Striding the world like a collosus at the dawn of the 20th.century, Swami Vivekananda was beyond question, the most eloquent and authentic spokesman of ancient Indian knowledge in modern times. Drawing on the deepest insights of Vedanta, he gave a ringing call to humanity that their future lay in pursuit, not of the the transient values of the external world but of the eternal values of truth, knowledge and bliss that comprised the divine spirit within man himself. His clarion call was to both religion and science to reach beyond self-imposed limitations of mind and method, to the One Truth towards which they were still groping. This message, enshrined in the Vedantic declaration "Thou art That", is even more relevant today at the dawn of the 21st.Century.
Each of Swamiji's lectures runs into 10 to 15 printed pages of incisive thought and eloquent phrase, and all his lectures run into the 7 Volumes that comprise his complete works. Scholars and book lovers around the world will always read these books, but unfortunately the number of such people is not as large as one would wish. The question then is, how do we attract large numbers of present and future generations of men and women, especially the young, to the central ideas of these lectures, when the pressures of everyday life leave them with little time for serious reading. The need then, is to find a way for these ideas to reach them, so that they could bring a new vision and creative energy into their lives and the lives of those around them.
To this question, part of the answer is to use the medium of the Internet to reach people round the world at their convenience. The rest of the answer is to give people, a quick glance in small instalments of Swamiji's central ideas. We now give shape to these answers in the form of a series of one page presentations on the Internet. Each presentation contains a very brief gist of one lecture, with the central idea stated in Swamiji's own eloquent words. In offering these presentations, it would be appropriate at this point to quote Swamiji himself from a lecture in New York in December, 1900. His lofty words will be clearly seen to be the words of a prophet :
"My whole life has been changed by the touch of one of those divine men about whom I am going to speak to you next Sunday; and the time is coming when these thoughts will be cast abroad over the whole world. Instead of living in monasteries, instead of being confined to books of philosophy to be studied only by the learned, instead of being the exclusive possession of sects, they will be sown broadcast over the whole world, so that they may become the common property of the saint and the sinner, of men, women and children, of the learned and the ignorant. They will then permeate the atmosphere of the whole world, and the very air that we breathe will say with every one of its pulsations 'Thou art That ....... "
Readers who are excited by the summaries of and quotations from the speeches of Swami Vivekanada that are presented here, will find the treasurehouse of his full speeches in the Seven-Volume "Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda published by the President, Advaita Ashrama, Mayavati, Pithoragarh, Himalayas, to whom we are beholden for using them in these presentations.