This volume contains its author's lectures at the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture in his capacity as the Institute's Vivekananda Professor of Indology and Indological Research. The author deals with Swami Vivekananda's approach to four of our six systems of philosophy and his observations are based on Swamiji's references to them available in the eight volumes of his Complete Works. As a supplement to this material the author deals with Swami Vivekananda's approach to the Upanishads and the Bhagavadgita. Swami Vivekananda's ideas of comparative religion, his response to Western Indology, Western philosophy and his view of history are here discussed perhaps for the first time in some detail. The tenth chapter deals with Swami Vivekananda and his Master Sri Ramakrishna to show that Swamiji interpreted Vedanta in terms of the teachings of Sri Ramakrishna who was to him Vedanta's greatest human exemplar. The twelfth chapter deals with a theme on which a great deal has been written. The author has tried to define Swami Vivekananda's idea of universal religion with reference to his observations on it as available in his Complete Works.

About the Author:

Born in Kolkata in 1915, the author was educated in Kolkata and Oxford. He was Tagore Professor of Bengali, and Head of the Department of Modern Indian Languages and Dean, Faculty of Arts, Delhi University and retired as Director of the National Library in 1980. He has been Swami Vivekananda Professor of Indological Studies at the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, Kolkata, since April 1994.