The great spiritual masters all seem to say that it’s God’s will alone—Thy will be done. It is God’s will which is working through everything, not ours.
There is no origin of this universe—no cessation, no creation, nor destruction of this universe. There is nobody who is in bondage. There is nobody who is a spiritual seeker who is doing spiritual practices. There is nobody who is seeking liberation, and indeed nobody who is liberated. This is the ultimate truth.
What is Vedanta? It is the source of spiritual knowledge called the Upanishads … In a secondary sense, the texts themselves are called Vedanta. In a primary sense, the spiritual knowledge that we get from the Upanishads is Vedanta … If there is one text that is associated with Hinduism, it is the Bhagavad Gita … The Bhagavad Gita is basically the essence of the teachings of the Upanishads … These three—the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Brahma Sutras—are together called the triple canon or the triple foundation of Vedanta.
The spiritual journey of Vedanta is not a journey in space. It’s not a journey from one place to another … Vedanta is not a journey in time. You are not waiting for something to happen … Vedanta is not there. It’s not then. It’s here and now.
What is Vedanta? Swami Vivekananda would say two things: the divinity within us, and the oneness of existence … Vivekananda used Advaita Vedanta as a foundation for morality. What Swami Vivekananda said was, because it is one reality, if I hurt somebody else, if I cheat somebody else, if I lie to somebody else, I am hurting myself in the deepest sense … Swami Vivekananda has said that he who runs away from the world to meditate and die in a Himalayan cave searching for God has missed the way. He who plunges headlong into the vanities of the world—he too has missed the way. Then what is the way? The way is to spiritualize your everyday life … We should realize ourselves as pure consciousness—Turiya—and everyone and everything as none other than the same Turiya, and live life in peace and fullness and joy. Realize the divinity within yourself and the spiritual oneness of the whole universe. Manifest that divinity in daily life through peace, love, and service to all beings. That is the spiritualization of everyday life.