Returning Home to the Advaitic Self: Svāmī Rāma Tīrtha and His American Audiences

A recurring theme in the Advaita Vedānta traditions is the necessity of empirical purification through means such as the cultivation of virtues, the study of the Vedas, and so on, even though the transcendental self has never been subject to any form of bondage. The traditions seek to mitigate this paradox by employing the vocabulary of a shift across the ‘levels’ of truth—while the worldly self is, empirically speaking, moving towards the goal of realization, from the transcendental perspective, the self never loses its eternal nature. We will explore how Svāmı̄ Rāma Tı̄rtha (1873–1906) addressed this theme of the recovery of one’s essential self in his lectures to some American audiences between 1902 and 1904. Drawing on some of the vocabularies of Swami Vivekananda, who had presented a ‘Practical Vedānta’ to Western audiences in the late 1890s, Rāma Tı̄rtha developed an Advaitic form of self-realization that is practically engaged with the world and, according to him, is the spiritual quest of humanity across all boundaries.