Advaita (non-duality)

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Continuing on the theme of Advaita or knowledge of the 'Self'

>From the talk by Swami Vivekananda given in New York in 1896

 

 

"Sometimes a sick man lying on his bed may hear a tap on the door. He

gets up and opens it and finds no one there. He goes back to bed, and

again he hears a tap. He gets up and opens the door. Nobody is there.

At last he finds that it was his own heartbeat which he fancied was a

knock at the door. Thus man, after this vain search after various

gods outside himself, completes the circle, and comes back to the

point from which he started-the human soul, and he finds that the God

whom he was searching in hill and dale, whom he was seeking in every

brook, in every temple, in churches and heavens, that God whom he was

even imagining as sitting in heaven and ruling the world, is his own

Self. I am He, and He is I. None but I was God, and this little I

never existed".