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Why Swami Vivekananda still matters
September 12, 2015 by admin

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He taught us how to realise the universal consciousness beyond the Articles on Yoga & Tantra
limitations of time and space within our own minds and hearts. Dr David
Core Teachings
Frawley writes more.
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Modern India rests upon the inspiration that Swami Vivekananda awakened over a hundred years ago. His
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life and teachings became the spirit that infused the countrys independence movement and proclamation
of self-rule, not only at a political level but at intellectual and spiritual levels as well.

The modern yoga movement began globally with Vivekananda, who brought Indias ancient yogic heritage
to the entire world, and soon made yoga into a common word and practice in every continent.
Vivekananda helped revive yoga in India, taking it from a specialised practice for a few select renunciates,
and turning it into a universal science of consciousness that everyone can explore and benefit from.

While the great scientist Albert Einstein discovered the law of relativity, showing us the limitations of a time-
space view of reality, Swami Vivekananda taught us how to realise the universal consciousness beyond the
limitations of time and space within our own minds and hearts. Vivekananda was not just an intellectual
genius but a spiritual visionary.

Yet a hundred years after Einstein and Vivekananda, humanity is still caught in the same divisions and
conflicts in time-space reality, which these great teachers taught us how to overcome.

The meaning of September 11

Swami Vivekananda on September 11, 1893 at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago spoke to all
people as brothers and sisters. He pleaded to his audience to reject the many divisions and barriers
created between people, particularly those erected in the name of religion, which can permanently
separate people into hostile camps. He invoked the yogic spirit of oneness as the solution to our individual
and collective problems. He encouraged humanity to enter a new era of unity consciousness and let these
regressive divisions disappear forever.

The young Swami from distant India was able to awaken his foreign American audience to a new vision of a
universal life and single humanity. That spark set in motion forces of spiritual transformation that have
since taken many forms.

Unfortunately, now September 11 has another meaning, which is the beginning of the era of terrorism and
unexpected catastrophic attacks on innocent people throughout the world. Terrorism is based upon a
rejection of the message of Swamiji that humanity constitutes of a single organism and reflects a single self,
which is the essence of all religion and all deeper thought.

Terrorism is the ultimate expression of the divisive mind that places belief and ideology over life and
feeling. It reflects an outer view of reality that wants to control the minds of people rather than let them be
free to discover who they really are.

The challenge today

Yet terrorism is not an isolated phenomenon but is connected to many other world problems born of lack
of human unity and a failure to honor the sacred nature of all life.

Today we are exploring the realm of information but have not understood the greater importance of
consciousness. Information does not always unite us. It can reinforce separate identities. We are similarly
looking to the outer mass media, rather than to our inner connection with the cosmic mind. Mass media,
used incorrectly, can make us more intolerant, rather than more compassionate. Our world has not yet
rejected the artificial divisions of nation and creed that marked the era before global communication and
which can be reinforced by wrong use of the new technology.

Swamiji did not just teach ideas but emphasised the building of character, making the soul and spirit
powerful, so that we are no longer the slaves of desire, opinions and impulses from the outer world. It is
not just what we know or what we own but who we are that truly matters.

Swamijis message was the lions roar of Vedanta, the great upanishadic teaching that each individual is the
self of the entire universe. He taught that you are not merely this small physical body, this mere brain, or
even this complex mind. In the core of your being, you are one with the universal consciousness and all of
its powers. Once we know this, even the thought of harming another person cannot arise.

Humanity cannot discover its true unity merely at an outer level of technology and communication,
however helpful these may be. It cannot erect that unity based upon upholding the divided identities of an
earlier era. It is a unity of heart and consciousness that is required. Yoga can show us the way.

The article was first published @ http://www.dailyo.in/lifestyle/swami-vivekananda-world-parliament-of-

religions-9-11-terrorism-consciousness-vedanta-social-media/story/1/6204.html

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