Saturday, January 13, 2007

Frederic Spiegelberg brought Haridas Chaudhuri to US

by rjon on Wed 10 Jan 2007 06:38 PM PST Permanent Link Keywords: CIIS
...Spiegelberg's interest encompassed all the world's traditions of religion and philosophy:
"I had contact with many Indians, but none of them has made such an impression as the reading of the books of Sri Aurobindo, which I did in Stanford University, where I started teaching in 1942. This led to my eventual visit to India on a Rockefeller grant in 1948 and '49, where I was fortunate enough to have the darshan of Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry." -- Frederic Spiegelberg
Spiegelberg also discussed philosophy with Ramana Maharshi and had extensive correspondence with Sivananda. Gainsborough's proposal intrigued Spiegelberg, and he set about the task of assembling a distinguished international faculty for the exciting and important project:
"When I was asked by Mr. Gainsborough of the Login Corporation to help him establish a center of Asian studies, I was immediately thinking about calling a first-rate man from Aurobindo's Ashram to join me in this work. After quite a bit of correspondence with the Ashram, one suggested Dr. Haridas Chaudhuri, who was then head of the Philosophy Department at Krishnagar College in Bengal to come to join me in this venture in the Academy of Asian Studies: "The question was brought to Sri Aurobindo himself, who approved of Chaudhuri's coming to us with the word "Acha" (of course!)." -- Frederic Spiegelberg
Two months later, in December of 1950, Sri Aurobindo died.
"Aurobindo is the guiding spirit of this earth and the prophet of our age. I believe that the last most important contribution that Sri Aurobindo made before passing was to send you here." -- Letter from Spiegelberg to Haridas Chaudhuri

No comments:

Post a Comment