Lectures from Colombo to Almora
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Some scanning errors (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand) · 1 illegible passage, excluded from answers
- Extent:
- ~170,000 words · 826 passages
Cite this work
- APASwami Vivekananda. (n.d.). Lectures from Colombo to Almora. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/swami-vivekananda/lectures-from-colombo-to-almora
- MLASwami Vivekananda. Lectures from Colombo to Almora. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/swami-vivekananda/lectures-from-colombo-to-almora.
- ChicagoSwami Vivekananda. Lectures from Colombo to Almora. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/swami-vivekananda/lectures-from-colombo-to-almora.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
The lectures Vivekananda gave travelling across India in 1897, on returning from his journey to the West, and the founding text of modern Indian cultural nationalism.
Context and history
In 1893 he had spoken at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago and had come back a public figure. These lectures — from Colombo to Almora, that is from south to north — were received as a national event, and what he says in them is twofold: to Indians, that their tradition is not a superstition to be given up but a body of thought the West has not yet understood; and at the same time, that India must learn organisation and science from the West, and that a religion which does not feed the hungry is worth nothing. Hence his formula that service to men is worship. It should be remembered that these are transcripts of speech, made to convince a particular audience.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
Once more history is going'lo repeat itself. For to-day, uiidci the blasting light of modern science, when old, ami appaienlly strong and invulnerable beliefs have been shattered to their very foundations, when special claims laid u[)on the allegiance of mankind by different sects have been all blown into atoms and have vanished into air — when the sledge-hammer blows of modem antiquarian reseaiches are pulverising like masses of porcelain all soils of antiquated oithodoxies —when leligion in the West is only in the hands of the ignorant, and liic knowing ones look down with scorn upon anything belonging to religion, here comes to the fore the philosophy of India, which displays the highest religious aspirations of the Indian mind, where llie grandest philosophical facts ha\e been the practical spirituality of the people. This natuially is coming to the rescue, the idea of the oneness of all, the Infinite, the idea of the Impersonal, the wonderful idea of the eternal soul of man, of the unbroken continuity in the inarch of beings, and the infinity of the universe. The old sects looked upon the wot Id as a little mud-puddle, and ihouglil that time began but the other day. It was iheic in our old books, and only theic that the gland idea of the infinite range of lime, space and causation, and above all, the infinite glory of the spirit of man governed all the seaich for religion. When the modern tremendous theoiies of evolution and con.…