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.

Way of the Mystic

Teen & Young Adult

Brahmavidyananda, Swami

Literature & Fiction

Temple Universal

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.

Way of the Sage

<p>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, Georg 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.</p>

Seeing Beyond the Circle (Western Works of Swami Vivekananda)

Religion & Spirituality

Vivekananda, Swami /. Brahmavidyananda

Swami Vivekananda, Vivekananda

Hinduism

Temple Universal Publishing

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.

The Sleeping Giant

Politics & Social Sciences

Vivekânanda, Swâmi

Philosophy

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