At the Parliment of World Religions, Swami Vivekananda learned about Christian Science and made commentary on it, what he said I don't know but it is recorded in the book Mary Baker Eddy, Years of Authority by Robert Peel, this commentary seemed to correlate Vedanta with Christian Science. Vivekanada also believed in spritual healing of the body but discouraged his followers from using it so that they could learn from the trials of their illness. Whatever his response, this shows that Vedanta is a fraud like Christian Science, it does not promote spiritual healing and likely Vivekananda discouraged it so as to hide this fact. However, infact, according to Vivekananda. net, there is a quote where Vivekananda said he used Christian Science to heal a cold and insomnia.
https://search.csbibliography.org/annotations/swami-vivekananda-and-christian-science/
“Swami Vivekananda and Christian Science”
Peidle, Joseph. “Swami Vivekananda and Christian Science.” Global Vedanta 25, no. 2 (2020): 5-8.
Peidle provides a vignette of Swami Vivekananda’s relationship with Christian Science. Vivekananda was a Hindu monk, philosopher, and chief disciple of the Hindu mystic Sri Ramakrishna. Vivekananda was a sensation at the 1893 World Parliament of Religions where he introduced Hinduism and Yoga to the West. This Parliament was also where he learned about Christian Science, as documented by Robert Peel in his biography of Mary Baker Eddy, Years of Authority (51). For the Parliament, Eddy had prepared a speech which her student Judge Hanna delivered. Peidle quotes from that speech, Eddy’s writings and Vivekananda’s correspondence to illustrate the resonance between Vedanta and Christian Science. Vivekananda saw spiritual healing as possible but did not encourage its practice in his students. But while suffering from ill health, he would observe: “I got one great benefit out of it [suffering] inasmuch as I came to know I have really no disease except worry and fear” (7). Later he would counsel: “Instead of materializing the spirit, that is, dragging the spiritual to the material plane, … convert the matter into spirit, catch a glimpse at least, every day, of that world of infinite beauty and peace and purity—the spiritual” (8).
ISSN: 1089-6902
https://www.speakingtree.in/blog/pioneering-lives-intersect-swami-vivekananda-mary-baker-eddy
The year was 1893. The occasion was the Parliament of the World’s Religions, widely viewed as the birthplace of formal interreligious dialogue. The location was the American city of Chicago.
A young monk from India felt this would be the perfect forum to present Vedanta teachings to the world. It would also be an opportunity to raise money to fund his mission to educate and uplift the poor in India. So he set off on the long voyage to America.
Many readers may be familiar with this story and with other accomplishments of this monk, Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902). His speech at that first World’s Parliament of Religions is considered to have been instrumental in introducing Hinduism to the western world. Following this well-received speech, he spent almost four years teaching and lecturing in eastern USA and London before returning to India in 1897.
What readers may not know is that he wasn’t the only religious pioneer to be represented at the inaugural Parliament of 1893. A written address was presented by Mary Baker Eddy (1821-1910)
So who was Mary Baker Eddy and why was her speech featured at the Parliament?
One of the most well-known women in America at that time, Mary Baker Eddy’s multi-faceted career would be considered remarkable even by today’s standards - healer, author, publisher, discoverer, church founder, lecturer, teacher. And all this at a time when women in America could not even vote!
That all came about as a result of a decades-long search for spiritual solutions to her own and others’ health problems.
Not finding a permanent remedy for her illnesses in the healing systems of the day, she constantly turned to the Bible searching for an understanding of the connection between spiritual well-being and practical well-being. And 150 years ago, in 1866 - at a time of great need - it was there in the Scriptures that she finally got a glimpse of the link she had been looking for - an idea that resulted in her “immediate recovery” from a near-fatal injury.
As she later wrote, this experience “was the falling apple that led me to the discovery how to be well myself, and how to make others so.” The understanding she gained from further Bible study, of God as universal, infinite, divine Love causing no evil, was a rule that could be consistently applied to bring healing. She named her discovery Christian Science and explained it in a book called Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, first published in 1875.
Like Swami Vivekananda, Mary Baker Eddy too felt the need for an organization that would carry forward her mission of healing to the world. While he founded the Ramakrishna Mission to forward the Vedanta principles, she founded The First Church of Christ, Scientist in Boston, Massachusetts. She also founded a publishing business as well as the Pulitzer prize-winning newspaper, The Christian Science Monitor.
Most of Swami Vivekananda’s work in America was centered in the Boston/New York area. So it was almost inevitable that he would have come into contact with Christian Science, which was a rapidly growing religious movement at that time. And, indeed, he did.
As someone who has found healing through the study of Christian Science, I was very interested to learn that Swami Vivekananda not only encountered it, but tested its healing claims. In a letter addressed to Miss Mary Hale of Boston on 13th September 1894, he had this to say:
“Everything so far is not going bad with me except that I had a bad cold. Now I think the fellow is gone. This time I tried Christian Science for insomnia and really found it worked very well.” (http://www.vivekananda.net/kn- ownletters/1894Aug_Dec.html)
Mo- re than a century later, the work of these pioneers continues through the world-wide organizations they established. What great examples of spiritual vision, persistence, selfless labor, and a genuine desire to bless the world!
Photos:
Mary Baker Eddy by H. G. Smith.Panyd [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Swami Vivekananda at the Parliament of the World's Religions (1893) by Thomas Harrison [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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