Vivekananda here maintains one more aspect of jnana-yoga, which especially Vedanta taught. He says that jnani should not mere think or realizes the spark of divinity in him. He is rather the whole of Divinity. Atman is not mere spark that got detached from the divine Brahman; that would mean that Atman and Brahman are two realities, which goes against the one, unique ultimate reality stand of Vedanta. To make Atman and Brahman one, it is necessary therefore that the two should stand on equivalent relation. Therefore, Vivekananda asserts that not just a spark, but the whole of Brahman exists in Atman just like the whole of sun is reflected in each dew drop, and not just one or two rays of it. A jnani thus realize that he is no different from Brahman, and therefore, all the immortality properly belongs to him. With the dawn of this realization, fear of death will go away, and he would realize his true self. The moment these self-realization dawns, man becomes liberated. Vivekananda called such a man jivanmukta – one who is liberated while living, in this very life.

          Vivekananda found the great lesson of jivanmukti taught in Gita who he called a commentary on Vedas. That great lesson is that the, “battle of spirituality must be fought out in this life; so we must not flee from it, but rather compel it to give us all that it holds.”³⁴ A jivanmukta in this spirit is one who has fought the battle and has won it; the battle of rising above the senses, attaining knowledge of his essential unity with Brahman, and self-realization in the end. In the same spirit, jnana condemns renunciation or ascetism – we cannot realize our true self by migrating to forests and doing penances. This will only inflict pains on our bodies, but that way, too, we would be still sticking to our bodies and jnana is about rising above our bodily pleasures and pains, which can be done while living in domestic life also. The trick is to live in the world, but in detached way such that outer elements, actions or events have no effect on us. Vivekananda gives the marks of a true jnani as – sense-control, patience, courage to suffer anything without complaints, an intense longing for freedom, knowledge that reality is only one and ‘rationality. A jnani not just meditates blindly on any truth, he critically reflects on it and then accepts it as truth. He denies everything but his Self which he realizes as no different from Brahman. By his will and reason, he attains knowledge and liberation in the end. The nature of self that jnani realizes is satchitananda – existence, knowledge and bliss.