Philip Goldberg - American Veda: From Emerson and the Beatles to Yoga and Meditation How Indian Spirituality Changed the West

Copyright 2010 by Philip Goldberg

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Harmony Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

www.crownpublishing.com

Harmony Books is a registered trademark and the Harmony Books colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Goldberg, Philip, 1944
American Veda: from Emerson and the Beatles to Yoga and meditation: how Indian spirituality changed the West / Philip Goldberg.1st ed.
p. cm.
1. HinduismUnited StatesHistory. 2. United StatesReligion. 3. VedantaHistory.
4. YogaHistory. I. Title.
BL1168.U532G66 2010
294.50973dc22 2010011040

eISBN: 978-0-307-71961-4

v3.1_r1

To the venerable rishis, sadgurus, and acharyas,
a thousand pranams

Passage to India

Lo, soul, seest thou not Gods purpose from the first?
The earth to be spannd, connected by network,
The races, neighbors, to marry and be given in marriage,
The oceans to be crossd, the distant brought near,
The lands to be welded together.

A worship new I sing,
You captains, voyagers, explorers, yours,
You engineers, you architects, machinists, yours,
You, not for trade or transportation only,
But in Gods name, and for thy sake O soul.

Walt Whitman, Passage to India

My gratitude begins with Trace Murphy, director of religious publishing at Doubleday, who saw the need for a book such as this one and made sure it got written. Profound thanks to my agent, Lynn Franklin, who brought Trace and me together, and whose support, guidance, and friendship have long sustained me. Thanks as well to Gary Jansen, whose astute hands-on editing was invaluable in shaping the book.

A deep bow of gratitude to Huston Smith, whose foreword graces these pages. That he took the time to write it at age ninety-one, with other priorities on his plate, is a testament to the importance he attributes to the subject matter. My added gratitude to Jon and Anna Monday for serving as liaisons to Huston, and for their feedback on sections of the manuscript.

Since I conducted more than three hundred interviews and engaged in countless informal conversations, I cant thank by name all those who generously shared their insights and expertise. I am grateful to every one of them, and especially to certain well-known individuals who are in demand by the media and nevertheless took the time to speak with me.

A number of people offered valuable assistance in a variety of ways, from transcribing interviews to supplying information to vetting passages of the book to extending profound moral support. For those contributions and others, I am thankful to the following: Jeffrey Ainis, Prem Anjali, Bill Barnard, John Roger Barrie, Raveen Battee, Swami Brahmavidyananda, Robert Brown, Sara Chadwick, Christine Chagnon, Christopher Chappie, Srinivas Chari, Ken Chawkin, Mawiyah Clayborne, Rameshwar Das, Dave DeLuca, my in-laws Betty and Richard Deutsch, Navin Doshi, Bill and Leslie Elkus, Tom Feldman, James Finley, Jack and Roberta Forem, Robert Forman, Elliot Friedland, Robert Gordon, Carlos Grasso, Robert Green, Michael Gressett, Linda Groff, Heidi Hall, Craig Hamilton, Andrew Harvey, Alan Hodder, Kristin Imboden, Jerry Jarvis, Kurt Johnson, Doug Kruschke, Ramdas Lamb, Lauren Landress, Jeffery Long, Jean MacPhail, Sanjay Manchanda, Franz Metcalf, Venkatesan Natarajan, Duncan Newton-Gaines, Jyotish and Devi Novack, Kikanza Nuri, Carter Phipps, John Raatz, Anita Rehker, Gus Reininger, Dana Sawyer, Sara Schrefflers, Michael Schwartz, Rita Sherma, Bahman Shirazi, Dean Sluyter, Stuart Sovatsky, David St. John, Tony Stern, Jim Strohecker, Murthy Subramaniya, Jeremy Tarcher, Mary Ellen Trahan, Jeff Utter, Sirah Vettese, Pravrajika Vrajaprana, Lisa Walford, Andrew Wenger, Melissa West, Sharon Whittle, Lola Williamson, and Connie Zweig.

While this might seem odd, I want to thank the creators of Google and everyone responsible for the miracle of the Internet. In an earlier era, writing this book would have taken at least twice as long, certain details might never have been uncovered, and I might have developed asthma from wallowing in the dusty stacks of a university library, searching for information that is now obtainable in a matter of seconds.

Finally, a deep bow to the dear ones whose encouragement and support over the years has meant more to me than they can possibly imagine: my brother Bob and everyone in my extended family and my wifes family, with special thanks to Aliya Rafei and Ryan Rafei for letting me play with them. Above all, deepest gratitude to my wife, Lori Deutsch, my own private devi (look it up), who never wavered in her support, even when it was obvious that this book would consume far more time and resources than anticipated. Without her healing presence, I cant imagine getting through this massive project with mind and body intact.

In the Indo-European languageso named because Sanskrit in India and Greek in Europe both derive from itv and w were interchangeable. Hence in India the word Vedanta and in Europe wit (and by extension wisdom) are branches of a single linguistic tree.

This common origin, however, is only the framework; the important question is what those two vessels (Vedanta, on the one hand, and the wisdom literature of Socrates, Plato, and their lesser lights, on the other) contained.

Here I will wax personal. As a professor of philosophy and religion, I had been well acquainted with the Wests wisdom literature, but I was totally unprepared for the shock of discovering that Vedanta proposes different paths of life tailored to human temperamentsjnana for intellectuals, bhakti for those who are emotional, karma for industrious individuals who like to work, and raja for contemplative people who profit from meditating. A verse in the Bible admonishes us to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart [