Oakland Tribune February 26 , 1900 |
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Vedantism and what it is and what it is not Lecture of Swami Vivekananda on the Religion of the Hindoos It is the Only Creed, He Says, that Can Be Taught Without Lies and Without Compromise The claims of the Brahmin religion, or Vedantism, on the modern world were presented to-night at the Congress of Religions in the First Unitarian Church by Swami Vivekananda, a remarkably eloquent expounder of that faith. . . . To his auditors to-night he explained Vedantism as the religion of the Vedas, or ancient Hindoo books, which, he asserted, is "the mother of religion." "It may seem ridiculous how a book can be without beginning or end," he said, but by the Vedas no books are meant. They signify the accumulated treasury of spiritual laws discovered by different persons in different times. The Hindoo believes he is a spirit. Him the sword cannot pierce, him the fire cannot burn, him the water cannot melt, him the air cannot dry. He believes every soul is a circle whose circumference is nowhere, but whose center is located in a body. Death means the change of this center from body to body. We are the children of God. Matter is our servant.
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- www.vivekananda.net edited by Frank Parlato Jr.