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. Good morning.

In our series of lectures on Swami Vivekanan Das Gya Yoga, this is the third in that series.

Swami Vivekhan da delivered a series of talks in London in 1896, which became the bulk of the book, Gana Yoga. Today the text we are going to reflect upon is a talk called the absolute and manifestation. There is a phrase in English,

going off on the deep end. So I think it refers to in a swimming pool if you go to the deepest

part and jump into the deepest instead of going from the shallow to the deeper.

Swami Vivekanda starts this talk with the most difficult and most profound of all questions in Adwaita Vedantah.

How did the one become the many? And he says, the most difficult question in the philosophy of Adwaita is how did the one become the many?

What is this question?

Adwaita Vedantah says that there is one reality, though it appears to be a world of difference and multiplicity and plurality behind all this plurality.

Underneath this differentiation, there is oneness, one existence consciousness place.

So Brahman alone appearing as the many, that is the central teaching of Adwaita Vedant.

But then that begs the question that how did this one become the many?

Maybe there is Brahman, maybe there is existence consciousness place we do not know.

But what we do know is this world.

Here, look, 100 people, more than 100 people here, outside 7 billion people and and all the animals and plants and all the quasars and quarks and trillions of entities in this universe.

So how did this one Brahman become the many?

How did the infinite become the finite?

How did Brahman, the ultimate reality, become Jiva, Jagat Ishwara, to put it in Vedantic terms?

Jiva means us.

Jagat means this universe and Ishwara means God.

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