Ralph Waldo Emerson, a nineteenth-century in the Unitarian minister who lectured on theology at Harvard University, was becoming increasingly disillusioned with aspects of Christian teaching that just didn't make sense to his active and inquiring intelligence. When he first began reading newly translated Indian scriptures like the Bhagavad Gita, the Hindu tradition hit him with the force of revelation. He wrote:
I owed a magnificient day to the Bhagavad Gita. It was the first of books, it was as if an empire spake to us, nothing or unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence which in another age and climate had pondered and thus disposed of the same questions that exercise us.
In part due to the mind-expanding influence of mystical Hinduism, Emerson went on to found the Transcendentalist movement in America. The Transcendentalists turned from unquestioning faith in the religious doctrines of their own culture to a more open and honest inquiry into direct spiritual experience.
No comments:
Post a Comment