- .... -~-·· ---- -~-~-. -· --. -· ·------~------~-·--~-~-*-·----~----~----·····"'·-.-·-~·-·--·---~------~-··i '

CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE

THE WORLD AS ILLUSION \\ EMERSON'S AMERICANIZATION ·oF MAYA

A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English by Rose Marian Shade [.

I I

May, 1975 The thesis of Rose Marian Shade 1s approved:

California State University, Northridge May, 1975

ii _,---- ~---'"·------~------·· .... -· - ... ------······. -·- -·-----··- ··------·--···---··-·-··------: CONTENTS

Contents iii Abstract iv Chapter I THE BACKGROUND 1 II INDIAN FASCINATION--HARVARD DAYS 5 III ONE OF THE WORLD'S OLDEST RELIGIONS 12 IV THE EDUCATION OF AN ORIENTALIST 20 v THE USES OF ILLUSION 25 Essays Nature 25 History 28 The Over-Soul 29 Experience 30 Plato 32 Fate 37 Illusions 40 Works and Days 47 Poems Hamatreya 49 Brahma 54 Maia 59 VI THE WORLD AS ILLUSION: YANKEE STYLE 60 VII ILLUSION AS A WAY OF LIFE 63

NOTES 70 BIBLIOGRAPHY 77

iii I

I

ABSTRACT

THE WORLD AS ILLUSION EMERSON'S AMERICANIZATION OF MAYA

by Rose Marian Shade Master of Arts in English May, 1975

One of the most important concepts that Ralph Waldo Emerson passed on to America's new philosophies and religions was borrowed from one of the world's oldest systems of thought--Hinduism. This was the Oriental view of the phenomenal world as Maya or Illusion concealing the unity of Brahman under a variety of names and forms. This thesis describes Emerson's introduction to Hindu thought and literature during his college days, reviews the_concept of Maya found in Hindu scriptures, and details Emerson's deepened interest and wide reading in Hindu philosophy in later life. The major portion of the thesis demonstrates how Emerson incorporated the concept of Maya into his essays :and poems, with an examination of the prose works Nature,

iv ,.------·--··------·--- .. -- .. . -·· ... . . ·-·--·---·--·· ...... -...... -~-- -· ..... ---· .. ---: -·-· ------····- ·-----·--- . ····------····------··--- -···----, 11 11 11 11 11 I"History, . The Over-Soul, "Experience, Plato, " "Fate, " l I "Illusions," and "Works and Day's, " ·and the poems l "Hamatreya," 11 Brahma," and "Maia." The Hindu sources of I ' jthe ideas in the poems are particularly stressed as well I las the manner in which Emerson used this material. I The thesis then describes how Emerson Americanized the concept of Maya in his own philosophy, taking what 1appealed to him from Hinduism and transmuting it to suit I !his own ideas. The final chapter deals with the practical I application of this philosophy to Emerson's own life.

v r·_, ______,_, ______~------~~ I~ I,

Chapter I

THE BACKGROUND

One of the remarkable phenomena of nineteenth- ' I century America was the infusion of Hindu thought into I practical Puritanical, Yankee New England. And no j East Indi: merchant imported more Orientalism than Ralph Waldo Emerson, who, writing in "India ink," indelibly l! I impressed his thought upon American literature, philosophy/ and "new" religions. One of the most important concepts that he passed on through his essays, lectures, and poems to America's ·new philosophies and religions was a concept gleaned from one of the world's oldest systems of thought--Hinduism. This was the view of the world of matter as Maya or Illusion concealing the unity of Brahman under a variety of names and forms. This infusion of Hindu philosophy into-a Christian setting can best be illustrated in his essays "Plato," "Experience," "Fate," "Illusions" and "Works and Days," and in his poems "Hamatreya," "Brahma," and "lVIaia." The way in which Emerson borrowed from Hindu mythology and scriptures and Americanized Maya makes an interesting story, illustrative of the American penchant for putting foreign resources to practical use.

1 2_ -..-:----·--········ -······-······ ...... · ...... -·------·----:·· ...... --- .... r Emerson's Transcendental phllosophy, whlch was to ! . become the leading intellectual movement of the 1830s, l l found few of its mystical roots in native soil. Born I May 25, 180J, the son of a Unitarian minister, Emerson was: I I j reared in sharp-eyed, down-to-earth Yankee New England,

j where he was exposed to a rationalistic type of Christi­ l anity that had veered away from mysticism. He was also l! exposed at an early age to the harsh reality of the I I phenomenal world with the death of his father, Dr. William! Emerson, who left the family penniless. Emerson's widowed mother was left with five sons to rear and educate in the manner expected for gentlemen's! sons in those days. It was not easy, but the boys' Aunt I I I Mary Moody Emerson, a free~ranging thinker herself, became! r a guiding intellectual mentor, exposing young Waldo to !

ll_ ideas and concepts from her own wide reading. One of I these would be Hinduism. I 1 The Harvard education traditional to his family I 1 was somehow provided for Emerson and his brothers and the I shy, serious and unworldly young man followed family I I tradition a few steps further into Harvard Divinity Schooli and the pulpit of the Unitarian ministry. I When in 1832 his own emerging individualism caused'' Emerson to resign his Boston pastorate and retire to Concord, he was soon launched upon a career as essayist, philosopher and lecturer that was to make him one of the most influential literary men of his day. 3 r~~s:c-:~:::~:~::-:::i~:::i::t~~~~:~;!:~n d::~:: ::::son. s I followed, he and such literary and philosopher friends I ! as Henry David Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, Orestes Brownson, i George Ripley, and Margaret Fuller, were to turn the town

of Concord, Mass., into the center of the Transcendenta~ list movement in America. An interest in the Hindu religion was mutually shared by several in the group, but Emerson was the leading disseminator of its concepts. The Transcendental movement had originally developed as a revolt against historical Christianity during the l8JOs among various Boston Unitarian clergymen who quested for a more authentic religious experience. They rejected form, creeds, rites and verbal explanations I

in favor of a direct mystical encounter with truth and theiI universe. 1 Throughout his writings, Emerson formulated his own ideas of the nature of the reality he himself encountered, but guiding his intuition always were the ideas and philosophical theories he had gleaned eclecti­ cally from his wide reading. Influences upon Emerson and Transcendentalism included contemporary German idealism, Plato, the Neo- platonists, the Swedish mystic, Emanuel Swedenborg, as well as Oriental mysticism. Emerson was among the first major authors of the modern, Western world to read and assimilate the Hindu and other Oriental literatures being. 4

r·------· ·-- ··~ ..... ·-- ·----· ·------··- -· -~----· --···· ...... - .. -·--·· ... . . - . ···-·· ·-· -· --··- ...... ------··--·- --···------·~------, l translated for the first time into European languages by i ! scholars of his day. Gradually throughout his life, he I assimilated and incorporated this Oriental idealism with I i I Western thought. Historically, it has been said, this was perhaps his greatest distinction. 2 Even before Emerson delved seriously into Hindu I thought, he had been indirectly influenced in this I direction by the writings of the Neoplatonists Plotinus, I Hermes Trismegistus, Porphyry, Proclus, Synesius, and I I Jamblichus, who had been translated by Thomas Taylor. These Alexandrian philosophers, half Greek and half Oriental in their concepts, combined Platonic idealism with a strong tinge of Oriental mysticism.3 Because his reading of such Hindu scriptures as the Bhagavad Gita did not take place until the 1840s when his first two books had been published and the major premises of his philosophy established, the Oriental influ~tice upon Emerson's work has not ·been sufficently stressed. It can be shown, however, that Emerson was Ii I acquainted with the Hindu concept of the world as 11. 1 us1on: . I during his college years. Additionally, it has been revealed in recent years that Emerson was probably already; j an "Orientalist" by the age of eighteen and that many articles on India and translations of Hindu scriptures were available to him through copies of The Edinburgh Review he borrowed from libraries between 1820 and 1825. 4 Chapter II

INDIAN FASCINATION--HARVARD DAYS

Emerson's serious study of Hindu beliefs probably came through correspondence with his Aunt Mary, but there were influences at Harvard as well. As early as 1820, passages from Emerson's Journals begin to show an interest I in the Orient, guarded at first by his initial aversion to I what he seemed to view as a strange heathen religion, fullll of superstition. While still a college junior in his seventeenth year, Emerson wrote: The ostentatious ritual of India which wor­ I

shipped God by outraging nature, though softened !J as it proceeded West, was still too harsh a discipline for Athenian manners to undergo. 1 But a fascination for the East was evidently felt by Emerson as well, as subsequent passages record. Shortly after he had heard Edward Everett mention the

1 Orient in a lecture in 1820, Emerson wrote: "As we go back, before the light of tradition comes in, the veil drops. 'All tends to the mysterious East.'"2 Not long after that, Emerson's further knowledge of the subject was evidenced by his mention in the Journals of "the Indian doctrine of eye fascination," and a little later, he recorded a romantic fantasy in which he imagined himself as "a pampered child of the East."3 But the first really significant entry came a few

5 6

' r"-~-~~--~~--~~-~--,·~-----·· --- -~----~---~--~"~~---'"-- --~-- -- ···--- · -- ~--~------~------·- ·----~------· ------.. -----·-~-Y···--·- ~-----~------~---~--. ~------· ~-----, I months later. In expressing his thoughts on God, Emerson : l concluded with a passage of poetry from the works of Sir William Jones, famed Orientalist, who was founder of the Royal Asiatic Society. In Jones's "Hymn to Narayena," the concept of Maya distilled from Hindu scriptures is clearly stated, showing how early this all-important doc- trine influenced Emerson's young mind. In summing up his discussion of God, Emerson wrote:

I . I know nothing more fit to conclude the remarks ! which have been made in the last pages than certain pagan strains. Of dew-bespangled leaves and blossoms bright Hence1 vanish from my sight, Delusive pictures; unsubstantial shews1 My soul absorbed, one only Being knows, Of all perceptions, one abundant source, Hence every object, every moment flows, Suns derive their force, Hence planets learn their course; But suns and fading worlds I view no m~re, God only I perceive, God only I adore! In a study of young Emerson's Orientalism while at Harvard, Kenneth Walter Cameron has shown that there was ample opportunity for Emerson to come in contact with Hindu philosophy at the college. One of the required textbooks, Dugald Stewart's Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, presented the similarities and contrasts between Bishop Berkeley's Ideal Theory and the transcen­ dentalism of the Hindus, quoting from Sir William Jones and citing his "Hymn to Narayena." This was undoubtedly the source of the poem which made such an impression on Emerson.5 . t ' 7

--~,--~ ~ .... ----Th-~t -th~·. -;~ii~-g~- ~;:~···;i~ ~ ·-~~;~-~---~f:--;·-g~;{~r~l·------~~ interest in Oriental themes was shown by the topic assigned Emerson by the faculty on March 7, 1821. He was 1 to write a poem of 100 lines entitled "Indian Superstition'.' I for an exhibition to be held the following April 24. 6 I Emerson wrote his Aunt Mary on April 7, 1821, urging her to attend the Exhibition, probably because of her interest in the Orient. Cameron cites a number of Il books which Emerson was known to have read from 1818 to I 1821, which would have familiarized him with East Indian lore, and which may well have been recommended to him by his aunt~ 7 One of the most important influences on Emerson's "Indian Superstition" was a prize-winning poem about India by Charles Grant, fellow of Magdalen College, Cambridge, which was entitled "Poem on the Restoration of Learning in the East." This poem, which according to Cameron, probably served as a model for Emerson, summarized Hindu philosophy, presenting clearly the con- cept of Maya: 'Tis all delusion: Heaven and earth and skies, But air-wove images of lifeless dyes. HE only lives--Sole Being--None beside-­ The Self-existing, Self-beatify'd: All else but wakes at Maya's fairy call; For All that is, is not; or God is All. ·- Ask. . the poor Hindoo if material things Exist: pe answers, Their existence springs From mind within, that prompts, protects, provides, And moulds their beauties, or their terrors guides.8 8

~-··--·-· ... _, ...... -...... --··· ...... ---·----·------.. ·---"-·------·--.--l Emerson's own poem de~lt·more briefly and indirectt i ly than Grant's with Indian beliefs in the delusiveness of! the phenomenal world, certainly not in a way that would I I indicate his later interest. In "Indian Superstition," I he speaks of "bewildered fancies" in the Hin.du scriptures and "fancy's cheated eye." To Emerson·at that stage, Indian lore was far from inspirational, as passages from his poem show: Far oer the East where boundless Ocean smiles, And greets the wanderer to his thousand isles, Dishonoured India clanks her sullen chain, And wails her desolation to the main. To her dark land the banded fiends resort, And Superstition crowds his haggard court. The bloated monster gluts his hellish brood, Gorging his banquet with the people's blood. • • • The wealth which toiling ages proudly piled, To build an ark of honour undefiled, Where distant times might lift the song of praise, And men commend their sires in loud-voiced lays Was vainly hoarded on the plundered plains Where guilty gods have reared unholy fanes. In such wild worship to mysterious powers The Indian stands in Ganges' holy bowers On the hot sands where human nature fails With Vishnu's aid he braves the fiery gales. His cany hut on beds of lotus reared, The groves of palm where Brahma was revered, Soft though they seem to fancy's cheated eye,-­ These yield no shelter to the brave that die~ The poem goes on to allude to the degradation of the lowest caste in India, and envisions the freedom of democracy coming at last to India.9 By the following year, when Emerson discussed Hinduism in a letter to his Aunt Mary, he was still interested, but still very much the proper young Unitarian, 9 r·------·-"·-,·------...... ,...... -- ...... _.------...... ______, ______...... _ .... , ...... ------.----, !looking upon the idolatrous East with a condescending j 1 j missionary eye: Boston, June 10, 1822 ••• I am curious to read your Hindoo mythologies. One is apt to lament over indolence and ignorance, when he reads some of these sanguine students of the Eastern antiquities, who seem to think that all the books of knowledge and all the wisdom of Europe twice-told lie hid in the treasures of the Bramins and the volumes of Zoroaster. When I lie dreaming on the possible contents of pages as dark to me as the characters on the seal of Solomon, I console myself with calling it learning's ElDorado. Every man has a fairyland just beyond the compass of his horizon: the natural philosopher yearned after his Stone; the moral philosopher for his Utopia; the merchant for some South Sea speculation; the mechanic for perpetual motion; the poet for -- all unearthly things, and it is very natural that literature at large should look for some fanciful stores of mind which surpassed example and possibility. I know not any more about your Hindu convert than I have seen in the Christian Register and am truly rejoiced that Unitarians have one trophy to build up on the plain where the zealous Trini­ tarians have builded a thousand • • • . 10 Rammohun Roy, whom Cabot and others have assumed the Hindu convert to be, has been suggested as a possible early influence on Emerson and the Transcendental move- ment in New England. Roy, a Hindu born in 1774, devoted his life to religious reform in his native country, refuting the prevailing modes of polytheistic faith. In 1816, Roy established a society dedicated to spreading the gospel of monotheism elaborated in the Vedanta and the Upanishads. With a broad eclecticism, Roy later strove to find the common basis underlying all religions The views of his society coincided with many views of 10

r------'" ------.------.----- . ------. --- ...... - .. ------. ------.. :------~------. I Emerson and Thoreau.ll . - -l Roy's religion was based on nature and intuition, respected religious truths in any book, believed the I i religious condition of man was progressive, that all true 1 religions were fundamentally the same, believed in one Supreme God with personality and moral attributes, but not in earthly incarnations of God, believed in immor- tality, providential care, love and worship, but that worship did not depend upon time, place, pilgrimages, relics or penances. 12 Roy's activities had been hailed in New England during Emerson's _college days by the Christian Register,· a Unitarian journal, on three different occasions. Especially his controversy with English Trinitarian missionaries in India was dealt with, and the fact that the Unitarians finally established a society of their own in Calcutta. This is what Emerson probably refers to in his letter. 13 According to Christy's list of Emerson's early reading, he was known from library records to have borrowed a copy of Roy's translation of a Vedic scripture in 1820, probably recommended to him by his Aunt Mary. Entitled Translation of the Ishopanishad, One of the Chapters of the Yajur Veda: According to the Commentary of the Celebrated Shankar-Acharys; Establishing the UD_ltY and Incomprehensibility of the Supreme Being, the boo-­ published in Calcutta in 1816, presents a portion_of the 11

r::~:~~::i::;!:f::::s:::~:::i-~:~~nt~cy .-;~;i~;bi~··--~---1

I In any case, there is ample evidence to establish I that Emerson was well exposed to Orientalism during his college years. -----·-.··-····----· •• --.~·-· -·- ·---- . ·-· .. --- ..... ·--· ·-·-· .------·-····------...... "-'" ..... ··- - .. .. ·····-·. -- - >»"•- ...... _:____ ·----·------··------'-----~, { I Chapter III

ONE OF THE WORLD'S OLDEST RELIGIONS l The climate in which Emerson formed an interest in! the Hindu religion was particularly favorable. New England was ripe for Oriental imports. Wealthy Boston I shipowners and East India merchants were filling their ! mansions with exotic chests and objects of art and contributing greatly to American curiosity regarding Oriental customs and philosophies. As early: as the 1790s, books from Calcutta had begun to reach Boston, mostly popularizations of Hindu thought such as the works of Sir William Jones, president of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. Among the Boston literati who found the Orient intriguing was Emerson's father, the Reverend William Emerson, who as editor of the Monthly Anthology and Boston Review had printed articles about India and translations as early as 1804. Magazines available in Boston during Emerson's early I I years such as the Edinburgh Review, the Christian Observer; of London, the North American Review, and The Christian l Disciple and the Theological Review printed articles about Hindu customs, stories about the Hindu reformer Roy and reprints of works by Sir William Jones. 1 Thus the bustling new democracy was exposed to

12 13

f"" -----~--·c····~·-·------·- ·····•·· .. -, ...... ----·------··-- ...... ------... ------·--- ...... --·-· --- ...... ------.. ., I one of the world's oldest religions. Although the first l translation of a work directly from Sanskrit into English --Charles Wilkins' version of the Bhagavad Gita--had been 1 published in 17 8 5, 2 few Bostonians had as yet read the Hindu scriptures themselves. Emerson and his fellow Transcendentalists did not delve seriously into these books until at least the 1830s and 40-s. But out of the darkness of antiquity, a knowledge of Hinduism was emerging. The Western world was learning of the vast influence of the socio-religious organism I that claimed hundreds of millions of followers in India I and other Asian countries. In spite of the inroads into I India of other religious bodies such as Muslims, Sikhs, I Jains, Parsis, Buddhists, Jews and Christians, Hinduism I had maintained its hold from the earliest days. Unlike Christianity, Islam, or Buddhism, Hinduism had no single founder. Its main spiritual source stemmed from a body of very ancient and anonymous revealed scrip­ tures called the Vedas. These, in turn, had their origin in even older hymns of worship sung for centuries by the Aryan nomads who came to India about the time that Moses was leading the Israelites out of Egypt.3 The most ancient Vedic teachings are called shruti' or "that which was heard," while later works are des- cribed as smriti or "that which was remembered." The four sacred Vedas are Hinduism's primary scriptures, with the Rig Veda generally accepted as the oldest text of the 14

-···- --·.·"-.. -...... --- ···-··· ...... ··-· ..... ······ .. ·-·- ...... _..... ··-. ····------···---······--··········-········-----··'·1 world's living religions. It contains many hymns and i 1prayers, including·an ancient song of worship with which ) 4 I Hindus still greet the morning sun. I ! Next came the Upanishads, Hindu scriptures that I l attempt to explain by parables the relationship of the atman or individual soul with the brahman or universal soul. Brahman, the supreme principal of life should not be confused with Brahma, one of the mythological triad of gods including Vishnu, Shiva and Brahma, and Brahmin, the elite of the Indian caste system. There are thirteen principal Upanishads, dating from I 1000 to 100 B.C. During twenty-five centuries, Hindus I have systemized the Upanishads into various schools called! I. darsanas, or "views of life." Of these, one of the most I I important and influential is Vedanta, meaning "end of the ! Vedas." All of the systems offer as ultimate aim the I

attainment of liberation, either by absence of rebirth i or fusion with the Absolute.) I Two Hindu epics told by storytellers for centuries l I are the Ramayana, which recounts the exploits of Rama, and 1 the Mahabharata, a vast epic which contains the often- i translated Bhagavad Gita. This episode of the larger work! I is a treatise of metaphysics delivered before a battle in ; ' a dialogue between the warrior Arjuna and the god Krishna, ' disguised as his charioteer. 6 Popular Hinduism has been transmitted primarily by the collection of tales called the Puranas or "ancient 15

. j·:··~·t-6t:i·~·~ .·;;·----Th-~~~- d.~t~--f;~~·-the fifth --t~---~igi{t~-e;;th_._cen- turies and have been instruments of mass education and entertainment, bringing Hindu philosophy, ideals and customs to the illiterate of India. Similar to the myths of Greece and Rome, they deal with anecdotes about per­ sonal deities.? The common Hindu believer, involved with the I diverse gods and cults which developed, has not been con­ I versant with the higher Indian philosophies of divine I ::::: ::i::c::~r:::t:~:Y::e::~w~it:::s~e::::m:::a:•::~ng servances, and worship of fantastic gods and goddesses, which the typical Westerner reacts to at first with some aversion, there lies a basic universal concept, the underlying belief in one ultimate reality known as Brahman. All else is Maya or illusion. 8 Maya was one of the first principles in Hindu thought to attract Emerson. He called his own version the doctrine of Illusion, but recognized the resemblance to Maya, which he felt extremely important. In his

Journal of Feb~ 18, 1861, he wrote:

Th~ doctrine of the Imagination can only be rightly opened by treating it in connection with the subject of Illusions. And the Hindoos alone have treated this last with sufficient breadth in their legends of the successive Maias of Vishnu. With them, youth, age, property, condition, events, persons, self, are only successive Maias, through which Vishnu mocks and instructs the soul.9 There is wide latitude to the term Maya in Hindu 16

~-·thOUght.· ·In the commentaries of Shankara·; ·MaYa or the ... _,

phenomenal world, is likened to Brahman in the way that a 1 I I I snake compares to an innocuous rope. Once the rope is ) realized for what it is, one is no longer frightened. The Hindus do not deny the existence of the world of matter, but say that matter itself is the veil, or Maya, through which one glimpses God. Maya is the finite, Brahman the infinite; Maya has attribute and form, Brahman does not; Maya is visible, Brahman invisible; Maya is perishable I and is subject to birth, growth and death, while Brahman I is imperishable, birthless and deathless; Maya acts, pallsJ . I

changes, and dissolves, while Brahman is beyond activity~ immutable and a joy forever. 10 I Men have failed to discriminate between reality i I and its appearance, according to Hindu sages. Realization 1 is like restoring eyesight to a blind man. Maya, however, I' must be a quality of the Real or else the world is dualistic. Maya cannot exist or it weuld constitute a limit to Brahman. But it must be real enough to produce a world, an aggregate of names and forms concealing the eternal Brahman. 11 The highest beatitude a Hindu mystic can seek is perfection of the spiritual sense so he will know nothing but Brahman as essence interpenetrating all matter. In the moment of illumination, the unity of subject and object, substance and shadow is realized. 12 Swami Vivekenanda, expounding upon Vedanta 17

---···-·---·------· '" """ ,, .. ,...... , "' ... "...... ,, '" ,""" ...... ,...... '"""'" "" ...... -.. -..... '""-'"• ·-·------~------·-·-----C-.• \ rphilosophy in Jnana Yoga, claims_that the term Maya is i I generally used wrongly to denote illusion or delusion. I The oldest idea of Maya found in Vedic literature denotes i I delusion, but this, he says, was before the real theory I I had been reached. In the early reference, "Indra through I his Maya assumed various forms," the term meant something The word Maya then dropped out of sacred II like magic. literature, but meanwhile the idea was developing in I I reference to the secret of the universe being hidden be- hind senses and desires so as to cover reality with a mist. Much later, in one of the latest Upanishads, the Svetasvatara, the term reemerged with a new meaning attached: "Know nature to be maya and the mind, the J ruler of this maya, is the Lord himself • .,lJ Thus Maya I I had become a fixed quantity--the phenomenal world of the

I! senses. The world, however, is not exactly illusion, I Vivekenanda explains. It exists as relative to man's I five senses, but does not possess unchangeable, immovable, infinite existence. It is a contradiction of existence and non-existence·, and all the contradictions and com- plexities of good and evil, happiness and sorrow are Maya. Everything that has form or that calls up an idea in one's mind is within Maya, he states. But beyond this Maya, the Vedantic philosophers find something which is not

bound by Maya. This Being beyond all man~festation of Maya is, paradoxically, within man himself, and all that 18

r·····--···:--·--·-· ---····----·-····-··· ...... - ...... ·-· ...... ·-·------··--·-···------~-----··-···-·---· ...... ____ .. . . ' is necessary for liberation is recognition of this fact.l4 i I I The Upanishad Svetasvatara, from which Vivekenanda! quo4es, personifies Maya as the divine consort and servant:I of Brahman. In a hymn to Brahman Supreme, we find these passages: Maya is thy divine consort-­ Wedded to thee. Thou art her master, her ruler. Red, white, and black is she, Each color a guna. Many are her children-­ The rivers, the mountains, Flower, stone, and tree, Beast, bird, and man-- In every way like herself. Thou, spirit in flesh, Forgetting what thou art, Unitest with Maya-- But only for a season. Parting from her at last, Thou. . .regainest thyself. Thou art lord and master of Maya, Man is her slave. r With Maya uniting, thou hast brought forth the universe, I The source of all scriptures thou art, I And the source of all creeds. The universe is thy Maya; And thou, great God, her lord, Wherever the eye falls, There, within every form, Thou dwellest. • • • At thy bidding Maya, Thy power divine, Projects this visible universe, Projects name and form.l5 The Bhagavad Gita also places a high value on the knowledge of the true unity underlying the world's

seeming va~iety. In Ann Stanford's recent verse trans­ lation of the classic, we find this discrimination: 19 r--~--~---~ ------·------~-- --· ------.---- -~------~----1 1 . ·. _ When one sees 1n all be1ngs 1 1 One eternal nature · I The undivided in the various l I Know that his knowledge is of goodness. j I I I But when one beholds in all beings 1 Seeing their variousness Separate natures of different kinds Know that his knowledge comes from passion.16 I Maya itself is dealt with in chapter 7 of the epic! as the Lord speaks: I am the taste in water, son of Kunti, I I am the light in the moon and sun l I am the Om in all the Vedas, ! The sound in space, the manhood in men. . . . And whatever forms are of goodness And of force and darkness too, Know they are also from me But I am not in them; they are in me. Charmed by the forms made of these three strands The whole world of moving creatures Fails to recognize me Who am beyond them, never changing. 1 For the illusion formed of the strands Is divine and hard to go beyond, I But those who walk toward me Cross over this illusion. . . . Turning in my veil of illusion I I am not shining out clear for all I The deluded world does not know me The unborn and unchanging.l7 l The exact date when Emerson finally read the Hindu! I scriptures is not known, but certainly he was familiar ' with their basic principles from his college reading. The scope of his reading increased and his interest deepened in Hinduism and Maya during the later stages of his life as Js evident in both his Journals and essays. ----··-----_-·-----·------·---~]

Chapter IV

THE EDUCATION OF AN ORIENTALIST

On June 17, 1845, in a letter to Elizabeth Hoar, Emerson wrote: The only other event is the arrival in Concord of the Bhagavad Gita, the much renowned book of Buddhism, extracts from which I have · often admired, but never before held the book in my hands.1

I Emerson's attribution of the volume to Buddhism I rather than Hinduism must have been a slip of the pen, fori by 1845 he had read enough about Oriental literature to I know better. The very importance he placed upon the j I - arrival of the book in Concord indicates his deepening ! interest in the philosophies of· the East. A. E. Christy, in an excellent study of the reading of Emerson, Thoreau and Alcott in The Orient in American Transcendentalism, presents a chronological tabulation of the Oriental books Emerson had probably read from about 1830. Christy uses library records from the Boston Atheneum, Harvard College,· and lists books known to have been in Concord's private libraries. In 1830, Emerson read two French sources of Hindu philosophy.'

On Jan. 1, 1830, he drew Volumes I and II of Joseph de Gernando's Histoire Comparee' des Systemes de Philosophie from the Boston Atheneum. This has been cited as a source

20 21

Emerson referred in his Journals to the Oupnek Lat of 1 1 j Anquetil Duper.ron, a French work that contained the four Vedas as well as two of the Upanishads important to Emerson's philosophy--the Bridhadaranyaka and the Chandogya. In 1836, the year he published his first book, Nature, Emerson was reading Sir William Jones's transla- tion of Institutes of Hindu Law or The Ordinances of Menu, and by 1840, he had drawn Jones's six-volume Works from the Boston Atheneum. These books contained a vast repository of Oriental lore and probably exerted great influence on Concord interest in Hindu literature. 2 It is significant that by 1840 Emerson was so familiar with the Vedas that he wrote in a letter to a friend praising the scriptures as "the bible of the tropics which I come back upon every three or four years,":I

and which "contains every religious sentiment, all the li l 1 ! grand ethics which visit in turn each noble and poetic l mind." Between 1842 and 1844, Emerson published in The Dial extracts from the Vishnu Sarma and The Laws of Manu, besides examples of Chinese and Persian religious lore.3 Thus by 1845, the year that Charles Wilkins' 1785 translation of the Bhagavad Gita was placed in Emerson's hands, he had undoubtedly read excerpts from various sources. That year, Emerson writes also in his Journals of reading The Vishnu Purana translated by Horace Hayman 22

phrased the Hindu allegory of creation from this source.

I Also in 1845, Emerson probably read Henry Colebrook's i . Miscellaneous Essays, an exposition of various Hindu schools of philosophy and translations from many of the Upanishads. The 1005-page volume was added to his library that year. 4 By 1845, according to Carpenter, Emerson began to use the Oriental ideas in his thinking. This is apparent

not only in his Journals, but in the essay he wrote on I! Plato in Representative Men. Here he portrays the Greek I philosopher as half an Orientalist, devoting several pages! of the essay to the Oriental aspect of Plato's thought. j The kernel of Emerson's Orientalism is first revealed I I i here. By the 18508, Emerson's interest had advanced so l greatly that he began to keep a separate Journal called i "The Orientalist," in which he recorded quotations and ideas relating to the Orient that were currently in his though"t.5 Throughout the 1850s and 1860s when his most Oriental-influenced essays and poems were written, Emerson was deep in the study of Hinduism. He had not only built up a library of his own, but inherited Oriental books from Henry Thoreau upon the latter's death in 1862. Ope of the books Thoreau bequeathed to Emerson, Eugene Burnouf's Le Bhagavata Purana, inspired Journal entries in 1866 dealing extensively with Maya. Emerson 23

r-·------···------··· ------··------quotes from the Bhagavat Pu;~~----i;;··d-~-~-~~'ibl~g---th~---g;~-;-~t I --1 I superiority and power of Bronson Alcott's mind. He concludes:

I· The moral benefit of such a mind cannot be [ told. The world fades: men, reputations, politics shrivel: the interests, power, future of the soul beam a new dayspring. Faith becomes sight. Then connecting this observation with Hindu thought, Emerson quotes: Maya (Illusion) of the Hindoos. Rudra says, "0 thou, who, always unalterable, createst, con­ servest, and destroyest this universe, by the aid of Maya, that energy in numerous forms which, powerless when it reposes in thy bosom, makes believe that it is distinct from thee, and gives to the world an apparent reality."-- Bhagavat Purana, vol. ii, p. 127._ Maya. The assistants said: "In the road of birth, where is no shelter;--which great mis­ eries make difficult; where the god of death presents himself as a frightful reptile; where they have before their eyes. the mirage of ob­ jects; where the opposite affections (of pleasure and pain) are precipices; where they fear the wicked as ferocious beasts; where grief is like a fire in the forest;--how should a caravan of ignorant beings, loaded with the heavy burden of the body and the soul, tormented by desire, --how, 0 God who givest asylum, should it ever arrive at thy feet?" The Veda says: "The world is born of Maya." "Brahma qui n'a pas de qualites." "Cet etre exempt d'attributs et de personnalite, qui e~t a la fois ce qui existe et ce qui n'existe pas" (pour nos organes).--Vol. ii, p. 111.7 Thus by 1866, the concept of Maya had become increasingly important to Emerson as a way of looking at the world. By August, 1866, he could write in the "Orientalist" notebook: 24

.r--··-·---~-~----·-;~--~~-~--~~:-~0~;- ~-~--···~~~·~··~~:-~~····-~-~--::~:- ~:;-~~·~:~---·---·-----~ fact than the Hindoo theology, teaching that the beatitude or supreme good is to be attained through science: namely, by the perception of the ·real and the unreal, setting aside matter, and qualities and affections or emotions and persons, and actions, as maias or illusions, and thus arriving at the contemplation of the one eternal Life and Cause, and a perpetual approach and assimilation to Him~ thus escaping new births or transmigrations.o I Naturally, an idea so important to him would be I incorporated into his other writings as well. The percep-1 I tion of "the real and the unreal" was beginning to find a significant place in Emerson's essays and poems. Chapter V

THE USES OF ILLUSION

Generally speaking, the Hindu concepts of Brahman and Maya translate into Emerson's essays as "The Over­ Soul" and "Illusions," and his two poems, "Brahma" and "Maia" are even less disguised versions of the Hindu doctrines. In tracing Emerson's use of the idea of the world as illusion, it is necessary to some extent to examine essays that incorporate the corollary concept of the Divine unity. lying behind the fugitive phenomenal world, as well as to include mention of several other essays and poems which make partial use of the doctrine of illusion.

Essays: Nature

As we have seen, Emerson's interest and reading in' Hindu lore greatly increased during the 1840s and deepened during the latter half of his literary career. I But the basic philosophy of his writings had been pro­ I I 1 pounded in the 1836 publication of Nature, sometimes i called the Bible of New England Transcendentalism. Here he attempted an ordered presentation of his own ideas, ideas that were not to change greatly throughout his lifetime. The later essays differe·d mainly in their

25 26 r~;~;.;;-~-~---~~:f-e~-~~~~--~t~-iii~d_~-~~~~ce;~~-~~;;J;i~-~---~d:--~-;-~-~-i:fic~-:-·: I - · · · 1

I Deeper stUdy in Hinduism merely confirmed for Emerson l,i· what he had already believed from early reading of Plato, I! ' the Neoplatonists and his early Oriental studies. He had already expressed the philosophic Idealism in Nature that would be reinforced by the concept of Maya. The 1836 study of man's relationship to the natural world about him shows Emerson's basic interest in his relation to the phenomenal world as a means of transcendence. While contemplating composition of Nature in 1834, Emerson wrote in his Journal that he would "study Natural History to provide me a resource when business, friends, and my country fail me, that I may never lose my temper nor be without soothing uplifting r· occupation. . . Through affinity with Nature, Emerson would find, in typical Romantic fashion, his unity with the infinite. In a much-quoted passage, Emerson displays the ease with which the phenomenal world, including his own body, could fall away from him as he blended with spirit: Standing on the bare ground,--my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space,--all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball. I am nothing. I see all. The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God ... 2 In the chapter on "Idealism," Emerson examines "the question of the absolute existence of p.ature." He acquiesces entirely in the permanence of natural laws, 27

1.... --~·~--- A7Z >>•••'•"•""•-• _, ______._.,_ - » .-•·---·- --·- -· •------·~--·- •- _. __ --·· 0 ••• ~- ._ ho<•--- ·-~- --- -~----- ••- "•To •o------~-.------.-·-·- '"·---~-·-~--~· ---·-·- --~-. ~--··~- -~~-~---.., . j but :points out that religion has advised man that "the things seen are temporal; the things that are unseen are eternal." Religion, he says, does for the unschooled I I what :philosophy does "for Berkeley and Viasa. nJ In this I way, Emerson explains, religion affronts nature: The uniform language that may be heard in the churches of the most ignorant sects, is-­ "contemn the unsubstantial shows of the world; they are vanities, dreams, shadows, unrealities; seek the realities of religion." The devotee flouts nature.4 I Philosophers as well have not looked with kindness upon matter, he went on to explain: Some theosophists have arrived at a certain hostility and indignation towards matter, as the Manichean and Plotinus. They distrusted in themsel\res any looking back to these flesh-pots of Egypt. Plotinus was ashamed of his body. In short, they might all better say of matter, what Michael Angelo said of external beauty, "it is the frail and weary weed, in which God dresses the soul, which he has called into time."5 Emerson, however, felt that although many factors tend to affect our convictions of the reality of the external world, one could go too far in the direction of idealism. He himself could not be this ungrateful. "I have no hostility to nature, but a- child's love to it .. I expand and live in the warm day like corn and melons. Let us speak her fair ..• "6 The advantage of the ideal theory was its great appeal to the mind, which would always view the world as :phenomenal. Virtue would always subordinate the world to the mind: 28

. . ,-~------.. -----~-~~ ~~-~-~~--~:·:·:·--~~: --~~~~~--~~- --~~~-:- ----~~---;:~~-~~:------! the whole circle of persons and things, of actions and events, of country and religion, not as painfully accumulated, atom after atom, act after act, in an aged creeping Past, but as one vast picture, which God paints on the instant eternity, for the contemplation of the soul • . • 7 Emerson did not stop at the denial of matter as many philosophers did, but in the chapter on "Spirit" taught the necessity of learning that "behind nature, throughout nature, spirit is present; that spirit is one and not compound; that spirit does not act upon us from without, that is, in space and time, but spiritually, or through -ourselves. "8 Thus Emerson's idealism was established in his first work, but also his lack of hostility to the world of matter was made clear. He did not deny the reality of matter in the way that Christian Science came to do, Carpenter points out. For matter had its use: "Does the fact look crass and material, threatening to degrade thy theory of spirit? Resist it not; 'it goes to refine and raise thy theory of matter just as much."9

History

Essays, First Series, published in 1841, showed more evidence of Hindu study, for Emerson wrote with more information of the theory of transmigration of souls in the essay on "History," but this represents the only clearly Oriental idea in the book, says Carpenter.10 But Carpenter overlooked the Orientalism in the very first 29

r-- ---~ ------.-·-----·----· ------. -··--··- ··------.. -.- ··------· .. ------· ·---· -----· ------~------··------·---·------, paragraph of "History," the volume's initial essay. The i . I I opening passage deals with the idea of universal mind that! was becoming more and more important to Emerson. It is I I j not far from the concept of Brahman: There is one mind common to all individual ! men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same. He that is once admitted to the right of reason is made a freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has thought, he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel; what at any time has befallen any man, he can understand. Who hath access to this universal mind is a party to all that is or c_an be done, . for this is the only and sovereign agent.ll The quatrain which precedes this paragraph universalizes matter in an interesting way: I am the owner of the sphere Of the seven stars and the solar year, Of Caesar's hand, and Plato's brain, Of Lord Christ's heart, and Shakespeare's strain.

The Over-Soul

Also in this first volume of essays was presented I the concept of "The Over-Soul," the supreme unifying force1 of the world that can be compared to the Hindu.Brahman. This doctrine, however, has been ascribed to Neoplatonism, I whose proponents theorized that spiritual emanation from ' an Absolute source to creatures below imparted to them the divine vital energy. 12 · Although Unity is paired with Variety in this essay, little is made of the illusory qualities of the world other than in two brief passages. The first comments upon "the influence of the senses" that "has in 30

r~-~~t > ~~e~-- ~-~-e~p~we;~d- th~ -~i~d ·t;-~ th~-t- -d~g·~-~;~-th; t l walls of time and space have come to look soiid, real and j insurmountable. • • .,l3 The other deals with the transi- toriness of matter:

I l Illusion was the primary law of life through which 1 experience was gained. In an essay noted fpr its carefully planned

of unreality with which the death of his five-year-old son, Waldo, in 1842, had left him. He had long since had the conviction that experience, even of suffering, could be an inferior order of reality. When put to the test, he had confessed, "I chiefly grieve that I cannot grieve; that this fact takes no more hold than other facts, is as dreamlike as they; a lambent flame that will not burn playing on the surface of my river."15 In his inability to grasp the reality of his son's death, Emerson turned to the theory of illusion to explain in his essay the 31

.~-~~-~~~~;;~- h-~- -f~1 t~---- .·----··------· ·-- ... ··- ... --·· -----··· -- -·--·------· ------·------~

Grief too will make us idealists. In the I

death of my son, now more than two years ago, I _I

.seem to have lost a beautiful estate,--no more. 1 I cannot get it nearer to me. If tomorrow I should be informed of the bankruptcy of my principal debtors, the loss of my property would be a great inconvenience to me, perhaps for many years; but it would leave me as it found me,-- neither better nor worse. So it is with this calamity: it does not touch me: some thing which I fancied was a part of me, which. could not be torn away without tearing me, nor enlarged with- out enriching me, falls off from me, and leaves no scar.l6 I A belief in the partial unreality of the world I seemed to help Emerson through this experience. It was asj if in shock he withdrew from the too bitter experiences of: life into an abstract realm where "sleep is not, death is I not." The philosophy suited his need. In this essay-- no mere exaltation of spirit over matter, but a carefully i' structured argument--he went on to describe the illusion that is life. " ••• Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion. Life is a train of moods like a string of beads, and as we pass through them, they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue, and each shows only what lies in its .. 17 focus • • • Experience thus brought first, he explained, the consciousness of illusion. Then experience would suggest that the cause of current illusion was temperament.

" Structure limits our vision. "Temperament is the iron wire on which the beads are strung .. " But temperament also L' 32

,-~~-t~~-;--i~t~-th~ -~y~-t~-~--~i-iii~~i~~~-,----;~-~-d--~h~t-~---~-~- i;;--~---·--·1

:prison of glass which we cannot see." And since everyone else is a creature of a given temperament as well, there is "an optical illusion about every person we meet."18 Then experience brings an awareness of succession, ' then surface, and eventually, on occasion, to surprise, "the deep thoughts that give unity to our experience, and thus make us our own masters." For one then begins to :perceive the true reality underlying all the illusion and the :purpose of the universe. Thus an awareness of the transitory moods and apparent illusions of individual experience could lead step by step to the piecing to­ gether of partial experiences and the vision of life as a whole. The parti-colored wheel, if revolved very fast, would appear white. 19 "Experience" echoed and amplified concepts Emerson had introduced in Nature, of nature as "Disci- pline." But though he spoke of Illusion, he gave no indication that his Idealism stemmed from anything but Platonism and Neoplatonism.

Plato

The entire volume of biographical essays entitled Representative Men (1850) contains much Oriental material,' specifically Hindu. Much is interwoven with Emerson's own thought, however. It is most apparent in "Plato." It is, ironically,in this essay on "Plato" that 33

r~~;~~-~~- f:i;~t-· t~~~~ci--~~-~ t .. cii;e ctiy -i~-~~-~-~~ ~-;y-·t;--lii~d~---··-·; 1

J sources for examples and illu~trations. that gave evidence ! of his Oriental knowledge. Although he spoke of Unity and Variety in describing the Greek philosopher rather

than Brahman and Maya, he symbolized Unity ~s an Eastern or Hindu quality and Variety as belonging to the Western world. Emerson describes Plato as half an Orientalist, probably over-identifying him with the Neoplatonists of third and fourth century Alexandria. The first English translator of the Neoplatonists, Thomas Taylor, probably caused this confusion in Emerson's mind. Taylor had stated that it was impossible to understand Plato without the aid of Neoplatonism, and it was under his influence .1· that Emerson ascribed to Plato many Neoplatonic ideas. 20 There were many ideas in Neoplatonism that were purely Oriental in addition to the concepts that could be traced directly to Plato. By birth and training they were Oriental, and their founder, Ammonius Saccass, the baggage carrier who turned philosopher, was in contact with travelers from all nations. Among their Oriental ideas were the All-Soul concept of Plotinus, which corre- spends closely to the "Paramatman" or Over-Soul of Hinduism, as well as their regard for pure intuition and love of mysticism. Their doctrines that matter is merely the absence of spirit, and evil the absenqe of good, are Eastern. 21 34

r·~---··-c-:·· ... ------..._ ...... -- -·-. -- . -- ... - ... ·- ··- ···- .. - ...... ------·------····-· ------·-'-·------~------, I Emerson recognized the Orientalism of the Neo- 1 I platonists, as is shown in a lecture given to Harvard I philosophy students in his later years: When Orientalism in Alexandria found the Platonists, a new school was produced. The stern­ ness of the Greek school, feeling its way from argument to argument, met and combined with the i beauty of Orientalism. Plotinus, Proclus, Porphyry, and Jamblichus were the apostles of the new philosophy.22 I

I In spite of this later insight, Emerson in his i I ! essay described Plato as if he were one of the Neo- I i platonists, balancing East and West, rather than the I Western source of Neoplatonism. The essay begins with l glowing praise of Plato and a brief summary of his life. Then, turning aside from Plato to philosophy itself, I Emerson points out that two cardinal facts lie at the I r I I base of the constitution of the world--Unity, or Identity,! and Variety. "We unite all things by perceiving the law I

which pervades them • . • But • • • this very perception I of identity or oneness recognizes the difference of I things. Oneness and otherness." I I This duality of Unity and Variety and their i. interrelation,·Emerson illustrates with a passage from the Vedas: I "In the midst of the sun is the light, in the i midst of the light is truth, and in the midst of truth is the imperishable being," say the Vedas. All philosophy, of East and West, has the same centripe·tence. Urged by an opposite necessity, the mind returns from the one to that which is not one, but other or many ... 23 In explaining the fundamental Unity, he turns to the East 35

.... ·-·----:-··----·- ---- ·--·· ··········-- ···--·--...... ···- ··-··-- ...... -.-- ...... -- ·····----·-···········--·-·--·-·····--····-····-····-··-·! . r for illustration: i f ·. j This tendency finds its highest expression ! in the religious writings of the East, and chiefly I in the Indian Scriptures, in the Vedas, the Bhagavat Geeta, and the Vishnu Purana. These writings contain little else than this idea, and they rise to pur4 and sublime strains in I celebrating it.2 I He further stresses the unity of all matter with a passage 1 that would find expression later in p.oetic form in his "Brahma.": I The Same, the Same: friend and foe are of one stuff; the ploughman, the plough and the furrow are of one stuff; and the stuff is such I and so much that the variations of form are i unimportant. "You are fit" (says the supreme I Krishna to the sage) "to apprehend that you are not distinct from me. That which I am, thou art, and that also is this world, with its gods and heroes and mankind. Men contemplate Ii distinctions because they are stupefied with ! ignorance." "The words I and mine constitute ! ignorance.25 I Emerson quotes at length from the supreme Krishna,' emphasizing the conviction that "The whole world is but a manifestation of Vishnu, who is identical with all things, and is to be regarded by the wise as not differing from, but as the same as themselves ••. "26 Here we receive an impression of the world as Maya, though this is not directly stated. Emerson paraphrases the intent of Krishna's statements and amplifies them with his own as he continues to espouse Hinduism's portrait of the world as illusion: As l.f he had said, "All is for the soul, and the soul is Vishnu; and animals and stars are transient paintings; and light is whitewash; and durations are ~eceptive; and form is imprisonment; ~ ..·-·--·······················- ...... -...... _,. ______, __ , ..... _...... ~------. ...., . and heaven itself a decoy. " ·That which the soul i l! seeks is resolution into b~ing above form, out I of Tarta~us and out of heaven,.:..-liberation from ' nature.2l Emerson thus turns aside in his essay for several ' I i' pages from the Greek philosopher to expound the Hindu ideal of Unity, but then proceeds to weave the concepts into a comparison of the "terrific unity" to which speculation

leads, and "in which all things are absorbed," with the I;

diversity to which action leads. These two pr·inciples, I i the absorbing, melting, reducing unity, and the creativity! and var1ety• of Nature "1nterpenetrate. all th1ngs,". he says•I He extends the metaphors of the one and the many, pre- I paring to characterize the differences between Asia and j Europe as he does so: One is being, the other intellect: one is I necessity; the other freedom: one, rest; the I other motion: one power; the other distribution: i one, strength; the other, pleasure: one, conscious­ ness; the other, definition: one, genius; the other, talent: one, earnestness; the other, know­ ledge: one, possession; the other, trade: one, caste; the other, culture: one, king; the other, democracy: and if we dare carry these generali­ zations a step higher, and name the last tendency of both, we might say, that the end of the one is escape from organization,--pure science; and the end of the other is the highest instrumentality, or use of means, or executive deity.28 · Each student adheres, he tells us to "the first or to the second of these gods of the mind." And parts of the world do so also. Asia is "the country of unity, of immovable institutions, the seat of a philosophy

delighting in abstractions, of men faithf~l in doctrine and in practice to the idea of a deaf, unimplorable, 37

r-·------:··:-··---·---- ···--·-····.-· ------····------· -----· ··-·-···· --·······------··-· -----· -·-····------·····-·-- ---·------······· ·------~ I immense fate • • • " Europe, on the other hand, is · i I t I "active and creative," resisting caste, its philosophy a ! discipline, a land of arts, inventions, trade, freedom. I "If the East loves infinity, the West delighted in boundaries."29 Plato, Emerson tells us, was a product of both cultures, a truly balanced soul. In Egypt and in Eastern pilgrimages he received the idea of the all-absorbing Deity, and could thus combine "the unity of Asia and the detail of Europe; the infinitude of the Asiatic soul and the defining, result-loving, machine-making, surface- seeking, opera-going Europe. . . .II These he came to join, and by contact, "to enhance the energy of each."JO t Thus Emerson characterized Plato as half Oriental in his thought, more of a Neoplatonist really than a Greek. But in doing so, he symbolized European civiliza­ tion and its qualities as Maya and Illusion in contrast to the Brahmanic quality of the East.

Emerson's 1860 collection of essays entitled The Conduct of Life marked the culmination of his use of Hindu source material. The volume begins and ends with essays dealing directly and fully with Oriental ideas, amply illUJ3trated with quotations from his reading. In "Fate," which opens the collection, and "Illusions," the ·essay which rounds out this volume of his most mature r;{~-do~~----E~~;;-~·~;- d~e-~- ~ot merely· ·:P·~~-~ph~;:~-~- ·-Hi~d.~--fde-as ;- ·--"~· I . I but uses and transmutes Indian 'philosophy to embody many I of his own ideas. ! I j "Fate" is more interesting as an example of Emerson's I ~rowing rel~ance on Hinduism than as an example of his

1 1nterpretat1on of Maya, but after a circuitous path of I 1 thought, he does in this essay conclude that man's belief

j in an arbitrary fate is part of life's illusory spell. I His basic argument that the fatal laws of the world I may be turned to man's advantage once they are realized and accepted, begins with a discussion of fate in which he mentions the "Hindoo, under the wheel," as an example of I those who accept a preordained fate. He explains how the l.. I I Hindus came to this concept of karma: "It was a poetic l ~r I attempt to lift this mountain o~ Fate, to reconcile this

1 despotism of race with liberty, which led the Hindoos to I say, 'Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a pnor I state of existence. 'n3l Then to illustrate the type of I fate that man attracts, he uses a Hindu legend in which I Maya is personified as a goddess: Whatever limits us, we call Fate. If we are brute and barbarous, the fate takes a brute and dreadful shape. As we refine, our cheeks become finer. If we rise to spiritual culture, the antagonism takes a spiritual form. In the Hindoo fables, Vishnu follows Maya through all her ascending changes, from insect and craw-fish up to elephant; whatever form she took, he took the male form of that kind, until she became at last woman and goddess, and he a man and a g9d.· The limitations refine as the soul purifies, but the ring of necessity is always perched ai the top.32 .39

~--·····------·-··-~---;~~~----~·~·~;~~:-·~·--·~:··-::~·~a-~~-~ ~·---;~---~h:-~~: c~-~~·~r;····-~-----~ ! ! I freedom of man, and intellect annuls fate. "The great day !

1 is when we realize the Unity ·in things. " Typically I i !optimistic, Emerson sees all fate involving the melioration/ lof man in a universe ascending toward greater good. And I I Isince matter is illusion, mind over matter is inevitable, I l for "the soul contains the event that shall befall it," l ! l !theI event only being "the actualization of its thoughts; . j jand what we pray to ourselves for is always granted." !Here Eme~son sounds indeed like the father of all positive thinking movements. To illustrate that the belief in an arbitrary fate is illusory, Emerson turns for example to his concept of world as illusion: All the toys that infatuate men, and which they play for,--houses, land, money, luxury, power, fame, are the selfsame thing, with a new gauze or two of illusion overlaid. And of all the drums and rattles by which men are made willing to have their heads broke,, and are led out solemnly every morning to parade,--the most admirable is this by which we are brought to

believe that events are arbitrary, and indepen­ l : dent of actions. At the conjurer's, we detect i the hair by which he moves his puppet, but we have not eyes sharp enough to descry the thread lI ·that ties cause and effect.JJ I If the world and fate are illusion, the mind is I all important, he reaffirms in concluding the essay: l Each creature puts forth from itself its own condition and sphere, as the slug sweats out its slimy house on the pear-leaf, and the woolly aphides on the apple perspire their own bed, and the fish its shell. In youth, we clothe ourselves with rainbows, and go as brave as the zodiac. In 40

r----···-···:~~~~--~j-~~~:··~--~~~-e:~-~~:~·~-~-~~;~-~-~:~~-~-~~~~~t}~i~-~i:~~----·-·:··l I and avarice. 34 . . . ' .· · · 1

I Illusions

I This is the most significant essay of all to a !study of Maya in Emerson's works, since it deals directly ! . iwith the subject, giving us most completely Emerson's I !interpretation of the Hindu doctrine. I A lengthy poem precedes the piece, illustrating i 1 the idea in cameo, demonstrating how one gains strength through dealing with life's illusions. Since all of life is constantly changing, unstable, and "fleeing to fables," there is no anchorage, even sleep or death. They are no lmore solid and real than the changing aspects of life: -1' House you were born in, Friends of your s·pring-time, Old man and young maid, I Day's toil and its guerdon, I They are all vanishing. . • I lEven the everlasting stars above are fugitive, no more jthan a flicker of heat-lightning or a fire-fly's flight. I 1 But one returns again and again and finally learns one's strength: When thou dost return On the wave's circulation, Beholding the shimmer, The wild dissipation. And out of endeavor To change and to flow The gas becomes solid, And phantoms and nothings Return to be things, And endless imbroglio Is law and the world,-- 41 . '

i . !Thus agaln we find a familiar theme of experience and I lgrowth resulting from life's illusions. j The essay itself is shorter than many of Emerson's, jalmost like a final restatement of the theme he had I !approached from so many angles and would finally deal with I 1 directly. Interestingly enough, in this most Hindu of I i iessays, the first illustration is strikingly reminiscent lof Plato. Emerson uses a cave, in this case Mammoth Cave lin Kentucky, to symbolize life's illusions. The metaphor takes us almost full circle to Plato's famous use of a I i·cave to demonstrate the unreal quality of the life that !greets man's senses. I Emerson, visiting the Kentucky cave with a group of people, sees what looks like stars in the high vaulted ceiling. But they are tricks of nature, crystal specks in the black ceiling, reflecting the light of a half-hidden lamp. At first, Emerson writes, he resented the cave for this theatrical trick, but subsequently realized that he had had many such experiences before and since. "Our conversation with Nature is not just what it seems. The cloud-rack, the sunrise and sunset glories, rainbows and northern lights, are not quite so spheral as our childhood thought them." One's own senses and organization inter- fere with reality, as for example, in the appearance that 42

Fth:;--~~;;-th is flat. And th~ -:Pi-ct~~i~i -q_~~ii-ty:·-·c;:r-··til·e-eye------~ I itself helps create the beauty of the sunset.35 Branching out from the cave imagery and optical trickery of nature, Emerson then applies this principle to emotions. "The same interference from our organization creates the most of our pleasure and pain. Our first

~mistake is the belief that the circumstance gives the joy

1 which we give the circumstance." He cites those who find

1entirely different modes of life joyful because of the I I !value they themselves put on the activity. "We live by our imaginations, by our admirations, by our sentiments," he concludes. He traces the illusions by which men live · from childhood on: I The child walks amid heaps of illusions, which i- he does not like to have disturbed. The boy, how sweet to him is his fancyl how dear the story of barons and battles! What a hero he is, whilst he feeds on his heroes! What a debt is his to imaginative books! He has no better friend than I Scott, Shakespeare, Plutarch, and Homer. I ! The grown man may have traded his childish illusions for 1 other joys, but who can claim they are more real? "In I I the life of the dreariest alderman, fancy enters into all Idetails, and colors them with rosy hue," for he is made happier by acting out a self-important role, and playing the game of status in society.36 Emerson then applies the image to an even broader scope of activities: The world rolls, the din of ·life is never hushed. In London, in Paris, in Boston, in San Francisco, the carnival, the masquerade, is at its ,----·-··---·· ·········'"·· ... ""···· ·······. ••• -•• •-•••--• -·--•·c--.~-·-·••"•••-~~-··-""~••••• , "• •••••••·• ~-··-~~.d"'"•--~• 1 height. Nobody drops his domino. The unities, jI the flctlons• • of the piece,· it would be an imperti- nence to break.

l1We rightly accuse the critic who destroys too many illu- ! !sions, Emerson points out. "Society does not love its i \unmaskers."3?

I In summing up his statements and presenting an !explanation for life's illusions, Emerson includes mention i \of the Hindu goddess of illusion: : I find men victims of illusion in all parts of life. Children, youths, adults, and old men, all are led by one bauble or another. Yoganidra, the goddess of illusion, Proteus, or Momus, or Gylfi's Mocking,--the Power has many names,--is stronger than Apollo. Few have overheard the gods, or surprised their secret. Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. Illusions are thus the teachers of men, riddles by which

he learns, but "the key to a rid~le is another riddle." !Illusion continues, from dream to dream, with the toys I "graduated in refinement to the quality of the dupe. ,.JS Everyone is drugged with his own frenzy, with

I !science, however, represented as "a sad-eyed boy, whose I jeyes lack the requisite refractions to clothe the show in l I due glory.". Some play the game better than others, and I !sympathize with the illusions of others. Emerson's own ;tendency in this regard he describes: When the boys come into my yard for leave to gather horse-chestnuts, I own I enter into Nature's game, and affect to grant the permission reluctantly, fearing that any moment they will find out the imposture of that showy chaff. But this tenderness is quite unnecessary; the enchant­ ments are laid on very thick. 44 rTh-~,--:iii~~i-~n;··~i. childh-~~d:---~-~ . t~~~:f~~---~-;~~-th~- ...... ~~poverty into apparent happiness, while women are fascinating because they, more than all, are "the element 1 !and kingdom of illusion."39 I I Emerson rambles on from example to example. !Illusions can explain bad marriages as well, and keep them I . jfrom becoming impossible, because of the hallucinations we !live amid. Even the scholar in his library is not exempt; lhe will be hopelessly fascinated with the illusion of the 1 printed page. He tells us that men who makes themselves felt in the world fail to interest us unless they lift a corner of the curtain and betray a certain poetry and play outside of their practicality. It is good to know, he 1 I I !explains, that our tuition throvgh this school of illusions1 I" ! !possessesI a fixed scale of rank aoove rank in phantasms. !

'! "We begin low with coarse masks, and rise to the most I !subtle and beautiful." Ideas and concepts become more and !more important. The red men offered Columbus tobacco, but [he found his illusion of arriving at the Indies more j I composing to his lofty spirit. "You play with jack-straws, I !balls, bowls, horse and gun, estates and politics; but i I there are finer games before you." There is the illusion I I of love, the illusion of time, in addition to many others. ! i I "There are deceptions of the senses, deceptions of the I . i ipassions, an,d the structural, beneficent illusions of ; sentiment and of the intellect." There is the illusion i of the elect, of the performer of the miracle. "Though he 45

r···--~-·-···--·-······· ...... ····----·--·-- ...... ____ .. ______, !make his body, he denies that he makes it. Though the 1 world exist from thought, thought is daunted in the 40 Ipresence of the world." I With such volatile elements, man "must work and !affirm, but we have no guess of the value of what we say I jor do." For value too may be illusion: We fancy we have fallen into bad company and squalid conditions, low debts, shoe-bills, broken glass to pay for, pots to buy, butcher's meat, sugar, milk, and coal. 'Set me some great task, I ye gods! and I will' show you my spirit.' 'Not so,' says the good Heaven; 'plod and plough, vamp your I affairs and the best wine by and by.' Well, 't is all phantasm; and if we weave a yard of tape in all humility, and as well as we can, long hereafter we shall see it was no cotton tape at all, but some galaxy which we braided, and that the threads were Time and Nature. But though the capital facts of life are hidden from our 1. 'l eyes from day to day, suddenly the mist may roll up and lreveal them, or a sudden rise in the road may show the system of mountains which were just as near all year but I out of sight. 41 I In the meantime, however, we grope for "stays and foundations." For Emerson these are founded in character, in a veracity and honesty, especially with oneself, that helps one to look at himself as realistically as possible and be just in dealing with others. "Speak as you think, be what you are, pay your debts of all kinds." The worst illusion of all, he states, is perpetrated by "the cheat which still leads us to work and liv,e f'or appearances, in spite of our conviction .•• " Riches and poverty 46

r------.. ------.- -- ... ------1should be no great matter; the re~l quality of existence 42 l.1s more 1mportant.. Emerson turns to Greek philos.ophers and Hinduism I ito come to the heart of his thesis, the essential unity ! !behind all illusion: I The early Greek philosophers Heraclitus and Xenophanes measured their force on the problem of identity. Diogenes of Apollonia said, that unless the atoms were made of one stuff, they could never blend and act with one another. But the Hindoos, in their sacred writings, express the liveliest feeling, both of the essential identity, and of that illusion which they conceive variety to be. "The notions, 'I am,' and 'This is mine,' which influence mankind, are but delusions of the mother of the world. Dispel, 0 Lord of all creatures! the conceit of knowledge which proceeds from ignorance." And the beatitude of man they hold to lie in being freed from fascination.43 The final paragraph of the essay is comparable to

I ·fpassages from Plato and Plotinus, according to Carpenter, i jwho claims Emerson definitely displayed his preference for the Hindu philosophy in this essay, but concluded with a iPlatonic simile chosen more for its literary quality than I its philosophy. This passage shows the young mortal ! I entering the hall of the firmament, where he is alone with the gods, receiving their gifts and benedictions. But he must be tested: On the instant, and incessantly, fall snow­ storms of illusions. He fancies himself in a vast crowd which sways this way and that, and whose movement and doings he must obey: he fancies him­ self poor, orphaned, insignificant. The mad crowd drives hither and thither, now furiously commanding this thing to be done, now that. What ~s he that he should resist their will, and think or act for himself? Every moment, new changes, and new showers of deceptions, to baffle and distract him. 47

r··-·-----=-.A:nd.· wh:-~n-, .by and. .. by, for an insta.rit:···t:he air .. ciears, 1 and the cloud lifts a little, there are the gods still sitting around him on their thrones,--they alone with him alone. :The eternal is always there, calm and serene, waiting to be !found behind the world's illusions. Thomas Carlyle praisedi ! jthis final paragraph which is said to mark the climax of !Emerson's writing. 44 I The basic idea of the essay, that disconnected !experiences are illusions, had been described in I l ! "Experience." But in this latter treatment, the illusory ' experiences are described more favorably as the only means i I by which wisdom and truth can be achieved. "Illusions" has; description of the experience of I

Works and Days

1 Some years later, in the volume Society and j Solitude (1870), Emerson developed the same idea even more i I concretely and in more ordinary language. In "Works and I Days," he claimed the modern world had chosen "works" or inventions and mechanical aids over "days," representing

1 the beauties of nature and God. He illustrated the value I of the days with the Hindu philosophy of illusion. The ' ' passage is found also in slightly different form in his Journals,.but in the essay he wrote:

Such are the days--the earth lS the cup, the sky is the cover, of the immense beauty of Nature which is offered us for our daily aliment; but what a force of illusion begins life with us and attends 48 r------~~- t~ --th-~ endl w~ -~re coa~~d:·--fl-~tt~-~~d ~-d -d.~;~·d------1 from morn to eve, from birth to death; and where is I the old eye that never saw 'through the deception? The Hindus represent Maia, the illusory energy of Vishnu, as one of his principal attributes. As if, in this gale of warring elements which life is, it was necessary to bind souls to human life as mariners in a tempest lash themselves to the mast and bulwarks of a ship, and Nature emplqyed certain illusions as her ties and straps--a rattle, a doll, an apple, for a child; skates, a river, a boat, a horse, a gun, for the growing boy; and I will not begin to name those of the youth and adult, for they are numberless. Seldom and slowly the mask falls and the pupil is permitted to see that all is one stuff, cooked and painted under many counter­ feit appearances ••• In the similar Journal entry, written in 1855, Emerson had added to the above the illustration he used in "Illusions" of boys entering his yard to gather horse-chestnuts. 46 But in this latter essay, illusions become even .:.more necessary and beneficial, for they are needed to bind i' !souls to human life. Illusions .thus become the educational Ijtoys of the growing soul. Eventually they must be out- jgrown, of course, as all toys must be, but under Emerson's I I jWesternizing pen, the whole idea of Maya had shifted I I subtly throughout his works to embody more purely American thoughts. Before examining more fully the manner in which he transmuted and translated Maya, it is important to see how he fabricated the three poems significant to this study--"Brahma," "Maia" and "Hamatreya."

Poems: "Brahma" and "Hamatreya," Emerson's two poems most famed for their Hindu sources, express similar ideas, but from different perspectives. "Hamatreya" stresses the 49

1-basic--un.i-ty- a:r-··ear-th--an-d. body-benea-tl1--tl1_e___ 1Iiiision ___ o_:f ___ .. ______l I I !variety, while- "Brahma" stresses the unity of the human lsoul. In addition, "Hamatreya's" imagery has been i . !Americanized, while that of "Brahma" remains Oriental. l The Hindu source material of both poems has been !well researched over the years, and a study of the two 1poems is most interesting from this angle. Two vastly I !different processes were at work. "Brahma" was developed ! i lover a lengthy period from a variety of sources, and i jscholars are still discovering additional possible sources for portions of the poem. In contrast, it is generally aclmowledged that Emerson derived and wrote "Hamatreya" directly from a single source, the Vishnu Purana. "Maia," the third poem that reflects the Hindu -j· I !concept of illusion is so fanciful and general in tone that'. I no specific source is probable, making only a brief !discussion possible. I Hamatreya I

The idea for "Hamatreya" came from a passage in the Vishnu Purana which Emerson copied in his Journal in 1845. He wrote the poem either in 1845 or 1846, and it was first published in the latter year. Since 1845 was the year Emerson's interest in Oriental reading reached its peak, i 1. is significant that his first transmutation of Hindu concepts into poetry seems to present an argument, according to Carpenter, between the Yankee and Oriental 50

-''"·"-"'"""····· ···········- -·--- """·"'"'"" -·. -.... , ... _.. ·""" ...... __ .. ___ ...... -· ··- ...... """""'""'"'"·'"" - ·--- ...... ·--·""'" . ··--·-----, jEmerson.47 It is very probable that while Emerson found ' I !the concept of oneness of all spiritually uplifting, he jstill possessed some of the American feeling for property l !and possession, of I and mine, that one side of the poem I !portrays. l In his essay on Plato, composed during that same

possession, as is shown in this condensed version of the

r~--- .. ~----.-~-~~-~--·-·· ·------~--·· ·--... __ ., __ ... --~-- .. ------~--- ·---~ ----- ·-- --- ·------·- -~" ------·------~------·------~------~--~~---~, , Know me, as does my dog: we sympathize; 1 I And, I affirm, my actions speak of the soil." The next section questions this typically Yankee !attitude by stressing the eventual triumph of the earth. i lit is only man's illusion that he possesses the earth; in jthe end the earth will possess his body. Where are these men? Asleep beneath the grounds. And strangers, fond as they, their furrows plow. Earth laughs in flowers, to see her boastful boys Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs; Who steer the plough, but cannot steer their feet I Clear of the grave. They added ridge to valley, brook to pond, And sighed for all that bounded their domain; "This suits me for a pasture; that's my park; We must have clay, lime, gravel, granite-ledge, And misty lowland, where to go for peat. I The land is well,--lies fairly to the south. 'T is good, when you have crossed the sea and back, To find the sitfast acres where you left them." Ahl the hot owner sees not Death, who adds Him to her land, a lump of mould the more. I Emerson completes the poem with the Earth-Song, !just as in the Hindu source, Vishnu has recited to I iMaitreya "the stanzas that were chanted by Earth •• II Hear what the Earth says:-- Earth-Song 'Mine and yours; Mine, not yours, Earth endures; Stars abide-- Shine down in the old sea; Old are the shores; i. But where are old men? I ! I who have seen much, Such have I never seen. 'The lawyer's deed Ran sure, In tail, To them, and to their heirs Who shall succeed, 53

~-~·--~------·--- ·-~"··----·-~---~ --- ·- ,.... - - -.. .__- ---- . . ------.. ~-~----~ .. ···---~--~---~----·~-·~-·-···---···------~----·--~---·--·---~----~---..... -~ ...! 1 Without fail . i Forevermore. 1 'Here is the land, Shaggy with wood, With its old valley, Mound and flood. But the heritors?-- Fled like the flood's foam. The lawyer, and the laws, And the kingdom, Clean swept herefrom. 'They called me theirs, Who so controlled me; Yet every one Wished to stay, and is gone, How am I theirs, If they cannot hold me, But I hold them? The moral with which Vishnu completed his message in the original is echoed by Emerson's last stanza:

I When I heard the Earth-song, J I was no longer brave; I My avarice cooled · 50 I Like lust in the chill of the grave. I Thus in "Hamatreya," Emerson translated Hindu !concepts directly into poetry, dramatizing the ideas for I • • • • , !the Western m1nd w1th 1magery that would h1t home markedly.; I i jit might be noted, however, that the beneficial quality of· !illusions, developed in later essays, was not yet present. As obviously Hindu-derived as was this poem, the concept of the illusion of property was not new to ' !Emerson's writing. As early as l8J6, in his first (publication, Nature, he presented a similar idea: "The ; \charming landscape which I saw this morning is indubitably ,made up of some twenty to thirty farms. Miller owns this 'field, Locke that, and Manning the woodland beyond. But .54

(..,...._ ___ • .... -.~... --V··-~•-

Brahma

"Brahma," only four stanzas in length, has been !called one of the most complete characterizations of the I iEast Indian philosophy to be found .in literature. It was !originally published in the first issue of the Atlantic !Monthly in 18.57 to the bewilderment and amusement of the average reader, who was not conversant with Hindu lore. A Jfew parodies were inevitable. To the few who had read the I 1 Bhagavad Gita, says W. T. Harris in a nineteenth-century assessment, the poem seemed an admirable condensed version of that book. Harris pointed out the passages in Chapters II, X, and XVIII, from which he claimed Emerson derived his ideas, but later source studies have shown that the poem was the result of at least a decade of study in various Hindu works • .5 2 In "Brahma," Emerson retained purely Oriental imagery and did not bother to educate his readers in the philosophy of illusion. The poem was a simple statement of universal unity beyond all illusions of life and death, "shadow and sunlight," and "shame _:nd fame." It reflected the idea of Unity illustrated in the "Plato" essay just as 55

~-;;il~~~-t~-~y.;;_;~"h~d.- -~·-t;~-~~~ci .. th~" v~;-i~t:Y. ~~pe·~--t-~---.·i3~-~h~~-~;------.

!could also be said to voice the positive pole of which the !essay 11 Illusions 11 was the negative. I ' The words of the poem are supposedly spoken by the I )impersonal Absolute force of the universe, which Emerson I !termed 11 Brahma, 11 confusing and mixing together two !different concepts. Brahman, as mentioned earlier, is the /supreme deity and unifying force of the-universe, while

I !Brahma is one of the triad of aspects of the supreme which I - jincludes Brahma (Creator), Vishnu (Preserver) and Shiva or Rudra (Destroyer). The subject of his poem is really the concept of · Brahman, the reality behind all illusion. It has been Jsuggested that 11 the red slayer 11 of the first line reveals l lEmerson's confusion, for in Hindu mythology, Brahma is :often said to be of a red color.53 Other scholars have ! ~~suggested, however, 11 the red slayer 11 is actually Shiva the !Destroyer, or else a member of the warrior caste, the !Kshatriya.54 I Although it is agreed that this poem is purely Hindu, there have been differences over the years regarding the specific source of each line. After W. T. Harris in 1885 attributed the entire poem to the Bhagavad i )--Gita, David Lee Maulsby in 1911, discovered sources in the Katha Upanishad, and later scholars discovered that the · Vishnu Purana was contributory also _-55· It is generally agreed now that the initial idea for the poem stemmed from- 56

r·------~--~--··---····- -· ------·-·-· .. ------···--·- -- -.. ------·-·------· .------·-·------·------·-·· -- ... _[a passage in the ~V..:::i:,:;s~h::;;.n=-:u;.:._;P=-u;;.:;r~a;;.;;n=a which Emerson copied in.·---·----, ! !his 1845 Journal: "What living creature slays or is slain? What I living creature preserves or is preserved? Each is his own destroyer or preserver, as he follows evil or good."56 I !LaterI that same year, Emerson versified this quotation in his notebook: What creature slayeth or is slain? What creature saves or saved is? His life will either lose or gain As he shall follow harm or bliss.57 Then eleven years later, in 1856, Emerson found in. the Katha Upanishad similar lines which directly led to his! I writing of the poem: "If -the slayer thinks that I slay, or if the slain thinks that I slay, or if the slain thinks J I am slain, then both of them do not know well. I It (the soul) does not slay, nor is it slain?"58 The final poem appeared as follows:- If the red slayer think he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways I keep, and pass, and turn again. Far or forgot to me is near; Shadow and sunlight is the same; The vanished gods to me appear; And one to me are shame and fame. They reckon ill who leave me out; When me they fly, I am the wings; I am the doubter and the doubt, And I the hymn the Brahmin sings. The strong gods pine for my abode, And pine in vain the sacred Seven; But,. thou, meek lover of the good! Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.59 But there is more to the origin of the first stanza 57

fth-~- th-~·-vi~~~----fu~~~-- ~d:--:K~th~ u.P~i~h~d. -J;~~~-~-g~~-~-----w~ ~-T-~-~ I I !Harris had earlier noted the similarity of the first !stanza to lines in Chapter II of the Bhagavad Gita. He J 1 jcited J. Cockburn Thomson's translation: He who thinks that this spirit can kill, and he who thinks that it can be killed, both of these are wrong in judgment. It neither kills nor is killed. It is not born, nor dies at any time. It has no origin, nor will it ever have an origin. Unborn, changeless, eternal, both as to future and

J past time, it is not slain when the body is killed. 6 0 !Ann Stanford's more recent verse translation of this same I !passage shows an even greater similarity to Emerson's poem: Who thinks of him as slayer And who thinks that he is slain Do not rightly understand. He slays not, nor is slain. He is never born, nor does he ever die Nor having been, will he. ever cease to be. Not born, constant, eternal, this ancie~t one Is not slain, though the body is slain.bl jLines 3 and 4 of the first stanza have been attributed to ja passage Emerson copied in his Journal from the Katha i !•Upan1shad: • "they do not know well" and "the soul being more subtle than what is subtle."62 There is less general agreement on the sources of the second stanza. The first line probably derives from a Journal entry, "He is far, and also near," copied from the Katha Upanishad. 63 Later studies, such as those of Goren and McLean, cite for this stanza various sources in the

;Bhagavad Gita, which are close in meaning ~ut not in . 64 wor d1ng. 58

~--·-··------:- ·-~-- ··-·-- -· ------·- ·------·------·- . ------·------·-·-·------.. ·-··· -----, _ 1 In the third stanza, all agree that the last line !derives from the Bhagavad Gita line in Chapter XII, 19• j"I am the sacred verse," or in Chapter X: "Of the Vedas, ji am the Sama-Veda."65 The imagery of wings in the third I !stanza seemed to elude most scholars, but has been traced to the following passage describing Brahman in the svetasvatara Upanishad: 1 I His eyes are everywhere; his face, his arms, his feet are in every place. Out of himself he 1, has produced the heavens and the earth, and with 1 his arms, and his wings, he holds them together.66 ' There has been much speculation on the identity of "the strong gods" and "the sacred Seven" in the final stanza. Harris originally named "the strong gods" as Indra, god of the storm; Agni, god of fire, and Yama, god of death, who "are absorbed unto Brahman at the close of the Kalpa, or day of Brahma."67 McLean cites a passage in Chapter X of the Bhagavad Gita for "the sacred Seven." Forth from my thought Came the seven Sages, The Ancient Four And at last the Manus: Thus I gave birth To the first begetters Of all earth's children.68 There are more than a few suggestions for the source of the last line, but probably as close as any is this passage from Chapter VIII of the Bhagavad Gita: The knower of Brahman Who ,.takes this path Goes to Brahman: He does not return.69 59 f'------~ .. -- -Thus :---witil-out regard.- for ·western minds -·c;·y. ·kn.c;w:·~-----l j } ledge did Emerson characterize Brahman--the reality behind i all illusion--in this most Oriental of his poems.

In this uncomplex poem, Maia is characterized as Ijan Oriental dancing girl. The imagery is Indian, but more !popular than religious in style. A possible source is I !Colebrooke's Miscellaneous Essays, which Emerson was ! i ireading in 1845 when he copied this passage from Volume I in his Journals: "Nature is likened to a female dancer exhibiting · herself to soul as to an audience" (and is reproached with shamelessness for repeatedly exposing herself to the rude gaze of the spectator.) "She desists however when she has sufficiently shown herself. She does so because she has been seen. He desists because he has not seen her. There is no further use for the world: yet the connexion of soul and nature still subsists." Colebrooke, p. 259 70 jThe poem itself is remarkably similar: I Her gay pictures never fail, I Crowds each other, veil on veil, Charmer who will be believed By man who thirsts to be deceived. Illusions like the tints of pearl, Or changing colors of the sky, Or ribbons of a dancing girl That mend her beauty to the eye.71

. i Chapter VI

J I l THE WORLD AS ILLUSION: YANKEE STYLE I I l I 1 The Hinduism from which Emerson borrowed viewed the 1 I Irecognition of Maya as necessary to Illumination and one- 'I I I !ness with Brahman, and although Emerson preached a j I I !similar message in essay and poem, he tended to l ' I !Americanize Maya by introducing the practical element. I 1 Maya under his pen became the "ties and straps" necessary "to bind souls to human life." His version of Maya also carried a certain Christian moralistic tone.

60 61 r-·-··--·-·······- r.-··;~;;~d_:·==~~ -:f~i~~d---~d· J:-~·.:~~;,·ed. ~ --~~g;iii~~~t-~·----, day to the Bhagavat Geeta;--It was the first of books; it was as if an empire spoke to us, nothing small 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 which exercise us. Let us now go back and apply a minute criticism to it, but cherish the venerable oracle.2 What Emerson seemed to see chiefly in the concept of Maya was the value of illusion in keeping life's 1 children attracted to the school of experience. As he explained in "Works and Days," "A rattle, a red coral, a doll, an apple, a horse-chestnut for a child keeps him going, climbing and tumbling about, and educates his muscle, blood and bones. • • ,.3 But Emerson implied also in his works the folly of !·clinging to life's illusions instead of growing spiritual- 1Jly. Earth laughed at the folly of the farmers in "Hama- j l·ltreya" who thought they possessed the land, and "shame and !fame" were alike to "Brahma." Emerson taught the value of Ia certain detachment about life. "Youth, age, property, !condition, events, persons,--self even,--are successive I .maias through which Vishnu mocks and instructs the soul."4 Along with detachment, however, Emerson's theory of the world as illusion--all a part of the Divine--lent a deep-felt beauty to even the most commonplace objects and events. "What is there of the divine·in a barber

: shop? 11 he asked in an early Journal. 111Vluch. All." was ,his answer. Divinity was everywhere for the soul who 'could comprehend this fact. Later, he wrote: "Whosoever 62

.f'th-eref.ore--ai):Preh:-enCis ___ tile infini te·~·.:::::md·--every ·ma.n-·;an:~-~-=----~ I brings all worth and significance into that spot of space where he stands, though it be a ditch, a potato-field, a !work-bench. • • "5 i In spite of Emerson's pantheism, there was some- j thing Christian about what almost seems a glorification of the work ethic in the passage above •. There was also some- thing Christian about his concept of the Over-Soul according to A. E. Christy: "The chief difference between Emerson's Over-Soul and the Hindu Brahma was that there was a Christian flavor in the former that was not in the I latter, a beatitude accessible to all in earnest active moral endeavor, suffering and perfect in every hour."6 I I With his American practicality and Oriental t l . i I philosophy, Emerson has been compared to his representatiort i of Plato--a truly balanced soul, poised between East and I West, delighting in the all absorbing unity of the Brah- i 7 ! man, but as practical as the extremest of his countrymen." I

I Just how practically did he put the doctrine of ! I illusion to work in his own life? I I

I ' . . f'"~··----~------·-· -~--- -~- ----~----·¥ »~--- ·------.. -"--·· ·"~---· ~--,----·------~~ ·--~ ··----'- - .-~~ ·- ~~--~ --·----~ --- --~~--"~"----~----... -~------~- .. v, ' I

Chapter VII

I I ILLUSION AS A WAY OF LIFE The ways in which Emerson applied the doctrine of I jMaya to his own conduct of life illustrate a balance I !between Idealism and practicality, a combination which was I :to become typical of the American way of life. How much : I iof a mystic was this Concord resident in his daily round of' I I life? His son, Edward Emerson, has described how his father began to study nature in searching out the Spirit behind forms: He daily went out from the four walls of his study to his larger study in the woods, recorded what he saw, but largely, not as a final fact,-­ as it were, with a pin through it,--but as an appearance, a suggestion, a parable, surely with wisdom behind it. He saw light, flowers, shadow on solid rock, but what he noted was, that the light glanced, the flower unfolded, the shadow passed, and even the rock was crumbling under the tooth of the air to pass into soil, then flower, then seed, then man: that all was flowing and new each moment. • • .Here is the whole fact. Heaven is here and now, or nowhere and never.l Others who have studied Emerson's life describe him as a mystic only in the broadest sense of the word, although there were mystical overtones to many passages in his essays. One of the most famous, the "naked eyeball" passage found in Nature, has been described as a metaphor borrowed from Plotinus and therefore only a second-hand : mystic experience. 2 i . ~ L 64

~--~~-~----- roi~ti~~i-·ili~~i~;ti~!l-_i;~;--b~~~---hi~t~;;i~-~i:l:Y--·------~-1 Iassociated with visions of a gr'ea t light. Although I, Emerson once recorded in his journal that "a certain I Ii : ! l !wandering light comes to me which I instantly perceive to I i jbe the cause of causes," this kind of experi_ence was I japparently infrequent. Emerson was too much absorbed in !the life of family and community to make room for the · I I isingle-minded concentration and severe discipline necessary! I 1 !for true mysticism. He was more a humanist than a mystic, i !who, as he once told Margaret Fuller, loved life. And in his journals he wrote: "Transcendentalism says, the man is all. ,.J That Emerson had not attained what Plotinus termed I I "cosmic consciousness" is agreed upon by Dr. Richard f !Maurice Bucke, in his book Cosmic Consciousness. In a !minute examination of those throughout history who seemed I. I Ito have attained this higher consciousness of Illumination,~ jDr. Bucke includes Emerson only as one who was close to I its attainment, but had not realized it. "He lived in the I light of the great day, but there is no evidence that its I sun for him actually rose." Bucke based his assessment ipartly on the coldness of language with which Emerson ! described the Brahmic splendor in "The Over-Soul. "4 i Emerson could perhaps best be described as a I ! J practical mystic. All mystical philosoph1es agree on the importance of ectasy and union with God, but differ in relating this experience to daily life. Oriental mysti- .r;i~~~---i~ ··-it~--;~t~-~~~-~- d~~i~~-value ~~--~~~iity···--t·~-th-~---;~rld i lof illusion and seeks to perpetuate only the ecstasy of [oneness. In extreme Western form, mysticism merely denies i ithe relative importance of everyday experience. Emerson i ! !differed from both: He sought the mystical experience for \ lits value in guiding practical life in the world.5 I And in a practical sense, the .doctrine of Illusions ldid help to ameliorate Emerson's own personal tragedies. I jWith the early deaths of his father, two older brothers, I !first wife, and young son Waldo, Emerson had more than his share of grief. After Waldo's death, he was able to say that affections, emotions and persons were all to be set aside as illusions: People grieve and bemoan themselves, but it is not half so bad with them as they say. There are moods in which we court suffering, in the hope that here, at least, we shall find reality, sharp peaks and edges of truth. But it turns out to be scene­ painting and counterfeit. The only thing grief has taught me, is to know how shallow it is ••• 6 Grief too would make one an idealist, he claimed in I 1 "Experience," although the true realization would come with the costly price of sons and lovers. In the same essay, he wrote·, as was previously quoted, of the diffi- culty of continuing to feel intense grief over the death of his young son, Waldo. The calamity had not seemed to really touch him, and something he felt once a part of him had fallen away without leaving a scar. He grieved mainly : that grief could teach him nothing, nor carry him "one step into real nature." In spite of these words of 66

• > ·~. •• --.~··--w •" • --·•• • '""• '"'"""~-• " -·•• <, < • ~-·-· -•-••-~··• - '""""- • """ • ••" -"'""''" • • •-·~~--·-•• •••·-" _. " •- -·-~·--. ·--~-·••••~·-~ /detachment, Emerson did not separate himself from the i . jworld emotionally; he remained a warm-hearted family man, !retaining a fine balance. "We live amid surfaces, and the ' I true art of life is to skate well on them," seemed to be ! l . i lhis philosophy.? l I Many have claimed that another aspect of Emerson's l I!philosophy, that of the unreality of matter, was highly l !influential upon the mind-cure religions that emerged in !America during the nineteenth century. Ernest Holmes, ! . : I Jfou~der of Religous Science, acknowledged his debt to Emerson; ·Mary Baker Eddy, however, claimed that she had formulated the doctrines of Christian Science long before reading Emerson. In any case, it is interesting to note Jhow Emerson applied the power of mind over matter in his \ I own life. II· There is a diversity of opinion on this. George I . I W. Cook, writing in Current Literature, claims that I Emerson in many of his lectures spoke ·of sickness as the ' j result of mental imperfection and a failure to give the I mind control over the body. Cook says that not even Mary Baker Eddy was more emphatic as to the cause of disease as spiritual rather than physical. In his account of

Emerson's life, Octavius B. Frothinghec::~n quotes Emerson as saying: "Shun the negative side. Never wrong people with

your contritions nor with dismal views on .~litics or society. Never name sickness, even ·it you could trust yourself on that perilous topic; beware unmuzzling a 67

rJ·-~· ··--·~····----·---···~ .. ~-·--·---~ -·-··4-~ ·--- -· ----~~···- ---~-- ·------·----~---- -~- .... ---·--· ____ ~--.------~----~---~-·--- ·--·-~------·-·-~------~---W--~ !valetudinarian who will soon give. you your fill of it. · !nr. Frederic Bailes, the New Thought writer, claims that !Emerson may have healed h1mself of a tubercular condition I !as a young man. His father and brothers had already died I !untimely deaths from the disease, and Emerson himself was ! !not expected by relatives to live a long life. Yet, ! !completely healed, he lived until almost eighty years of I lage. Bailes says that Emerson unconsciously used the true !method of treating himself mentally. Instead of seeking

genial working temper; the horizon opens, and we are full j of good will and gratitude to the Cause of Causes."9 !' i Mary Baker Eddy claimed, however,. that Emerson's own negative thinking kept her from healing him during his final illness. In a letter to a friend, da-ted March 4, 1888, Mrs. Eddy tells how she and her husband made a visit 68

r······ ...... ··-··--·------·--·······------...... •••. ., ...... ·-·· .... -·······-.. --···· ...... ------. ---· ··------·------· .. ··· ······------···--.:....-~---··· Ito Emerson's bedside several months before his demise. 1 l i I "As soon as I got-in the deep recesses of his mind," she \

!wrote,i . - "I saw his case was hopeless. " He told her, "I am I i' !old and my brains are wearing out from hard labor." When I j I ! !she asked him if he believed in the powers of God above all I !other causation, he replied that he did, but that it would i lbe profane for him to believe that a man does not wear out.: l"I don't believe God can or wants to prevent this result ! i I iof old age." This was a far cry from his words as a young 1 I lman: "This old age ought not to creep on a human mind. I see no need of it. Whilst we converse with what is above us, we donot grow old, but grow young." Some sixteen years abefore his death, however, his mood seemed to have f- shifted with the writing of the poem "Terminus. "

'I It is time to be old, To take in sail:-- !. The god of bounds, 1 Who sets to seas a shore, Came to me in his fatal rounds, I And said: "No morel" 10 I Perhaps this was not so much a growing negativity I as a certain detachment Emerson gradually learned towards I life itself. In June, 1861, this is evidenced by j observations written in his Journals on the advantages of I old age: i I l I reached the other day the end of my fifty­ seventh year, and am easier in my mind than hither­ to. I could never give much reality to evil and pain. But now when my wife says perhaps this tumor on your shoulder is a cancer, I say, What if it is?11 69

r·------·····--··-~·--·-----·--·· ········· -.-- ...... -·- ·--·-· -·--· ·-- ... --··-· -·---- ..... ·- ... --- ·- ---...... _ ···--· -·- ·---·····------...... -······-·----·-··] In spite of'this growing detachment, Emerson I I remained to the end of his life a fine balance between East: 1 !and West, between Idealism and practicality. Even Protap I i jchunder Mozoomdar, the East Indian who in 1884, praised I !Emerson as "a geographical mistake," whose character I !"shines upon India serene as the evening star," saw the !practicality in his life. He described the two types of . I jHindu devotees--those who renounced their homes to retire I !into the forests, and those who remained in the world and I ! !devoted themselves to virtue--and placed Emerson among the

. 1,. I,latter group. This was most exemplary: "Did he not I I Iwelcome work, spirituality, aspiration, obscure excellence •j !from every quarter of the globe into his house? Did he not' J· !identify himself with every good movement, however unpopu- lla.r, which had for its object the amelioration of his lrace? ••• " Truly, Emerson, he concluded, was the best 1 . 12 ! o f Bra h m1ns. I I r-·------~ -~ ~--- -·--·· --········-··--· -··· ...... -····--···"" .... -··-·--· ...... I . I I .NOTES 1- 1 Chapter I 1Paul F. Boller, Jr., American Transcendentalism, 1830- 1860: An Intellectual Inquiry (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1974), p. 1. 2Frederick I. Carpenter, Emerson .Handbook (Ne.w York: Hendricks House, 1953), p. 210 ]Frederick I. Carpenter, Emerson and Asia (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1930), pp. 15, 43, 44-46. 4carpenter, Emerson Handbook, p. 210.

Chapter II 1A. E. Christy, The Orient in American Transcendenta­ lism: A Stud of Emerson Thoreau and Alcott (New York: Octagon Books, Inc., 19 3 , p. 2Christy, p. 67. 3christy, p. 68. 4christy, p. 69. 5Kenneth Cameron, Indian Superstition (Hanover, New Hampshire: The Friends of the Dartmouth Library, 1954), pp. 13-17 6cameron, p. 17 ?cameron, pp. 18-24. Some of the books Emerson read in preparation for his Indian poem included: William Robertson's An Historical Disquisition Concerning the Knowledge which the Ancients Had of India, Thomas Duer Broughton's Selections from the Popular Poetry of the Hindoos, Hugh Pearson's Memoirs of the Rev. Claudius Buchanan, Volume I of Lord Woodhouses's Considerations on the Present Political State of India, Volume I of Sir William Jones's Asiatick Miscellany, and Robert Southey's The Curse of Kehama. 8cameron, pp. 26-JO. 9cameron, pp. 49-54. 10James Elliot Cabot, A Memoir of Ralph. Waldo Emerson (1887; rpt. New York: AMS Press, Inc., 1965), I, 80-81. 11william Bysshe Stein, ed., "Introduction," Two Brahman Sources of Emerson and Thoreau (Gainesville, Florida: Scholars' Facsimiles and Reprints, 1967), pp. v-vi.

• ••••"'-•••o -·-•••' 70 71 r-·-'"··--···-- .. ------,.·-----·- ·-··--· ---·---· -·------·------· .. -. ---- ., 12stein, p. vi-vii. 13stein, ·;·.··-- ~:-.···i4c~~~~~;,· ·;·~---;-;·5·~------~

/·chapter III ! 1Kenneth Cameron, Indian Superstition (Hanover, New !Hampshire: The Friends of the Dartmouth Library, 1954), lPP· 13-17. I 2Ann Stanford, trans., The Bha avad Gita: A New Verse !Translation (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970 , p. xxi.

1 3Nru;cy Wilson Ross,. Thr~e ~a:ys of Asian Wisdom: Hinduism,, !Buddh1sm Zen and The1r S1 1f1cance for the West (New ;York: Simon and Schuster, 19 , p. 17. I I 4Ross, p. 17. I 5Louis Renou, ed., Great Religons of Modern Man: Hindu­ ism (New York: Pocket Books, 1972), p. 23. 6Ross, p. 54; and W. T. Harris, "Emerson's Orientalism," in The Genius and Character of Emerson, F. B. San born, e d. ,: (New York: Kennikat Press, 1885), p. 378. 1 1 8 I ?Ross, pp. 53-54. Renou, p. 19, and Ross, p. 19. I 1'. 9A. E. Christy, The Orient in American Transcendenta- ' 1 lism: A Study of Emerson, Thoreau and Alcott (New York: ' Octagon Books, Inc., 1963), pp. 86-87. l 1 11 ! °Christy, pp. 89-91. christy, pp. 90-91 12 I christy, p. 92. ! 13swami Vivekananda, Jnana Yoga (New York: The Vedanta Society, 1902), pp. 51-52. 14vivekenanda, pp. 55-72, 83, 104. I l5The U anishads: Breath of the Eternal, Swami Prabhava- 1 nanda and Frederick Manchester, trans. New York: A Mentor: Book, 1948), pp. 124-127. l 16stanford, p. 123. 17stanford, pp. 57-69. '

Chapter IV 1A. E. Christy, Tl}g _Orient in American Transcendenta­ lism: A Study of Eme:; ';mt Thoreau and Alcott (New York: Octagon Books, Inc., .. 963), p. 287. 72

-·······2 "'····· ... -··· ...... ···---····· ...... -_-·······-· '"...... ~--. --···-- .. ·-·· -·-···-·· ·-· ... --·-·------·-··---·- ...... --···--·- --l r Christy, pp. 275, 278, 284-85. i 1 . 3navid Lee Maulsby, Emerson: His Contribution to Literature (Tufts College, Mass.: The Tufts College Press, 1911), p. 122.

4christy, p. 288. 5Frederick I. Carpenter, Emerson and Asia (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1930), pp. 14, 21. 6christy, p. 291. ?The Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Edward Waldo Emerson and Waldo Emerson Forbes (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1909-1914), X, 158-159. 8christy, p. 87.

Chapter V 1The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. William H. Gilman et. al. (Cambridge, Mass.: !The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1960), IV, l 290-291. Hereafter cited as JMN. l 2selected Writin s of Ral h Waldo Emerson, ed. William !H. Gilman New York: A Signet Classic, 19 5), p. 189. !Hereafter cited as SW. I· ! 3Gilman, SW, pp. 213-14; and Frederick I. Carpenter, i Emerson and Asia (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University ! !Press, 1930), P• 104. ! 4 ! Gilman, SW, p. 214. 5Gilman, SW, p. 214. I I 6Gilman, SW, p. 214. ?Gilman, SW, p. 214 8Gilman, SW, p. 216.

11 9From Emerson's essay, Circles, II quoted by Frederick I. ! , Carpenter in 11 Introduction 11 to Ralph Waldo Emerson: ! 1 Representative Selections, ed. Frederick I~ Carpenter i (New York: American Book Company, 1934), p. xxx. Hereafter i cited as RS. 1°Frederick I. Carpenter, Emerson and Asia (Cambridge, :Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1930), p. 105. Hereafter · cited as Asia. · 11Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Irwin Edman (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1926), p. 1. 7.3

r·- .. -...... ·--·-···----· --··------...... ·-···· ---·- ...... ·-·-····· .. -··-·----- ...... ······- ----······-----· ... ---·--·------·-···---··------l 1 j 12carpenter, Asia, p. 75. .3Edman, p. 191. . . j I 14 . · .

!.!. Edman, p. 19.3.

1 l5Quoted in Ralph L. Rusk, The Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1949), p. .301. 16 Edman, p. 295. 17Edman, p. 296 18Edman, pp. 297-98. 19Edman, pp. J00-02; Rusk, pp. JOl-02; W. T. Harris, "Ralph Waldo Emerson," The Atlantic Monthly, 50 (Aug. 1882), 248; and Frederick I. CarJ?enter, Emerson Handbook (New York: Hendricks House, 195J),.p. 62. Hereafter cited as Handbook. 20carpenter, Asia, p. 41. 21carpenter, Asia, pp. 40-42. 22From The Atlantic Monthly, 51, 826, quoted in Carpenter, Asia, p. 4.3. 2.3carpenter, RS, p. 2.35. 24carpenter, RS, p. 2.36. 25carpenter, RS, p. 2.36. 26carpenter, RS, pp. 236-37. 27carpenter, RS, p. 2.37o 28carpenter, RS, p. 2.37. 29carpenter, RS, p. 2.38 • .3°carpenter, RS, p. 239. 1 2 ,. .3 Gi1man, SW, pp • .380-84 • .3 Gilman, SW, pp • .387-88. .3.3Gilman, SW, pp • .397-98. .34Gilman, SW, p • .398 • 6 I .35Gilman, SW, p. 404. .3 Gilman, SW, p. 405 • ! .37Gilman, SW, p. 405. .3 8Gilman, SW, pp. 405-06 • .39Gilman, SW, pp. 406-07. 40Gi1man, SW, pp. 407-09. 41Gilman, SW, pp. 409-10. 42Gilman, SW, pp. 410-11. 43Gilman, SW, p. 411. 44Gilman, SW, pp. 411-12; Carpenter, Asia, p. 1.31; and Carpenter, Handbook, p. 67. 45carpenter, Handbook, p. 67. 46Basic Selections from Emerson: Essa s Poems and , Apothegms (New York: A Mentor Book, 1954 , ·P· 126; and The Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Edward Waldo Emerson and Waldo Emerson Forbes (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1909-14), VIII, 578. 74

»·-· ----:· ...... ·-··· ...... - . - ···- ... --·--... . --· ·-·---··---- ... -- -~- ..... ··-··-· .... -- ·---~ .. ····-··-·.. -·--·-·-·---· r------···-"·· ..... 1 . 47carpenter, Asia, p. 123. 48Gilman, JMN, IX, 321. 4 . . 9Mohan Lat Sharma, "Emerson's Hamatreya," The Expli­ cator, 26 (April 1968), 63. 5bGilman, SW, pp. 464-65. 5lGilman, SW, p. 188. 52Rusk, p. 396; and W. T. Harris, "Emerson's Oriental­ ism," in The Genius and Character of Emerson, ed. F. B. Sanborn (New York: Kennikat Press, 1885), p. 373. 1 I 53Andrew M. McLean, "Emerson's 'Brahma' As An Expression1 of Brahman," New England Quarterly, 42 (1968), 116-17.

54Harris, Genius and Character of Emerson, p. 374; and K. R. Chandrasekharan, "Emerson's 'Brahma'; An Indian Interpretation," New England Quarterly, 30 (1960), 305. 55navid Lee Maulsby, Emerson: His Contribution to Literature (Tufts College, Mass.: The Tufts College Press, l9ll), p. 123-25; and Harris, p. 374. 56Gilman, JMN, IX, 319. 57Gilman, JMN, IX, 354. 58Quoted in Carpenter, Asia, p. 116. 59Gilman, SW, p. 471. 60 H arr~s,. p. 3 74 • 61Ann Stanford, trans., The Bha avad Gita: A New Verse Translation (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970 , 2:19-20. 62carpenter, Asia, p. 117. 63carpenter, Asia, p. 117. 64Leyla Goren, "Elements of Brahmanism in the Transcen­ dentalism of Emerson," Emerson Society Quarterly, 34 (1964), 36-37. 65carpenter,· Asia, p. 118; and Harris, p. 376. 66McLean, p. 120. 67Harris, p. 377. 6 ~cLean, p. 120. 69McLean, p. 121. 7°Gilman, JMN, IX, 292. 71Poem quoted in A. E. Christy, The Orient in American Transcendentalism (New York: Octagon Books, Inc., 1963), pp. 93-4. 75 ~-~~~~:::d~:e_e_M~~~s~;~-~~:s~~,'-H~~-~o~t~:~~t=-~:---1 Literature (Tufts College, Mass.: The Tufts College Press,j 1911), pp. 136-37. l I 2The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ral h Waldo: Emerson, ed. William H. Gilman et. al. · Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press, 1960), X, 360. 3The Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Edward Waldo Emerson and Waldo Emerson Forbes (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1909-1914), VIII, 578. 4Frederick I. Carpenter, Emerson, and Asia (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1930), p. 131. 5A. E. Christy, The Orient in American Transcendenta­ lism (New York: Octagon Books, Inc., 1963), p. 77. 6christy, p. 79. 7w. T. Harris, "Emerson's Orientalism," in The Genius and Character of Emerson, ed. F. B. Sanborn (New York: Kennikat Press, 1885), p. 372. Chapter VII 1Edward Waldo Emerson, Emerson in Concord: A Memoir I (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1898), p. 249. I 2Paul F. Boller, Jr. , American Transcendentalism 0- : 1860: An Intellectual Inquiry New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1974), pp. 84-5. 3Bo11er, pp. 84-5. 4Richard Maurice Bucke, Cosmic Consciousness (New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., Inc., 1969), pp. 290-91. 5Frederick I. Carpenter, Emerson Handbook (New York: ·Hendricks House, 1953), p. 119. 6 From "Exp eri enc e , " .::::S..:;:e:.:::l:...:;:e:..::c~t::..::e::.::d::::...... :~=-:::.;~=_;:;-=-:--==?~...::.:.::== Emerson, ed. William H. Gilman A Signet Classic, 1965), p. 329. ?Gilman, SW, pp. 329, 335. 8charles s. Braden, S irits in Rebellion: The Rise and Development of New Thought Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1970), PP• 35, 37. 76

~~~-9~;~~:~: ;.~ J~.~ . ~-- -- ... . -- . -- - - ~"~-~~~- ~--- --~~-l

10 Robert Peel, Christian Science: Its Encounter with i American Culture (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, i 1958), pp. 88-90, 99. 11The Heart of Emerson's Journals, ed. 'Bliss Perry I (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1926), p. 285. I 12Protap Chunder Mozoomdar, "Emerson as Seen from India," in The Genius and Character of Emerson, ed. F. B. Sanborn (New York: Kennikat Press, 1885), p. 367. ·-. ···--·-·-. -...... ·- .. - .... - ·- ··• ··-~-· ..... ···- ...... , ...... _ ...... - ...... ·-·········-C---l l I BIBLIOGRAPHY ' I \ Ando, Scholi. Zen and American Transcendentalism: An Investigation of One's Self. Tokyo, The 1 Hokuseido Press, 1970. Bhagavad-Gita. Trans. Lionel D. Barnett. Boston: The I Beacon Press, 1951. Bhagavad-Gita. Trans. Swami Nikhilananda. New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1952. Bhagavad-Gita: A New Verse Translation. Trans. Ann i Stanford. New York: Herder and Herder, 1970. Bode, Carl, ed. Ralph Waldo Emerson: A Profile. New York: .Hill and Wang, 1968. Boller, Paul F., Jr. American Transcendentalism, 1830-. 1860: An Intellectual Inquiry.· New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1974. Braden, Charles S. ·Spirits in Rebellion: The Rise and I -1· Development of New Thought. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1970. Brooks, Van Wyck. The Flowering of New England, 1815- 1865. New York: 1941. Bucke, Richard Maurice. Cosmic Consciousness. New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., Inc. 19.69. Cabot, James Elliot. A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson. 2 vols. 1887; rpt. New York: AlVIS Press, Inc., 1965. Cameron, Kenneth. Emerson the Essayist. 2 vols. Raleigh, North Carolina: Thistle Press, 1945. ------Indian Superstition, ed. with A Dissertation on . i Emerson's Orientalism at Harvard. Hanover, New ! Hampshire: The Friends of the Dartmouth Library, 1954. ------Ralph Waldo Emerson's Reading. New York: Haskell House, 1966. · Carpenter, Frederick I. Emerson and Asia. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1930. . ;

77

/ 78 r~-=-~~-==·=·-·--~~~~~~--~-~~~~0~~-:·--····~~~---y-~~-~-~--~~~~~i~;~--~~u;~-~------l I . , I 1953. j 1 I, Chandrasekharan, K. R. "Emerson • s 'Brahma' : An Indian Interpretation," New England Quarterly, 30 (1960), t 305. Christy, A. E. The Orient in American Transcendentalism: A Study of Emerson, Thoreau and Alcott. 1932; rpt. New York: Octagon Books, Inc., 1963. Cooke, G. W. A. A Bibliography of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Boston, 1908. Emerson, Edward Waldo. Emerson in Concord: A Memoir. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1898. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Basic Selections from Emerson: Essays, Poems and Apothegms. Ed. Eduard C. Lindeman. New York: A Mentor Book, 1954. Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ed. Irwin Edman. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1926. The Heart of Emerson's Journals. Ed. Bliss Perry. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1926. j ------The Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ed. Edward Waldo Emerson and Waldo. Emerson Forbes. 10 vols. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1909-1914. The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph 1 Waldo Emerson. Ed. William H. Gilman, Alfred Ferguson, Merrell R. Davis, Merton M. Sealts, Jr., Harrison Hayford, et. al. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1960-- The Portable Emerson. Ed. Mark Van Doren. New York: The Viking Press, 1946. ! Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative Selections. Ed. Frederick I. Carpenter. New York: American Book Company, 1934. Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ed. William H. Gilman. New York: A Signet Classic, 1965. Engel, Mary Miller. I Remember the Emersons. Los Angeles: Times-Mirror, 1941. 79

r·---~------,------.. ---- ...... ------.. ------..... --- ... ------.--.. --- ...... ! Frothingham, Octavius Brooks. Transcendentalism in New England: A History. 1876; rpt. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1959. l__,i ! Goddard, Harold Clarke. Studies in New England Transcen­ dentalism. New York: Hillary House, 1960. Gohdes, Clarence L. F. The Periodicals of American Transcendentalism. Durham, N. C.: Duke University Press, 1931. Goren, Leyla. "Elements of Brahmanism in the Transcen­ dentalism of Emerson," Emerson Society Quarterly, 34 (1964), 6-55- Harris, W. T. "Emerson's Orientalism," in The Genius and Character of Emerson. Ed. F. B. Sanborn. New York: Kennikat Press, 1885. ------"Ralph Waldo Emerson," The Atlantic Monthly, 50 (1882), 245-53- Rockfield, George, ed. Selected Writings of the American Transcendentalists. New York: A Signet Classic, 1966. I j. Holmes, Ernest. The Science of Mind. New York: Dodd, l Mead and Company, 1938. Holmes, Oliver Wendell. Balph Waldo Emerson. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1885. Hubbell, G. S. A Concordance to the Poems of Ralph I Waldo Emerson. New York: H. W. Wilson, 1932. Konvitz, Milton and Stephen Whicher. Emerson: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1962. McLean, Andrew M. "Emerson's 'Brahma' as An Expression of Brahman," New England Quarterly, 42 (1968), 115-22. Matthiessen, F. 0. American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman. New York: Oxford University Press, 1941. Maulsby, David Lee. Emerson: His Contribution to Literature. Tufts College, Mass.: The Tufts College Pres?, 1911. Miller, Perry. The Transcendentalists. Cambridge, Mass.: 1950. 80

~--~----···-····--·-···--··. ----- ...... •. - ··•·· -· ...... ··-·· ...•.... ._ .... -----. ....•. -. . . - ... ·-·· ...... ------·-·· ·------.... ------...... -----· -;--·------··-~. Mozoomdar, Protap Chunder, "Emerson as Seen from IndJ.a," i 1 · in The Genius and Character of Emerson. Ed. i F. B. Sanborn. New York: Kennikat Press, 1885. · Parker, Gail Thain. Mind Cure in New England: From the Civil War to World War I. Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1973. Farrington, Vernon L. Main Currents in American Thought. Volume II, The Romantic Revolution in America. New York: Harcourt Brace and Co., 1927-1930. Peel, Robert. Christian Science: Its Encounter with American Culture. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1958. Perry, Bliss. Emerson Today. Princeton, N. J., 1931. Renou, Louis, ed. Great Religions of Modern Man: Hinduism. New York: Pocket Books, 1972. Ross, Nancy Wilson. Three Ways of Asian Wisdom: Hinduism, Buddhism, Zen and Their Significance for the West. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966. I Rusk, Ralph L. The Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson. New I York: Columbia University Press, 1949. Sharma, Mohan Lat. "Emerson's Hamatreya." The Expli- lI cator, 26 (April, 1968), Item 63. Smith, Huston. The Religions of Man. New York: Harper and Row, 1958. Spiller, Robert E., et. al. Literary History of the United States, Vol. I. New York: The MacMillan Co., 1948. ------The Oblique Light: Studies in American Literary History and Biography. New York: The MacMillan Co., 1968. Stein, William Bysshe, ed. Two Brahman Sources of Emerson and Thoreau. Gainesville, Fla.: Scholars• Facsimiles and Reprints, 1967. The Upanishads: Breath of the Eternal. Trans. Swami­ Prabhavananda and Frederick Manchester. New York: A Mentor Book, 1948. Vivekananda, Swami. Jnana Yoga. New York: The Vedanta Society, 1902. i L .. _.