Your Thoughts on Vedanta?

[Rahul]

Will anyone care to offer some opinions on how they see the Vedanta tradition of explaining that which is termed as Brahman and our Self(Atman)?

These days, I see a lot of ascetic vein being used to attract people to this great tradition. It is not at all something which I like but some people are using too strong a logic to bring up as nihilist something which has a lot of meaning or give it a nihilist actualisation, at least.

Vedanta is the conclusion of the Vedic codex.

[Moody]

This can be related to Western Philosophy, as I take it that in the Vedanta the Brahman is 'the source of everything', and the Atman is 'the Self'.

As in Western Philosophy, at one extreme, some seek to completely indentify 'the Self' with 'the source of everything', while at the other extreme, some attempt to separate them almost as antagonists.

Asceticism can be used to repudiate the Self and so auto-obliviate into the All.
Or else asceticism can be seen as the Self's will-to-power exercising its tyranny not over the world, but over the Body.

[Rahul]

Or else asceticism can be seen as the Self's will-to-power exercising its tyranny not over the world, but over the Body.

That is very well-said. The tyranny is also visible, in a self-destructive manner, in Tantra.

The actual Vedanta is very coherent and simple for the Aryan mind to understand, in a purely racialist Aryan spirit. But not so with the Swami-based spiritual seeker's vedanta of civilisation.

There is truth in the Ramayan rather in the Gita or any bible.