Notes

Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902) was a disciple of Sri Ramakrishna and an Avatar in his own right. In 1951 He reincarnated in Sri Lanka as Swami Premananda (Benjamin Creme, Share International, Feb. 1983, p.16).

Ramakrishna sent Vivekananda on a mission to the United States, where He arrived in 1893 without money or a place to stay. In September of that year He addressed the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago. His opening line of "Sisters and Brothers of America", which was a departure from the usual "Ladies and Gentlemen", drew applause that lasted for two minutes.

In this book Swami Vivekananda gives His own commentary on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.

On Christmas Day 1899, during His second visit to the West, Swami Vivekananda lectured on "Christ's Message to the World." As Josephine MacLeod, one of His foremost friends and supporters, would later recount: "Perhaps the most outstanding lecture I heard was his talk on Jesus of Nazareth, when he seemed to radiate a white light from head to foot, so lost was he in the wonder and power of Christ. I was so impressed with his obvious halo that I did not speak to him on the way back for fear of interrupting, as I thought, the great thoughts that were still in his mind. Suddenly he said to me: 'I know how it is done.' I said, 'How what is done?' -'How they make mulligatawny soup! They put a bay leaf in it.' " (From: 'Glimpses of Vivekananda - Part VII' in the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center's Weekly Message No.23)

See also:
Alice A. Bailey (1927), The Light of the Soul
Charles Johnston (1921), Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
Swami Prabhavananda (1953), How to Know God

Links

• Online text
• .Pdf file
• Official Swami Premananda website