1:16 Swamiji, you might find it very interesting that in an assembly ( which could be monthly) of the contributor writers to the famous high brow bengali journal Parichay (such journals of the time used to take their cue from Eliot's Criterion) someone suggested the name of Vivekananda when it was felt that they would discuss an Indian philosopher. But Sudhindranath Datta, the editor and one of the most famous poets of the post Tagorean era, dismissed it saying academically speaking one cannot claim him to be a philosopher. Your classes as well as your book Vedantic Cosmopolitanism root out the terrible tradition of Vivekananda baiting that began in the intellectual practice of expressing such cartesian doubts! We eagerly await a great age of Vivekananda interpretation and scholarship .
It will be wonderful if Revered Maharaj takes a class on Swamiji's poem-'Gai Geet Sunate Tomay/ A Song I Sing to Thee', just like the class on " Sakhar Prati ". Thanks and Pranam🙏
Religion without books-- i think shruti is without a book? I think writing it down has come from the time of Veda Vyasa who probably codified it forcibly because of opposition from religions with script-ure? So puranas itihasa and whatever portion of the original shrutis that was needed to counter kali yuga,ie to go through kali yuga without losing track of the shruti, so we have a tradition of rituals, etc which are now jusr symbols of the original shruti ,till we surface up on the other side of the murky kali yuga. I think all religions are such symbolic only,representing a deeper truth which will eventually prevail.
