SOURCE: HINDUISM TODAY
When boarding the train on a Saturday, the ritual of buying books for a comfortable read by the sunlit window warmed my heart. There weren't any commercial stores, but I came across ISKON and Ramakrishna Society book stalls. Those stalls carried ideas and lectures in simple prose. Wisdom indeed was the tone of the day.
'I have a copy of The Bhagavad Gita', I thought as I scanned through the display and moved towards the teachings of Swami Vivekanand. The culture and religious heritage of India has been in constant turbulence and are open to various interpretation. Seeking the truth, making an intellectual inquiry- well! that's what I intend to achieve. Striking a balance between pretentiousness and ignorance has been my quest for a long time now.
Wishing for more time to go through the contents before my final pick, I zeroed in on ' Vedanta: Voice of Freedom' by Swami Vivekanand hurriedly. Rushing back and settling into my seat, I scanned the book after goodbyes.
What caught my eye was the foreword to the edition by Christopher Isherwood! I have heard of him from E.Albert. I don't know of him in-depth, but I remember him from twentieth-century literature. There was a paper presentation. Keeping the book aside, I googled the link between Isherwood and Vedanta.
Christopher Isherwood from the Auden generation was introduced to Vendanta by Aldous Huxley(you know him from The Lord of the Flies ) and Gerald Heard (he is known for his magnum opus The Five Ages of Man). Heard and Huxley both became Vedantists after migrating to America under the guidance of Swami Prabhavanada, the founder of the Vedanta Society of Southern California.
Isherwood between 1939-1945, sunk himself in the study of Vedanta scriptures. As a result, he would join hands with the Guru for the next 35 years in lectures, translation and article collaboration. Some of his works and lectures are; My Guru and His Disciple( book), Who is Ramakrishna ( lecture), and The Writer and Vedanta (lecture). He also tried his hand at the publication of the bi-monthly journal of the Vedanta Society of Southern California, Vedanta and the West (originally titled Voice of India).
Christopher Isherwood is famously known for The Berlin Stories. His memoir Christopher and his Kind(1976) had been the gospel of the Gay Liberation Movement in the west.
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