Vedantist (or Vedantin) is the Anglicized term for an adherent to philosophy (or Vedanta) of the end section of the Vedas. Vedanta is a system of Jnana Yoga that attempts to guide the individual to englightenment. It is drawn from the Upanishads, considered the fundamental essence of all the Vedas, and some of the earlier Aranyakas. The three branches of Vedanta best known in the West are Advaita Vedanta, Vishishtadvaita, and Dvaita. In the West, it has not been necessary to take Hindu rites or identify oneself as a Hindu in order to be a philosophical Vendantist or Vedantin.

Other than Shri Adishankara, Shri Ramanuja and Shri Madhva, the founders of each of the three main Vedantic divisions, other important pre-modern Vedantins include Bhaskara, Vallabha, Caitanya, Nimbarka, Vacaspati Misra, Suresvara, and Vijnanabhiksu. In the modern period, Vedantins include Ramakrishna Paramahansa, Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo, and Sri Ramana Maharshi. These modern thinkers represent of the Advaita Vedanta school. Proponents of other Vedantic schools continue to write and develop their ideas as well, although their works are not as widely known outside of India.

While the traditional Vedic 'karma kanda', or ritualistic components of religion, continued to be practiced as meditative and propitiatory rites to guide society, through the Brahmins, to self-knowledge, more jnana- or knowledge-centered understandings began to emerge, mystical streams of Vedic religion that focused on meditation, self-discipline and spiritual connectivity rather rituals. In earlier writings, the Sanskrit word Vedanta simply referred to the Upanisads, the most speculative and philosophical of the Vedic texts. In the medieval period, the word Vedanta came to mean the school of philosophy that interpreted the Upanisads. Traditional Vedanta considered scriptural evidence, or sabdapramana, as the most authentic means of knowledge, while perception, or pratyaksa, and logical inference, or anumana, were considered to be subordinate.

Consistent throughout Vedanta is the exhortation that ritual be eschewed in favor of the individual's quest for truth through meditation governed by a loving morality, secure in the knowledge that infinite bliss awaits the seeker. Near all existing sects of Hinduism are directly or indirectly influenced by the thought systems developed by Vedantic thinkers. Hinduism to a great extent owes its survival to the formation of the coherent and logically advanced systems of Vedanta.

Otto Johann Maximilian Strasser (September 10, 1897 - August 27, 1974) was a German politician and left-wing member of the Nazi party who rejected Adolf Hitler's ideas and formed his own faction, along with his brother, Gregor Strasser.

Born in Bavaria, he took part in World War I and returned to Germany in 1919 where he served in the Freikorps that put down the Munich Soviet and also joined the Social Democratic Party. In 1920 he participated in the opposition to the Kapp Putsch. However, he grew increasingly alienated with the party's stand, particularly when it put down a worker's uprising in the Ruhr, and he left the party later that year. In 1925 he joined the Nazi Party, which his brother had been a member of for several years, and worked for its newspaper, Arbeiter Zeitung, as a journalist, ultimately taking it over with his brother. He took the socialist element in the party's programme seriously enough to lead a left-wing faction of the party in northern Germany with his brother Gregor and Joseph Goebbels. His faction advocated support for strikes, nationalisation of banks and industry, and closer ties with the Soviet Union. These policies were opposed by Hitler, and the faction was defeated at the Bamburg Conference (1926), with Joseph Goebbels joining Hitler. Humiliated, he nonetheless, along with his brother Gregor, continued as a leading Left Nazi until expelled by Hitler in 1930.

Following his expulsion, he set up his own party, The Black Front, composed of radical ex-Nazis, in an attempt to split the Nazi Party. His party proved unable to counter Hitler's rise to power in 1933, and Strasser spent the years of the Third Reich in exile. The Nazi Left itself was annihilated during the Night of the Long Knives in 1934 (in which his brother perished), leaving Hitler as undisputed party leader.

Strasser settled first in Switzerland in 1938 and then, in 1940, he went to Bermuda by way of Portugal, leaving a wife and two children behind in Switzerland. In 1941, he emigrated to Canada, settling for a time in Montreal. In 1942, he settled in Paradise, Nova Scotia, where he lived for more than a decade in a rented apartment above a general store under the pseudonym "Adolph Schmidt." He does not seem to have ever attempted to reestablish contact with his family or bring them over to live with him after the war.