Emerson’s “Nature” – Transcendentalism, Ecology and Spirituality
11:00-11:50 a.m.
Sunday, December 11, 2005
Presented by
Ruth Harring, Ph.D.

Ralph Waldo Emerson has been aptly called the “first American philosopher.” 
And his essay titled, “Nature” (1836) sparked the Transcendentalist movement 
of the 1830s and 40s both in America and abroad. Emerson’s family was 
traditionally Calvinist, and his father was a well-known New England 
Unitarian minister. But, over his lifetime, Emerson emerged out of these 
ancestral roots and immersed himself in reading the spiritual wisdom of 
India, which he obtained through his friends abroad and newly available 
European translations. Through his essays and lectures, translating that 
wisdom into the American idiom for the emerging American nation, Emerson 
became the preeminent philosopher of his day and unofficially the leader of 
the intellectual movement that we know as “Transcendentalism.” Members of 
the Transcendentalist movement included people as diverse as feminist 
Margaret Fuller, naturalist and writer Henry David Thoreau, and even the 
involvement of artist-writer Nathaniel Hawthorne in Brook Farm, an idealist 
community inspired by Transcendentalism.
Today, Western students of spiritual philosophy continue to find Emerson’s 
lectures inspiring and, born out of the American milieu, oftentimes more 
easily assimilated than direct reading of Eastern scriptures. Emerson’s 
ecologically-minded spirituality, encapsulated in his essay, “Nature,” 
attracts modern day spiritual seekers who feel betrayed by present 
socio-political policies and practices and trace the growing number of 
ecological disasters to our post-modern abuses of metaphysical wisdom. We 
seemed to have forsaken the many sources of traditional wisdom that abound 
cross-culturally for a lavish materialist philosophy enveloped in 
rationalism and scientific and technological development. Seemingly a victim 
of the times, whether living in America or elsewhere “on the block,” 
humankind is in crisis, clutched in the double fists of technology and the 
emerging globalism. Isn’t it time to re-read Emerson? Isn’t it time to 
reflect upon the Transcendentalists’ “organic” philosophy? To dig into the 
soil of our American philosophical past finding our roots and right-full 
place? To be spiritually alive is to be present to the entire universe of 
objects, people, animals—in short, the eco-community, the intimately and 
innately inter-woven web of Creation.
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. Ruth will present her thoughts on Emerson’s essays, along 
with the vision, words of wisdom of other transcendentalists, and reflect 
upon on how his ecologically-based spiritual philosophy is applicable to 
modern time and movements, including the eco-spiritual community proposed by 
Mother’s Trust/Mother’s Place.
Ruth Harring
----- Original Message ----- 
From: Ruth Harring
To: Swami Tapasananda
Sent: Saturday, December 03, 2005 5:07 PM
Subject: Emerson's Nature Talk


Hope this works for you.
rh.om 


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