanished. Applying this to ourselves, when we come to realize ourselves as the spirit
the body would have vanished and when we are with body consciousness we are aware of the body only.
➢This shows that whatever exists is one and that is appearing as there various forms. Vedanta asks us to find God
in ourself and worship the God. What is more practical than this? God is not a being far off. He if the self in you. It
is through the self that you know anything. According to Swamiji without knowing Him we can neither live or
move.
➢We cannot breathe or live a second. Is it not preaching a practical God? We see the God inside me, outside me,
before me, behind me, a God omnipresent, in every being and in every thing. We are to worship God in all men
and women, in the young and the old, in the sinner and the saint, in the Brahmin and the pariah, in the poor, the
sick, the ignorant, the destitude and the down trodden. According to Vedanta, serve them, worship them and
that will be serving and worshipping the living God. “He who sees Shiva in the poor, in the weak, and in the
diseased, really worships Shiva, and if he sees Shiva only in the image, his worship is but preliminary.
❖The Vedas teach that the soul is divine, only held in the bondage of matter;
perfection will be reached when this bond will burst, and the word they use for
it is therefore, Mukti — freedom, freedom from the bonds of imperfection,
freedom from death and misery.
❖And this bondage can only fall off through the mercy of God, and this mercy
comes on the pure. So purity is the condition of His mercy.
❖How does that mercy act? He reveals Himself to the pure heart; the pure and
the stainless see God, yea, even in this life; then and then only all the
crookedness of the heart is made straight. Then all doubt ceases
Infinite power is in the soul
a) The external teacher offers only the suggestion which rouses the internal
teacher to work to understand things.
b) Then things will be made clearer to us by our own power of perception and
thought, and we shall realize them in our own souls.
c) The energy was there potentially no doubt, but still there.
d) So is infinite power in the soul of man whether he knows it or not.
e) Its manifestation is only a question of being conscious of it
 We should give positive ideas
a) We should give positive ideas. Negative thoughts only weaken men.
b) Do you not find that where parents are constantly taxing their sons to read and
write, telling them that they will never learn anything and calling them fools and so
forth, the latter do actually turn out to be so in many cases…
c) If you speak kind words to them and encourage them, they are bound to improve in
time.
d) If you can give them positive ideas, people will grow up to be men and learn to stand
on their own legs.
e) The teaching must be modified according to the needs of the taught. Past lives have
moulded our tendencies, and so give to the pupil according to his tendencies.
f) Take every one where he stands and push him forward
Shraddha
1. The idea of true Shraddha must be brought back once more to us. The faith in our own selves
must be reawakened and then only all the Problems which face our country will gradually be
solved by ourselves.
2. What we want is this Shraddha.
3. What makes the difference between man and man is the difference in the Shraddha and
nothing else.
4. What makes one man great and another weak and low is this Shraddha. My master used lo
say : he who thinks himself weak will become weak ; and that is true.
5. This Shraddha must enter into you. Whatever of material power you see manifested by the
western races, is the outcome of this Shraddha, because they believe in their muscles; and if
you believe in the spirit how much more will it work
Thank You