Contemplating Consciousness - Swami Sarvapriyananda

Good afternoon, and thank you all for coming.

It is a great honor and a joy to introduce Swami Sarvapriyananda to you this evening, which is the greatest irony for today.

The one person on the planet who doesn't need an introduction gets an introduction.

[laughing]

But just in case you got off the boat from Borneo, this is for you.

Okay, so Swami Sarvapriyananda, as you prob- probably know already, is our current head of our Vedanta Society of New York, which is actually the first Vedanta society founded in this country by Swami Vivekananda himself.

And before that...

He started there in twenty seventeen, but before that, he was our beloved assistant here, and we fought like tigers to keep him here, but it didn't work.

So he's thriving in New York City, uh, which we're actually pretty happy about, as you know.

Uh, he was also a, a acharya at our monastic, uh, probationer training center at Belmarsh.

He was there for some years.

He is obviously a well-known speaker on Hinduism, on Vedanta particularly, and he's known around the world globally for his expertise in these matters.

Um, basically, you all know, he's the YouTube Swami.

Everybody knows him.

Okay.

[laughing]

So he is a speaker on TEDx, Google Talk, and many, many...

He's been s- uh, spoken in many, many universities around the world.

Um, he's also been engaged in af- fa- fascinating discussions with some of the world's leading thinkers, um, philosophers, scientists, AI guys, religious leaders, and, um, uh, he's been at the UN, of course.

He's also spoken to the for-- Oh, he's been there, done that, you know.

[laughing]

So he has-- he is our global representative of Vedanta.

Now, he has some publications, uh, some I didn't even know about.

One is Mahavakya: The Essence of Vedanta.

One I had heard, Fullness and Emptiness: Vedanta and Buddhism, and one which we sell right here in our bookstore because it's published by Vedanta Press, From Illusion to Infinity.

Nicely put together.

So may I introduce to you Swami Sarvapriyananda, who is speaking on contemplating consciousness.

Thank you.