Swami Vivekananda

Qu'est-ce que l'Absolu ? Dieu existe-t-il ?

The personal God is the Absolute as read by the human mind

À la fois personnel et impersonnelIl le dit expressément

Swami Vivekananda, disciple of Ramakrishna, defends Advaita Vedanta without disdaining devotion. In his Jnana Yoga lectures he holds that the only reality is the impersonal Brahman, existence, consciousness and bliss, and that the human soul is identical with it. In Bhakti Yoga, in the chapter on the philosophy of Ishvara, he explains that the personal God is that same Absolute as perceived by the human mind: not an illusion to be discarded but the highest reading of the Absolute available to one who still feels himself an individual. Hence his claim that dualism, qualified non-dualism and non-dualism are stages of one path. For Vivekananda, the divine has a face that is loved and a formless ground with which, ultimately, one is identified.

Qui suis-je ? Existe-t-il un vrai soi ?

Each soul is potentially divine; the real man is the infinite Atman

Le Soi est l'AbsoluIl le dit expressément

Swami Vivekananda distinguishes, in the lecture «The Real and the Apparent Man» collected in Jnana Yoga, between the limited individual we believe ourselves to be and the real man, the Atman, infinite, immortal and one with Brahman. The apparent man is a passing manifestation of that Atman through body and mind; everything that limits us belongs to the level of appearance. Hence his motto, which heads his exposition of Raja Yoga: each soul is potentially divine, and the goal is to manifest this divinity within by controlling nature, external and internal, through work, devotion, psychic control or philosophy. Vivekananda stresses the ethical consequences: if we are all the same Self, serving another is serving God. The true self is not a part of the Absolute but the Absolute itself.

Pourquoi souffrons-nous ?

Maya always mixes pleasure and pain; only the Atman is free of both

L'ignorance de ce que nous sommesIl le dit expressément

Swami Vivekananda treats suffering in his lectures on maya, collected in Jnana Yoga. Maya is not for him a theory of illusion but a statement of the contradiction in which we live: every pleasure drags its pain, every good its evil, and no worldly progress will remove that mixture, because it belongs to the nature of the relative world. Whoever seeks complete happiness in the finite is condemned to frustration. The root of suffering is ignorance of our true nature: we identify with body and mind, subject to contradiction, rather than with the Atman, which lies beyond it. Vivekananda does not draw indifference from this: in Karma Yoga he proposes working to relieve the pain of others without attachment to results, as a way of purifying oneself and of serving God in every being.

Que se passe-t-il après la mort ?

The Atman is immortal; bodies change, are reborn and are finally known as illusory

Ce que je suis ne naît ni ne meurtIl le dit expressément

Vivekananda sets out the question of death from Vedanta in lectures such as «Immortality», included in Jnana Yoga. He denies that the soul is created or can die: what has a beginning has an end, and the Atman, which is Brahman, has none. On the relative plane he accepts reincarnation: the subtle mind, laden with impressions (samskaras), leaves the body and seeks another in accordance with its karma, and Vivekananda defends it as a more rational explanation of the differences between beings than the creation of new souls at each birth. But on the ultimate plane, that of non-duality, the soul never came and never went: the same infinite Self appears under names and forms. The goal is not an eternal life in a heaven, which would be another form of birth, but to recognise that one was never born.

Comment atteint-on la libération ou le salut ?

Manifest the inner divinity through work, devotion, mental control or knowledge

Par une pratique disciplinéeIl le dit expressément

Swami Vivekananda sums up his position in the preface to Raja Yoga: each soul is potentially divine and the goal is to manifest that divinity by controlling nature, external and internal, whether by work, by worship, by psychic control or by philosophy, by one, several or all of these means. The other elements of religion (doctrines, rites, books or temples) are secondary details. He devoted a book to each path: Karma Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, Raja Yoga and Jnana Yoga. His originality lies in presenting them as verifiable, almost experimental methods suited to different temperaments, and in joining them to service of others, whom he asked people to see as manifestations of the divine. The ultimate horizon is the Advaitic realisation of identity with Brahman.

Faut-il un maître ?

Spiritual impulse passes from soul to soul: a true guru is needed

IndispensableIl le dit expressément

In Bhakti Yoga, Swami Vivekananda devotes chapters to the need for a guru and to the qualities of the aspirant and the teacher. He holds that books alone do not awaken the soul: the spiritual impulse must come from another, already awakened soul, and the one who transmits it is the guru. He asks much of the teacher: he must know the spirit of the scriptures, be free from sin and not teach for money or fame. And he asks of the disciple purity, thirst for knowledge and perseverance. His own life illustrates this position: he attributed everything he was to his master Ramakrishna. At the same time, Vivekananda rejected credulity and asked that teaching be examined; the guru is necessary, but not just anyone is one.

Le monde est-il réel ?

Maya is not a theory: it is a description of the world as it is

Apparence sur l'unique réalitéIl le dit expressément

In the lectures collected in Jnana Yoga, Swami Vivekananda devotes several talks to maya and warns against understanding it as a claim that the world does not exist. Maya is, for him, a description of facts: the world is a contradictory mixture of good and evil, pleasure and pain, life and death, which cannot be resolved within itself. It is neither simply unreal nor real in the ultimate sense: it is the appearance the Absolute takes on through time, space and causality. Behind that appearance stands Brahman, the only reality, which is also the Self of each person. Hence his practical emphasis: seeing the divine in the beings one serves.

Qu'est-ce que l'amour ?

Love for love's sake, without asking or fearing, leads to union

Le désir ardent et l'unionIl le dit expressément

Vivekananda devoted one of his four yogas to love. In Bhakti Yoga he defines devotion as the search for God through love and describes its culmination, supreme devotion (para-bhakti), through what he calls the triangle of love: love asks nothing in return, knows no fear and has no other object than love itself, which is its own ideal. He goes through the forms the relationship with God takes — as Father, as Mother, as friend, as beloved — and holds that all human love, even the most limited, is a reflection of divine love. At its height, the lover, love and the beloved become one, and devotion flows into the same non-duality that knowledge reaches. At the same time, Vivekananda joins love of God with service: to serve the human being is to serve God present in him.

Sommes-nous libres ou tout est-il déterminé ?

We are what our acts have made us, and we can remake ourselves

Le karma et le choixIl le dit expressément

Vivekananda stresses human responsibility with almost programmatic vigour: in *Karma Yoga* (1896) he holds that each person is the sum of his past thoughts and actions, and therefore holds in his own hands what he will become. His critique of the fatalism of the India of his day is explicit: weakness, not destiny, is the cause of misery. But as a Vedantin he distinguishes levels. In his *Jnana Yoga* lectures he explains that the will, as a phenomenon of the world of *māyā*, is subject to cause and effect and is not free in an absolute sense; what is free is the Ātman, beyond the causal chain. Practice consists in using conditioned action to reach that freedom which does not depend on choosing.

Pourquoi méditer ou prier ?

Concentrating the mind until the soul knows itself in samadhi

Revenir à la source du jeIl le dit expressément

In *Raja Yoga* (1896), his commentary on Patañjali's *Yoga Sutras*, Vivekananda presents meditation as an experimental science: just as the chemist focuses his instruments on matter, the yogi focuses the mind on itself. His ladder runs from ethics and posture through breath control, withdrawal of the senses, concentration and meditation up to *samādhi*, a superconscious state in which the soul recognises itself as free and independent of nature. He does not deny the value of devotion, to which he devotes *Bhakti Yoga*, nor of selfless action, but for him the end of meditative practice is realisation of the Ātman, identical with Brahman, not petition to a separate God.

La raison peut-elle connaître l'ultime ?

Religion must withstand reason's scrutiny and culminate in superconsciousness

La foi et la raison s'entraidentIl le dit expressément

Vivekananda claims for religion the same rational scrutiny applied to science: in his lecture «Reason and Religion» he holds that a religion unable to defend itself before reason does not deserve to survive, and presents Vedānta as the most rational of doctrines. But in *Raja Yoga* (ch. 7, «Dhyāna and Samādhi») he sets out a scale of knowledge: instinct, reason and superconsciousness. Reason surpasses instinct but moves within a limited circle; beyond it is *samādhi*, in which truths are known that reason cannot reach, though they never contradict it. The statements of sages and scriptures, he insists, must be verified in one's own experience.

Se retirer du monde ou le transformer ?

Serving the human being is worshipping God: a practical Vedanta

S'engager dans le mondeIl le dit expressément

Swami Vivekananda, a renunciant monk, set out to bring Vedanta out of the forests and caves and into daily life. In his lectures on Practical Vedanta, delivered in London in 1896, he holds that the unity of all beings in the Ātman is not an idea for isolated contemplation but the foundation of an ethic of service: if God is in every human being, serving the poor, the sick or the ignorant is worshipping God. He takes up his master Ramakrishna's teaching of serving beings by seeing them as Shiva, and in 1897 founds the Ramakrishna Mission, which joins monastic life with hospitals, schools and relief in famines and epidemics. In Karma Yoga he presents selfless action as a path to liberation. He harshly criticised a religiosity concerned with rites while the people of India went hungry.

Belur, Howrah (junto a Calcuta), Bengala Occidental · India

Belur Math, headquarters of the Ramakrishna Order

Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission

Belur Math, on the banks of the Ganges, is the headquarters of the Ramakrishna Order that Swami Vivekananda founded on his return from the West, and the place where he died in 1902. The grounds hold the Sri Ramakrishna temple, whose architecture Vivekananda conceived to bring together motifs from different religions, the temples of Sarada Devi and of Vivekananda himself, the room where he lived and a museum. The institution describes it as a place of pilgrimage for people of all faiths. It has a guest house for pilgrims, and its branch centres worldwide share the same spirit of service and study.

Kanyakumari, Tamil Nadu · India

Vivekananda Rock Memorial and Vivekananda Kendra, Kanyakumari

Vivekananda Rock Memorial & Vivekananda Kendra

At the southern tip of India, on a rock off Kanyakumari, Vivekananda meditated in December 1892 before setting out for the West; the Vivekananda Rock Memorial now stands there. Its sister organisation, Vivekananda Kendra, is based at Vivekanandapuram on the mainland and describes itself as a spiritually oriented service mission working in education, health and rural development. As well as receiving the pilgrims who visit the memorial, it runs residential yoga camps, certificate courses and spiritual retreats, taught mainly in English and Hindi, under the motto that they alone live who live for others.

Nueva York (Upper West Side) · Estados Unidos

Vedanta Society of New York

Vedanta Society of New York (Orden de Ramakrishna)

The Vedanta Society of New York is the first Vedanta society in the West: Swami Vivekananda founded it in 1894, during his first stay in the United States, and it belongs to the Ramakrishna Order. From its home on West 71st Street it offers Sunday lectures, weekday discussions on the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita and other texts, and daily vesper services. Its talks, particularly those of its current minister, are published openly as videos and podcasts, which has made it one of the most accessible sources for studying Advaita Vedanta in Vivekananda's line from anywhere in the world.