PHILOSOPHY

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA

"Help everyone to get higher and higher; include all humanity.
This philosophy preaches a God who's a sum total.
If you seek a universal religion which can apply to everyone,
that religion mustn't be composed of only the parts,
but must always be their sum total and include all degrees of religious development.
This idea is not clearly found in any other religious system. They're all parts equally struggling to attain to the whole."

WHAT IS A UNIVERSAL PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION?

Universal doesn't mean eclecticism or syncretism, and certainly it certainly doesn't mean toleration or fanaticism.

Eclecticism places a hodgepodge of disjointed ideas side by side, with the hopes of conveying a larger idea. Syncretism tries to force these disjointed ideas together into something coherent. Toleration implies, "I don't like you, however, because I'm weak, I'll have to allow you to live." Fanaticism struggles to crush out everyone and everything that's different. The notion is that only by destroying everything else can we have a universal solution.

Universalism
is a thought system large enough to include every tradition.

Rather than focusing on any one religion as "ultimate," universalism focuses on a larger process that's taking place behind and within all religions. All of the parts thus fit together harmoniously in a vision that's all accepting. Each religion brings its own wisdom, empowering the others, allowing the system to remain open, alive and flexible to endless possibilities.

Whether it be the moral truths of Confucianism, the physical powers of Chi Gong, the brotherly love of Islam or the moral and ethical power of Judaism, universality embraces every tradition, revealing the same grand spiritual potential arising within them all.

THE VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY IS INDEPENDENT OF ANY CULTURE

The Vedanta philosophy, or Vedism (which is a spiritual expression of the Vedanta) shouldn't be confused with Hinduism.
For as a philosophy, the Vedanta predates Hinduism.

Hinduism is the historical and cultural response India has made down through the centuries to this philosophy, which India has gradually embraced and integrated it into it's body politics.

As John Dobson, founder of Sidewalk Astronomers says: "Hinduism is what they do about the Vedanta in India, just as Roman Catholicism is what they do about Christianity in Rome."

THE VEDANTA

In the largest sense, the Vedanta is a generic term for a body of universal principles, processes and practices which have accumulated in India over the ages. These ideas are often couched in the language of Sanskrit. However, the system is so inclusive that it readily embraces all religious traditions.
The basic premise is that Transcendence is latent within the human psyche and overall, alive within creation.

Transcendent Reality governs the universe and is operating within all religions and societies. All religions teach this in one form or another. Some speak of a personal God, while others speak of an impersonal Reality.

The Vedantic philosophy doesn't rely on history or any singular personality to explain the process.

Swami Vivekananda
"The meaning of the word 'Veda', from which the word 'Vedanta' comes, is knowledge. All knowledge is Veda, infinite as God is infinite."

How can we explain this position?

The word "Vedanta" is made up of two parts:
"veda" and "anta."

Veda means "insight" or "knowledge."

Today, our dominant vedas or insights are in the areas of technology, physics, psychology, and the arts. These secular vedas always tend to broaden out. The aim is to discover those universal laws that explain the processes occurring around and within us.

Anta has three interactive meanings, which reveal
the dynamics of knowing.

Its first meaning is "the inner part, inside, nature or condition." Its second meaning is " the border or outskirts." Its third meaning is " the culmination, or completion."

ONE

AWARENESS IS OUR CORE NATURE. AND IS FUNDAMENTALLY SPIRITUAL

Transcendent Awareness is the source of creation.
Awareness never changes. It is omnipresent, immortal and ever free.
Out of this primary essence, the whole knowing process evolves.

TWO

RELATIVE KNOWLEDGE IS ALWAYS ATTEMPTING TO EXPRESS AND EMBODY THIS UNDERLYING AWARENESS

Our lives are but stages of transformation. "Revelation is inherent within life" because of this underlying Reality.

Consciousness tends towards the universal. All minds are maturing and ripening, life after life. Whether absorbing smaller or larger truths, all new understandings open and unify consciousness.

The direction of the "knowing process" is always towards ever clearer unitary expressions of the surrounding world. These are partial revelations of an ultimate unity. Thus, all insights (vedas) are pregnant with spiritual content, guideposts along the way toward a Truth which is openly sacred and all consuming.

Our sciences, as well as the religions of the world, are part and parcel of this movement of consciousness through higher, more inclusive intuitions and apprehensions.

THREE

THE MYSTICAL TEACHINGS OF ALL RELIGIONS ARE EXPRESSIONS OF THIS LARGER KNOWING, WHICH IS THE INEVITABLE CONSEQUENCE OF THIS EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS.

Consciousness ultimately opens out into a Transcendent state of understanding. This is what religion and modern science is trying to explain in various way.