The Spirituality of American Transcendentalism   Ralph Waldo Emerson has been aptly called the “first American philosopher.” His essay “Nature” (1836) thrust Emerson into the center of a literary, philosophical and religious movement of the 1830s and 40s both in America and abroad.   Morhers Trust / Morhers Place Lakeshore Interfaith Institute December 4th, 2006   A Talk by Ruth Harring

Born in 1803, Emerson was the descendent of six generations of ministers, from early-American New England Calvinists to his 19^th-century “heretical” Unitarian father, William Emerson. Emerson’s introduction to Eastern wisdom was gradual, arising initially from the encouraging mentorship of his aunt, Mary Mood Emerson, shaped by his extensive reading habits, and broadened by his studies at Harvard. In the early 1830s, through travel and association with contemporary European poets and writers such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Thomas Carlyle, Emerson first came to read the newly-available European translations of India’s scriptures, and he immersed himself in this well-spring of wisdom. Emerson incorporated portions of that Eastern wisdom into his essays and lecture, transposing its ideas into the local idiom for the

emerging American nation. His writings after 1860 evidence a third phase during which Emerson demonstrates both greater understanding and synthesis of Indian philosophy. Emerson was the preeminent philosopher of his day and the unofficial, inspired leader of the trans-continental intellectual movement that we know as “Transcendentalism.”

The list of those Emerson inspired is long and diverse, transcending both national borders and generations. Some of those are: Margaret Fuller, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, W.E. Channing, Theodore Parker, Bronson Alcott, Orestes A. Brownson – all contemporaries and fellow Transcendentalists. Emerson’s influence also demanded the responses of other famous contemporary writers, such as Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville. Emerson’s thought reached into subsequent generations, influencing American writers such as: Frederick Douglass, Theodore Dreiser, Hart Crane, Wallace Stevens, and Robert Frost. Emerson’s appeal transcended national borders, and his essays were enthusiastically received across Europe, notably by Friedrich Nietzsche, Matthew Arnold, and Thomas Carlyle. Emerson’s essays were appreciated in the 20^th-century by India’s architect of independence, Mahatma Gandhi as well as by American’s preeminent civil rights activist, minister and writer Martin Luther King.

Ruth Harring, Ph.D. in American Literature from Michigan State University, a Trustee of The Sambodh Society, and CE of the Sambodh Center for Human Excellence, Kalamazoo, MI, whose interest in India’s spiritual heritage began in the mid-1970s, has traveled extensively and studied in India since 1979. Under the guidance of a Vedantic master and founder of The Sambodh Society, Swami Bodhananda Saraswati, she has studied Indian philosophy for nearly a decade. Along with the Transcendentalist’s spiritual vision, Ruth will present Emerson thought found in “Nature” and other of his essays, include other Transcendentalists’ words of wisdom, and reflect upon on how this spiritual philosophy – which has inspired so many others over nearly 2 centuries – still inspires us today.