Both Tesla and Vivekananda recognized that they had been pondering the same thesis on energy—in different languages, through different disciplines, and on different continents.+

Swami Vivekananda was a 19th-century spiritual leader in the philosophies of Vedanta and Yoga, and his contemporary, Nikola Tesla, was a scientist and inventor. Both men were, and remain, extraordinarily influential in their respective fields: Tesla in physics, and Vivekananda in Vedanta.

In 1893, Vivekananda traveled to America to hold lectures on Vedanta philosophy. He was the first known Hindu Sage to come to the West to introduce Eastern thought at the World’s Parliament of Religions, and by all accounts, he was a hit. The Swami impressed everyone who saw and heard him and became an in-demand guest at social gatherings.

As eminent personalities of the time, Swami Vivekananda and Nikola Tesla frequented the same social circles. According to an article by Toby Grotz, President of the International Tesla Society who organized and chaired two Tesla symposiums in the 1980s, the two men met at one of the soirees given by a famous actress, Sarah Bernhardt.**

Evidently, both Tesla and Vivekananda recognized that they had been pondering the same thesis on energy—in different languages, through different disciplines, and on different continents.

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Tesla was impressed with Vedanta's philosophy, understood the Sanskrit terminology, and believed it to be a good means to describe the physical mechanisms of the universe as he perceived it, while Vivekananda was keenly interested in scientific proof supporting Vedanta.**

After meeting the Swami and after continued study of the Eastern view of the mechanisms driving the material world, Tesla began using the Sanskrit words Akasha, Prana, and the concept of a luminiferous ether to describe the source, existence, and construction of matter.**

All perceptible matter comes from a primary substance, or tenuity beyond conception, filling all space, the akasha or luminiferous ether, which is acted upon by the life-giving Prana or creative force, calling into existence, in never-ending cycles all things and phenomena.” ~ Nikola Tesla, Man’s Greatest Achievement, 1907

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Tesla’s use of Vedic terminology provides a key to understanding his view of electromagnetism and the nature of the universe.

Today, the idea that everything in the universe is made out of energy is widely accepted by the scientific community. Physicists recognize that physical atoms are made up of vortices of energy that are constantly spinning and vibrating and that at its smallest observable level, matter is energy. Tesla was very much aware of this almost a century and a half ago, and his study of Vedanta and his friendship with Vivekananda helped to lead him to it.