Introduction - Selections from the Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda

Selections From The Complete Works Of
Swami Vivekananda
An Introduction

"Just as the sun dispels darkness,
just as Lord Vishnu destroys the wicked,
so his enchanting personality
destroys the threefold misery of man."
-- Swami Ramakrishnananda,
(a brother disciple of Swami Vivekananda)

The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda contains almost every recorded word that emanated from Swami Vivekananda in the form of speeches, interviews, sayings, writings, letters or poems. Undoubtedly these are the very words that prompted the Nobel Laureaute in Literature, Romain Rolland to say,

"I cannot touch these sayings of his, scattered as they are through the pages of this book at thirty distance, without receiving a thrill through my body like an electric shock. And what shock, what transport, must have been produced when, in burning words, they issued from the lips of the hero!"

These are the very words that prompted the world renowned father of the Indian Nation, Mahatma Gandhi, whose love for India can hardly be understated to say,

"... after having gone through [his works], the love that I had for my country became a thousandfold."

and the first Prime Minister of independent India, Jawaharlal Nehru, to say,

"His whole life and teaching inspired my generation. . ."

which include giant after giant men of exceptional character all of whom are revered all over India for their remarkable and exemplary lives and precepts.

The Complete Works is a reference material setting down a broad charter for modern Hinduism in general and their influence on modern Hindu thought cannot be understated; and Sister Nivedita's words truly express what it would have been had we not had the Complete Works:

"The truths he preaches would have been as true, had he never been born. Nay more, they would have been equally authentic. The difference would have lain in their difficulty of access, in their want of modern clearness and incisiveness of statement, and in their loss of mutual coherence and unity. Had he not lived, texts that today will carry the bread of life to thousands might have remained the obscure disputes of scholars. He taught with authority, and not as one of the Pundits. For he himself had plunged to the depths of the realisation which he preached, and he came back like Ramanuja only to tell its secrets to the pariah, the outcast, and the foreigner."

and what it is with it:

"In these volumes we have not only a gospel to the world at large, but also, to its own children, the Charter of the Hindu faith. For the first time in history Hinduism itself forms here the subject of generalization of a Hindu mind of the highest order. What Hinduism had needed was the organizing and consolidating of its own idea. What the world had needed was a faith that had no fear of truth. Both are to be found here."

In the side bar to this page, you will find links that will give you a glimpse from pages of the book.

A 9 volume and pp 4600 must read for anyone seriously interested in Vedantic thought !

The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda(an absolute must read !) can be obtained in book form from The Advaita Ashrama in Calcutta, or The Vedanta Society of Southern California. However, of late, the entire book is available in a CD-ROM but which also includes two volumes of "The Life of Swami Vivekananda" and six volumes of the research work "Swami Vivekananda in the West - New Discoveries".