What is Vedanta?

My notes from ‘Vedanta: Voice of Freedom” – a selected compilation from the Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda.

‘What is Vedanta’ Chapter Highlights reproduced below:

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Just as creation is infinite and eternal, without beginning and without end, so is the knowledge of God without beginning and without end. And this knowledge is what is meant by the Vedas (Vid to know). The mass of knowledge called Vedanta was discovered by personages called rishis, and the rishi is defined as a mantradrashta, a seer of thought— not that the thought was his own.

This mass of writing, the Vedas, is divided principally into two parts, the karma kanda and the jnana kanda— the work portion and the knowledge portion, the ceremonial and the spiritual.

The main ideas of the karma kanda, which consists of the duties of man, the duties of the student, of the householder, of the recluse, and the various duties of the different stations of life, are followed more or less down to the present day. But the spiritual portion of our religion is in the second part, the jnana kanda, the Vedanta, the end of the Vedas— the gist, the goal of the Vedas.

The essence of the knowledge of the Vedas was called by the name Vedanta, which comprises the Upanishads. And all the sects of India— Dualists, Qualified— Monists, Monists, or the Shaivites, Vaishnavites, Shaktas, Sauras, Ganapatyas, each one that dares to come within the fold of Hinduism— must acknowledge the Upanishads of the Vedas.

Just as the law of gravitation existed before its discovery and would exist if all humanity forgot it, so is it with the laws that govern the spiritual world. The moral, ethical, and spiritual relations between soul and soul and between individual spirits and the Father of all spirits were there before their discovery and would remain even if we forgot them.

Until the truth has come through one who has had realization, from one who has perceived it himself, it cannot become fruitful. Books cannot give it. Argument cannot establish it. Truth comes unto him who knows the secret of it.

After you have received it, be quiet. Be not ruffled by vain argument. Come to your own realization. You alone can do it.

Be pure, be calm. The mind when ruffled cannot reflect the Lord.

The human soul is eternal and immortal, perfect and infinite, and death means only a change of center from one body to another. The present is determined by our past actions, and the future by the present. The soul will go on evolving up or reverting back, from birth to birth and death to death.

Come up, O lions, and shake off the delusion that you are sheep. You are souls immortal, spirits free, blest, and eternal. You are not matter, you are not bodies. Matter is your servant, not you the servant of matter.

To be more free is the goal of all our efforts, for only in perfect freedom can there be perfection. This effort to attain freedom underlies all forms of worship, whether we know it or not.

Anything that makes you weak physically, intellectually, and spiritually, reject as poison.

Man is an infinite circle whose circumference is nowhere, but whose center is located in one spot; and God is an infinite circle whose circumference is nowhere, but whose center is everywhere. He works through all hands, sees through all eyes, walks on all feet, breathes through all bodies, lives in all life, speaks through every mouth, and thinks through every brain. Man can become like God and acquire control over the whole universe if he multiplies infinitely his center of self— consciousness.

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