Ralph Waldo Emerson was the first American to pioneer the serious exploration of Indian philosophy, and as his own thinking grew over time. Indian philosophy profoundly influenced the course of that growth. Emerson and the Light of India thoroughly investigates the ways in which the scriptures of India shaped the maturing Transcendentalism of this great American thinker. In addition, by analyzing in concrete detail the crucial ways in which the scriptures of India influenced Emerson's metaphysical development, Light of India repudiates the arguments of those who maintain that Emerson abandoned the optimistic faith of his youth. It makes plain that those who ascribe to Emerson a "Fall" from his early beliefs are demonstrably in error, primarily because of their serious misunderstanding of the influence, on Emerson, of Hindu and Buddhist teachings.
Robert C. Gordon received his B.A. from the University of Colorado at Boulder, his M.A. from the University of California at Santa Barbara, and his Ph.D. from Princeton University in the History of Religion. During his career, he has been a faculty member at the University of California at Santa Barbara and the University of New Mexico at Taos. He has also served as Research Associate with the School of American Research and the Museum of New Mexico. He currently teaches Psychology of Religion at the University of Oregon.
It is with great pleasure and delight that I write this brief foreword to Robert Gordon's definitive work on Ralph Waldo Emerson. There are countless works on Emerson, and I am familiar with most of them. However, none of those works explores the depth and breadth of the evolution of Emerson's thought. In keen contrast, Robert Gordon's book clearly traces the development of various strands of Emerson's thought and demonstrates that one of their most important origins was the great texts of the Hindu civilization, such as the Bhagavadgita, the Upanishads, the Vishnu Purana, the Bhagavata Purana, and so on. Gordon explicitly identifies all the concepts and propositions Emerson acknowledges having received from the Hindu texts, such as the doctrines of karma and rebirth, Maya, the non-dual reality of Atman/Brahman, and the need and possibility for each human being to be enlightened here and now, instead of looking for salvation as something to be attained as Heaven after death. Gordon exquisitely documents Emerson's conviction, in full accord with the Upanishads: that all beings, animate as well as inanimate, are manifestations of the divine spirit, Atman/Brahman. Gordon also makes clear that while Emerson himself admired and acknowledged the influence of the pre-Socratics and Plato on his own thinking, he believed that these great thinkers themselves obtained their profound insights from the Indian sages.
In an era of decreasing cross-cultural sympathy, Ralph Waldo Emerson is an inspiring counter-example- a man who devoted much of his life to studying the highest thoughts of other eras and cultures. He did his best to learn from, in his words, "the Bibles of the world, or the sacred books of each nation, which express for each the supreme result of their experience." Emerson was deeply influenced by this expansive reading, most profoundly by the wisdom of India. Since he was the first American to pioneer the serious exploration of Indian philosophy, a rather extensive literature on this subject has developed, and appropriately so. While these earlier studies are valuable and informative, they have contented themselves with chronicling the Indian sources that Emerson read, and drawing parallels between his Transcendentalism and the wisdom of India. None, however, has shown the crucial way in which the scriptures of India influenced Emerson's metaphysical development. That is, none has analyzed how Emerson's philosophy grew over time, and the vital ways in which Indian philosophy influenced the course of that growth. The purpose of Emerson and the Light of India is just that to investigate the ways in which the scriptures of India shaped Emerson's maturing Transcendentalism.
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