Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882) was one of the most renowned philosopher-transcendentalist American writers of the 19th century. He was certainly the most influential thinker in the literary and philosophical group known as the American Transcendentalists, who believed that individuals have the ability to transcend the physical world of senses and move to a deeper spiritual experience by exercising one’s free will.
Emerson’s philosophical and spiritual writings, which were strongly influenced by Indian philosophical thought, has had a huge impact on Americans both during his times and in the contemporary era. While explaining Emerson’s prodigious influence on America, the renowned Yale scholar, Harold Bloom, described Emerson as “the mind of America.” In American Veda, Philip Goldberg wrote: Emerson’s “prodigious intellect was augmented by a deep intuition that yielded insights similar to those of the Vedic rishis. He was, in short, a mystic.”
Thanks to the British colonialists, Emerson’s works also reached Indian shores. The educated Indians were thrilled to find that their sacred texts had influenced Emerson so profoundly. Tagore, Gandhi and Yogananda extolled the virtues of Emerson’s works. Gandhi advised one of his followers to read Emerson: “The essays to my mind contain the teachings of Indian wisdom in a Western garb.” In an interview with an American journalist, Tagore remarked: “I love your Emerson. In his work one finds much that is of India. In truth he made the teachings of our spiritual leaders and philosophers a part of his life.” According to Goldberg, Yogananda quoted Emerson at least ten times in his much-celebrated book, Autobiography of a Yogi.
Emerson’s immersion in Indian religion and philosophy started when he was at Harvard. He voraciously read books on Indian poetry, politics, philosophy, and religion. During his time at Harvard, Emerson also read a portion of William Jones’s translation of The Laws of Manu, which inspired him to write: “The soul itself is its own witness; the soul itself is its own refuge; offend not thy conscious soul, the supreme internal witness of men.” In Emerson and the Light of India, Robert Gordon states that by the time Emerson graduated from Harvard University, he had acquired a great deal of knowledge on the history, beliefs and religious practices in India.
According to Gordon, Emerson had developed a deep appreciation of India as a centre of spiritual practice, embracing four major tenets of Indian spirituality ~ (1) The idea that the material universe is actually a manifestation of divine power; (2) The purpose of life is for the human soul to realize its inherent unity with its source; (3) The concept of maya, which perceives the multiplicity of material forms as illusion that hinders the path towards ultimate knowledge; and (4) the transmigration of souls from body to body through successive lifetimes.
In 1836, Emerson founded the famous Transcendental Club in Massachusetts. During this period, he was deeply engaged in Indian philosophy. He described his experience about the Bhagavad Gita in his journal: “It was the first of books; it was as if an empire spake 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.”
During this phase, Emerson also read the essays by Rammohan Roy and oth r important works on India, including William Jones’s poem A Hymn to Narayana.” Emerson described his deep appreciation of the Indian religious writings: “The raptures of prayer and the ecstasy of devotion lose all being in the one Being. This tendency finds its highest expression in the religious writings of the east, chiefly in the Indian scriptures.”
According to several scholars, it was his deep understanding of the Indian religious and philosophical writings that led Emerson to believe that the ultimate purpose of life was in spiritual transformation and in experiencing directly the divine power in the here and now on earth.
According to Gordon, the deep insights that Emerson acquired from Indian religious and philosophical texts were consistently reflected in all his writings, illuminating the lives of millions all over the world. Similarly, Alan Hodder, author of Emerson’s Rhetoric of Revelation, explains the impact Indian philosophical and religious writings had on Emerson: “If we are to judge from the plethora of entries Emerson made in his journals from the mid-forties on, in which he transcribed passages from his Hindu readings or reflected on their implications, he read this particular branch of literature more zealously than perhaps any other during the last few decades of his life.”
Many of the themes in Emerson’s writings are based on Indian philosophy and religious thought. For example, the following quote of Emerson’s echoes the ideas of Manu as expressed in Laws of Manu: “Single is each man born, single he dies, single he receives the reward of his good and single the punishment of his evil deeds.” Emerson’s perspective on compensation is akin to the laws of karma. In one of his essays, Emerson wrote: “You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong. …Treat men as pawns and ninepins, and you shall suffer as well as they. If you leave out their heart, you shall lose your own.” Emerson’s belief in reincarnation is reflected in the following quote: “[he] discovered the secret of the world that all things subsist, and do not die, but only retire a little from sight and afterwards returns again.”
Following Hindu philosophy, Emerson looked to the individual’s self for a path to the “universal self” as reflected in the following quote: “The man who perceives in his own soul the supreme soul present in all creatures, acquires equanimity towards them all, and shall be absorbed at last in the highest essence, even that of the Almighty himself.” Emerson’s title of the essay The Over-Soul is almost a literal translation of the Sanskrit word Param Atman (Supreme Self).” In this essay, Emerson demonstrated the Vedantic principle that everything that is manifested in this material world is an expression of formless Brahman.
Emerson wrote that “the simplest person, who in his integrity worships God, becomes God; yet forever and ever the influx of the better and universal self is new and unsearchable.” This passage once again reveals Emerson’s philosophy having strong roots in Hindu philosophy as he constructs the “self” in relation to the “universal self.” In the same essay, Emerson wrote: “We live in succession, in division, in parts and particles. Meantime, within man, is the soul of the whole, the wise silence; the universal beauty to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal One.”
Emerson’s frequent mystical revelations can be compared to the experiences of the Indian rishis in their quest for the Ultimate knowledge. The following quote of Emerson’s mystical union with the divine is very much akin to the Upanishad’s concept of “I am Brahman”: I behold with awe and delight many illustrations of the One universal Mind.
I see my being imbedded in it. As a plant in the earth so I grow in God. I am only a form of him. He is the soul of me … A certain wandering light comes to me which I instantly perceive to be the Cause of Causes.
It transcends all proving. It is itself the ground of being and I see that is not one and I another, but this is the life of my life. That is one fact then; that in certain moments I have known that I existed directly from God, and am, as it were his organ. And in my ultimate consciousness Am He.
Emerson’s superb blending of Indian monism and Western idealism, Hindu atman and the Western self, Indian mysticism and Neo-Platonism with Emersonian transcendentalism appealed to a vast number of people in the Western world.
If one were to peruse the list of Emerson’s followers, it’s a dazzling roll call for sure: Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Alfred North Whitehead, William James, and Jack Kerouac, among other luminaries. Emerson was never afraid of confronting hot-button issues and was a leading voice supporting the rights of women, Native Americans, and the enslaved African Americans. According to Bloom, “if God appeared in nineteenth-century America it was as Ralph Waldo Emerson.” While Emerson passed away on April 27, 1882, he left behind two individuals, Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman, both of whom left massive footprints on American culture.
The writer is Professor of Communication Studies at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles