Swami Medhananda, Swami Vivekananda's Vedantic Cosmopolitanism

Swami Vivekananda and his teacher Sri Ramakrishna are probably the most influential of the Indian thinkers who introduced neo-Vedantin spirituality to the West at the end of the Nineteenth Century. In his lucid and accessible book, Swami Medhananda expounds Vivekananda’s philosophy, locating it in both the Indian and Western intellectual debates, and establishing his originality and enduring relevance. In this review, I shall endorse most of Medhananda’s conclusions but argue that Vivekananda’s philosophy tends to undermine his Vedantin spirituality. For it leads, I suggest, to a deflationary interpretation of the central thesis that the individual person is identical with Brahman/God.