Ome, lead us from the unreal to the real, lead us from darkness unto light, lead us from death to immortality.

Ome, peace, peace, peace.

Oam, Namashriy, Raja, Vivekhanandha Suray,

Satchid suhahrupaupaya, Swami Neta Phaarini. Today I would like to talk about

Swami Vivekananda's lectured freedom of the soul

So that's why we have titled this talk freedom

Swami Vivekan

starts with a very

what will feel like a very contemporary note today.

He says that the Vedantic ideal of freedom is a very democratic kind of spirituality.

He said that just as in the West we see that people are ever pushing for at higher and higher ideas of freedom

and democracy, that they find it intolerable that anybody should rule over them, from the

rule of feudal chiefs to the rule of kings to a democratic nation where power is distributed equally among all citizens.

And some of that process we see it's still happening.

It's an ongoing process.

What you see today in the streets of big cities and towns in the United States today.

He says exactly the same thing happened in the realm of spirituality and philosophy in ancient India.

In the Vedas, you find there's a movement from the many Vedic gods to one God that there is one

supreme power which rules and controls the universe but at one point the Vedic

thinkers found even that intolerable and so the one personal god was quickly made into an impersonal principle which is distributed

throughout the universe, which is immanent in the universe, in every being, in everything, in everybody.

So from many gods to one God, one personal God, the supreme creator of the universe, two, an impersonal principle, an absolute,

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