Nandkumar M. Kamat
The National Youth Week, originally launched in 1995, will begin on January 12, the 163rd birth anniversary of Swami Vivekananda. I appeal to the readers of this column, especially young teachers and students, to read his complete works available free online to download.
In early 1896, Swami Vivekananda met Nikola Tesla in New York City. This encounter was neither ceremonial nor accidental. It did not take place on a public platform, nor was it framed as an interfaith exchange or philosophical dialogue for an audience. It occurred privately in a social setting, introduced by the celebrated French actress Sarah Bernhardt. Vivekananda himself thought the meeting important enough to record it in a letter dated February 13, 1896. This short letter remains the single most reliable account of what transpired between the two men—and it is remarkably precise.
Vivekananda wrote that Tesla was “charmed” on hearing about the Vedantic ideas of Prana, Akasha, and Kalpas. These were not explained to Tesla as religious beliefs or as metaphors. Vivekananda presented them as a cosmological framework: Prana as the universal energy underlying all motion and force; Akasha as the most subtle form of matter from which all physical forms arise; and Kalpas as cycles of manifestation and dissolution governing the universe. Tesla, according to Vivekananda, believed that these ideas were not only intelligible but also among the few theories that modern science could seriously consider.
The following is the most significant part of the letter. Tesla told Vivekananda that he believed he could mathematically demonstrate that force and matter were reducible to potential energy. Vivekananda noted that he would visit Tesla the following week to see this mathematical demonstration. He then added a sentence that leaves little room for misunderstanding: if Tesla succeeded, “the Vedantic cosmology will be placed on the surest of foundations.” This was not an expression of their faith. This was a conditional statement grounded in proof. Vivekananda did not claim that Vedanta had already been validated by science. He was not asking Tesla to accept Vedanta as a philosophy. He was waiting for the mathematics. If the demonstration fails, the claims will also fail.
Tesla’s confidence did not stem from metaphysical enthusiasm but from his own unresolved scientific struggles. By the mid-1890s, Tesla had already revolutionised electrical engineering. His work on alternating current systems, rotating magnetic fields, induction motors, high-frequency oscillators, and wireless transmission experiments made him one of the most prominent scientific figures of his time. However, he was increasingly dissatisfied with the conceptual foundations of physics. He believed that space was not empty, that energy was continuous and omnipresent, and that matter itself might be a secondary phenomenon—something produced by motion rather than an ultimate substance. Classical physics offered Tesla no satisfying framework for his intuitions. Ether theories were inconsistent and increasingly untenable thereafter. Matter was treated as a fundamentally solid state. Energy was treated as something that acted on matter rather than something from which matter might arise. Tesla suspected that this hierarchy had been reversed.
At this point, Vivekananda’s exposition of Vedantic cosmology became relevant. As Vivekananda explained, Akasha was not empty space but the most subtle form of matter—prior to atoms, prior to gross physical structure. Prana was not breath or vitality in a biological sense but the universal dynamic principle that acted upon Akasha to produce motion, differentiation, and form. Creation was not an event in time but an ongoing process, and dissolution was not annihilation but reversion to a subtler state. Tesla immediately saw parallels with his own thoughts. Vivekananda recorded that Tesla believed Prana and Akasha to be the only theories that modern science could entertain. This was not flattery. This reflects Tesla’s belief that existing European scientific categories were inadequate to explain what his experiments revealed. What he lacked was a way to express these ideas mathematically without collapsing them into speculation. The proposed mathematical reduction of force and matter to potential energy was the pivot for their exchange. Vivekananda clearly understood the stakes. If matter can be shown to be a form of energy, Vedanta’s claim that the material universe emerges from a subtler energetic reality would move from metaphysics into physics. That is why he placed so much weight on Tesla’s demonstration.
Tesla attempted to reduce the number of cameras but did not complete the task. From later reconstructions, it appears that he understood the concept of transformation—matter converting into energy—but did not arrive at the precise equivalence formalised by later physicists. Vivekananda never recorded that the demonstration was successful. No equation survives. No follow-up letter announced a breakthrough. Silence is telling.
However, the failure of this proof did not end intellectual exchange. The influence of Vedantic concepts, is evident in Tesla’s later writings. In a text written in 1907 and published posthumously, Tesla explicitly used the Sanskrit terms “Akasha” and “Prana” to describe the origin of matter. He wrote that all perceptible matter arises from a primary substance filling all space, acted upon by a creative force, forms matter through motion, and dissolves when motion ceases. This language is not incidental. Tesla deliberately chose Vedantic terms because he believed they captured physical realities that contemporary physics could not yet describe adequately.
It is important to note what neither man claimed to be. Vivekananda did not assert that Vedanta explained everything that science would ever discover. He was explicit that religion must submit to investigation and that any belief destroyed by reason deserved to be destroyed. Tesla did not claim that physics had become metaphysics. He sought structure, proof, and demonstration rather than spiritual consolation.
Equally important is what the documents do not reveal. There is no evidence of prolonged collaboration, joint publications, or sustained correspondence between Tesla and Vivekananda. The meeting appeared to be intense, but brief. Its importance lies not in the outcomes achieved but in the seriousness with which both men approached the problem. The equation Vivekananda was waiting for—establishing the equivalence of mass and energy—was published nearly a decade after his passing. By then, Tesla’s central role in physics had faded, and the opportunity for direct dialogue between Vedanta and modern physics had passed away. The connection Vivekananda hoped to forge remains incomplete. However, the meeting remains significant because it was unfinished. It shows Vivekananda not as a preacher seeking validation from science but as a thinker willing to subject his tradition to mathematical scrutiny. It shows Tesla not as a mystical eccentric but as a scientist prepared to look beyond inherited categories in search of deeper coherence.
As Swami Vivekananda’s 163rd birth anniversary is marked, this meeting deserves attention not for its symbolism but for its intellectual honesty. This reminds us that the most meaningful encounters between ideas are not those that end in agreement but those that insist on proof, accept failure, and leave questions open. More than a century later, in a world transformed by science and technology, this attitude may be the most enduring legacy of the evening when Nikola Tesla met Swami Vivekananda. With the 130th anniversary of this meeting approaching in February, its significance has only grown. For scientists, it serves as a reminder that unanswered foundational questions are important. For Vedanta students, it is a caution that philosophical insight must ultimately face evidence, not reverence.
