A Lectures Series

Monthly Talks from August to November 2023

By Pravrajika Sridharaprana

Including PowerPoint Presentations and Q & A/ Discussion sessions

Join us in Vedanta Hall from 10.30 am for meditation, or join live via Zoom from 11 am: ZOOM (Link)

Talks recorded and uploaded later to the Vedanta Society of NSW YouTube Channel

Concluding Talk in the Series:

Program:

• Talk and PowerPoint Presentation on the Fourth Chapter of the Kena Upanishad:  Instructions about Brahman
• Questions/ Answers/ Discussion

‘THE struggle to overcome the animal impulses, the effort to release the mind from its thraldom to the senses, the endeavour to forge a pure will possessed of the capacity to turn the energies of body and mind in the direction of the divine Self within, this is what makes spiritual life a heroic endeavour. The heroes of the Spirit are the greatest heroes of history. In them, the long travail of human evolution achieves its consummation. Man the brute, becomes man the God.

From Swami Ranganathananda’s commentary on the fourth chapter of Kena Upanishad – Message of the Upanishads, pages 261 – 262.

THE KENA UPANISHAD

By whose mere presence does that desire arise, which moves the universe?

THROUGH a series of profound questions and answers the Upanishad leads us from the gross to the subtle, from effect to cause, seeking out the source of our being from self-consciousness to God-Consciousness.

The Upanishads:

Through introspection and meditation over thousands of years in India, countless renunciants – both men and women – discovered a Transcendent Reality within, more real and vibrant than the external world of the senses. Their wisdom was recorded in the Upanishads, the philosophical and religious texts of Hinduism.

“In the whole world, there is no study so beneficial and elevating as that of the Upanishads. It has been the solace of my life, it will be solace of my death.” Erwin Schrodinger, Nobel Prize Winner of Physics.

If all the Upanishads and all the other scriptures happened all of a sudden to be reduced to ashes, and if only the first verse in the Ishopanishad were left in the memory of the Hindus, Hinduism would live forever.

Mahatma Gandhi