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.

View from the Center

Politics & Social Sciences

Vivekânanda, Swâmi

Brahmavidyananda

Philosophy

Temple Universal

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.

The Way Home

Religion & Spirituality

<p>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.</p>

Way of the Hero

Teen & Young Adult

Literature & Fiction

Way of the Saint

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

Brahmavidyananda, Swami

This volume contains the Sutras of Patanjali. But the theme is the same as Part I. For 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.

Christian Books & Bibles

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

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.

The Grand Illusion (Vol. 8)

Swami Brahmavidyananda

Swami, Vivekananda

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

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Temple Universal publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Temple Universal

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Temple Universal publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

View from the Center

The Way Home

Way of the Hero

Way of the Saint

Way of the Mystic

Way of the Mystic

Way of the Sage

The Grand Illusion (Vol. 8)

The Sleeping Giant