Renowned Vedanta scholar and spiritual leader Swami Sarvapriyananda will visit Sydney this week, with a special public lecture at Western Sydney University on Sunday, August 23, exploring questions of identity, belonging and the deeper nature of the self.
The lecture, titled “Belonging in a Divided World – A Vedantic Perspective on Identity, Self, and Home,” will be held at 5pm at Sir Ian Turbott Hall, Western Sydney University’s Parramatta South Campus.
Swami Sarvapriyananda is a monk of the Ramakrishna Order and the Minister and spiritual leader of the Vedanta Society of New York. He is widely known for his accessible teachings on Advaita Vedanta, the non-dual philosophy that explores consciousness, self-knowledge and the nature of reality. He has also spoken at TEDx, Google and leading universities including Harvard.
He joined the order in 1994 and received sannyasa in 2004. He was a Nagral Fellow at Harvard Divinity School in 2019–20, where he was among the first Hindu monastics to participate in the university’s programme bringing Hindu thought into dialogue with other religious and academic traditions.
The Sydney lecture will examine what it means to belong in a world increasingly shaped by conversations around identity, migration, culture and difference. Drawing on Advaita Vedanta, Swami Sarvapriyananda will explore whether there is a deeper sense of identity beyond nationality, religion, race and ideology.
“Who am I? Where do I truly belong? What unites us beneath our differences?” are among the questions at the heart of the lecture, according to the organisers.
The event is being organised by the Vedanta Centre of Sydney, in association with the Hindu Council of Australia and Western Sydney University. Registration is currently available for the university lecture.
Swami Sarvapriyananda’s Sydney visit also includes a spiritual retreat and a separate talk at the Vedanta Centre of Sydney in Ermington on the morning of August 23. The Ermington event, titled “Perfection in Every Experience,” has already sold out.
A philosophy that travelled from India to the West
The Vedanta Society of New York has a remarkable history. Founded by Swami Vivekananda in 1894, it was the first Vedanta Society established in the West and became an important centre for introducing Indian spiritual philosophy to Western audiences. Today, it offers lectures, classes and discussions on Vedanta, reaching a global audience through its extensive online teachings.
Vedanta’s influence has also extended into the intellectual history of modern science. Erwin Schrödinger, one of the founders of quantum mechanics, engaged deeply with the Upanishads and Advaita Vedanta, particularly the idea of an underlying unity behind apparent multiplicity. Recent scholarship has documented how these ideas became part of Schrödinger’s philosophical reflections on consciousness and reality.
Nikola Tesla also engaged directly with Vedantic ideas through his meetings with Swami Vivekananda in New York in the 1890s, discussing concepts including Akasha and Prana and the relationship between matter and energy. Niels Bohr, meanwhile, is famously associated with the Upanishads, with the physicist quoted as saying that he went to the Upanishads “to ask questions” — a reminder of the intellectual dialogue that developed between modern physics and Indian philosophical thought.
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