(Plagiarism: not giving credit to your sources.

Pretending that you thought of it!).

Prof. William James the Wily (1842-1910) – termed the Father of American spirituality. He’s Swamiji-trained on spirituality!

In these very rooms!

Sara Bull’s mansion, Brattle Street, Cambridge, USA. Today. Here, Swamiji walked, sat and talked of Vedanta and of his projects for the future.

Thanks: mansionglobal.com. The house was up for sale with inside views shown. Built in the 1860s by Sara Bull with her husband Ole Bull, the brilliant Norwegian violinist (1810-1880).

It was in these rooms that Swamiji taught spirituality to Prof William James (1842-1910), the Harvard philosophy professor. Swamiji was a guest on 3 occasions, totalling 41 days during 1894-96. Plenty of time to get educated on Vedanta’s spirituality. William James even took Swamiji for lunch once. Prof James was trained in theology and philosophy – very dry subjects. (What Swamiji calls, ‘Kindergarten maps’). Through the window of Swamiji’s deep spirituality the Prof passed into another world. Does Prof. James mention Swamiji? 

In March 1896, Swamiji declined the position as Chair of Eastern Philosophy at Harvard, stating he was a monk. Prof James must have been instrumental in arranging that offer. Prof James gives the Gifford lecture in Scotland, 1901 in Edinburgh. The annual Gifford lectures are, ‘To promote natural theology in the widest terms’.

Swamiji’s first formal talks were in this mansion during autumn of 1894, after his speeches at the Parliament of Religions (in Chicago, 1893) and the Greenacre Conference at Eliot, Maine (summer 1894).  Sara Bull was much read on Indian scripture and art – now she had a ‘living-in’ gold mine to consult.  

The large room below will have been used during Sara Bull’s celebrated gatherings. Here, Swamiji will have made his presentations on Vedanta, its spirituality and had his discussions with her guests, among whom were: Prof James, William Douglass (anti-slavery campaigner), Jane Addams (Nobel Peace prize 1931. Social activist – working with immigrants and the poor, founded the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom), Henry Ward Beecher (anti-slavery reformer), Gertrude Stein (author, art collector, ran her Paris salon), Julia Ward Howe (composer – Battle Hymn of the Republic), Sarah Farmer (organiser of the Greenacre Conferences, Sara Bull’s close friend), Emma Thursby (famous concert singer and earlier performer of duos with Sara Bull’s husband, the brilliant violin virtuoso who had died in 1880). Music and intellectual evenings were celebrated. Her circle included the famous: professors, orators, activists, singers and poets. She was a philanthropist.

Sara Bull invited Swamiji to stay as he could get needed rest to recover from his travels and he could write. And here they would discuss his next projects and what funding she would contribute. The purchase of their first monastery house, at Belur, beside the Ganges was very likely one project.

Swamiji will have sat by this warming, holy fire during his winter stays with Sara Bull. Fire is purifying in Eastern cultures.

In another project, Swamiji needed printing facilities for their first books and pamphlets, in Kolkata, once the monastery was established (est. 1897). The first printing press was located at the Mayavati Retreat Centre with Charlotte Sevier as the head editor, Swamiji recognising the need for her as the only mother-tongue English person available.

Prof William James (on left) with colleague Prof Royce. Both Professors of Philosophy, Harvard University.

David Hume the Wily.  1711-1776.

  –  ‘Like a Sponge’  –

He was shaped with key ideas on ‘Eastern Thought’, in the years 1735-37, by the Jesuits. He stays at the town la Flèche in France which has Jesuit (missionary) seminary colleges.

Expanding from my original source: Prof Alison Gopnik’s 2009 piece. The Atlantic Monthly, Oct-2015 issue. Alison Gopnik is at: Philosophy Dept, University of California. And Wikipedia, New Advent.org. Thank you.

After qualifying at Edinburgh university and writing his first book, David Hume spent 2 years at La Flèche (250km south west from Paris) which had the famous Jesuit Colleges, some royal funded. He’s aged 24 with his brilliant, searching mind. He had fluent Latin from being at Edinburgh University and very likely French. He wrote his ‘Treatise of Human Nature’ while at la Flèche.

He distracts by saying it was cheaper to live in France. This meant he did not just read the books of the famous library, as he claimed. The deceipt is – he will have heard about and discussed the main Eastern teachings coming down from the great minds of these Jesuit missionaries to their disciples. And Charles Francois Dolu, now in his 80s, was still there when Hume stayed at la Flèche.

These colleges were a gold-mine of Eastern thought. These able Jesuits had lived long spells in, knew deeply the cultures and were fluent in the languages of: China, Siam (Thailand), Tibet and India. They understood Buddhist, Taoist and Hindu beliefs. What they wrote  (some returned to La Flèche for their last years) were the first examples of Eastern thought in the West.

Though Dolu and the disciples of the others were likely busy teaching Jesuits-to-be, Hume had access to them. Hume was not such a fool as to miss this opportunity.

Like a sponge! This Eastern thought was soaked up.

Consider these 6 famous scientists at exactly this period or a little earlier (these scientific delegations had royal patronage):

1-

Charles Francois Dolu (1651-1740). 

He was resident at La Flèche between 1723-1740 (Hume: 1735-1737). He was a member of the 2^nd French Embassy to Siam (Thailand) in 1687. This embassy will have studied and learnt about Thai Buddhism.  Earlier, for several years, he had been a missionary in India (Pondicherry).  For 5 years he and Desideri lived together at la Flèche. In fascinating discussions, they will have compared their experiences (he will have known well Desideri’s work, ‘An Account of Tibet’). I venture Hume will have spoken to Dolu gleaning much.

2-

Ippolito Desideri (1684-1733).

He was resident at La Flèche between 1728-1733. He was a missionary in Tibet, possibly between 1715-1727. He wrote of his experiences in ‘An Account of Tibet’, a comprehensive work on Tibetan: geography, agriculture, customs, the Buddhist philosophy, having read their main Tibetan book of philosophy. He was fluent in Tibetan, translating both ways: the Christian doctrines and comparing parts of Buddhism to Christianity. Included in his ‘An Account of Tibet’ were a series of letters, published around 1717. To suggest that Hume did not read parts of Desideri’s ‘Account of Tibet’ is not realistic.

3-

Jean Venance Bouchet (1655-1732).

For 40 years in south India, fluent in Tamil, he practised as a missionary, became a leader, but he adapted to the local practices and lived as an Indian ascetic, gaining their respect. He wrote on Hinduism. Died in India.

4 & 5 –

Jean Richaud (1633-1693), and Jean de Fontaney (1643-1710). The former led a mission to China in 1687 and later became the rector at the College Royal, one college at La Flèche (no doubt receiving royal funds). They were two astronomers who brought the first telescopes to India and China. Certain discoveries were made jointly with Indian/Chinese astronomers, in India and China at the Jesuit observatories – the Jesuits specialising in astronomy.

  6-

Joachim Bouvet (1656-1732).

He was in the group of scientists with Jean de Fontenay, that arrived in China in 1688. The Chinese emperor, most impressed by their knowledge, allocated land in the royal precincts (here they lived, built an observatory and a church). Bouvet became mathematical advisor to the emperor and later, tutor to the emperor’s son.

 In 1697 Bouvet is the Chinese emperor’s senior envoy in a delegation to France with significant gifts and letters of exchange, returning back to China in 1699 with 10 new scientist-missionaries. He died in Beijing. His several books on China are still available.

He wrote that the Chinese had known about Christianity for a long time earlier and some strands of the bible were in certain ancient Chinese classics.

   [These earlier ones will have been the Nestorian Christians from 600AD ca (whose teachings partly came from the banned Gnostics. See Book 1) who had flourished in China, entering along the Silk Road. Some of Genghis Khan’s (1162-1227) troops were Nestorian clans. A digression! – Those troops were brilliant horsemen – strapped to a horse from age 3 – and archers. When fighting, they had extra energy over their opponents by mid-afternoon – as they knew to drink their leather pouches of mares’ milk around midday – the essential protein recharge when working strenuously. Their opponents were exhausted without midday protein, their breakfast long gone].

In China 100 years earlier, the great Italian Jesuit, Matteo Ricci, 1552-1610, had preceeded these French Jesuits. He had made enormous breakthroughs with the Chinese Emperor and his court and was a royal adviser. Fluent in Chinese, translating the Bible one way and the Chinese classics the other, he was well accepted in the court.

Meister Eckhart the Wily (1260-1328). ‘Porete-Trained’.

He has stolen key ideas from Porete’s ‘Mirror of Simple Souls’. Marguerite Porete is burnt for heresy in Paris, 1310.

The Mirror – ‘A book of incredible subtlety’. Chancellor de Gerson.

  –  From Heretic to Theologian!  –

  Eckhart lifted some of his main ideas from the ‘Mirror’; his writings change, he becomes much stronger than in his earlier, weaker efforts.  Eckhart, a Dominican, is called by Pope John 22 (Franciscan!) to Avignon in 1327 to face trial for heresy, all arranged by the inquisitors (Franciscans!). He died a year later, during the trial. Some of his writings were later declared heretical without naming him. (Franciscans and Dominicans were always in conflict – competing for power and influence!).

Today his Monist teachings (I and God are One), learnt from Marguerite, seem to be fine in the Roman church. Her book now has the papal stamp of approval.

Eckhart: ‘Know that all our spirituality depends on one thing: I must go beyond everything temporal, beyond all being, to that place without definition, beyond my virtues, my thoughts, to be empty.’

Porete – ‘Reason! You will always be half-blind!’

‘Men can tell me naught! And that’s the end of it!’  (AZ quotes).

Swamiji – ‘Stop this whirling mind! Beyond the intellect, beyond reason‘. And, ‘Drop my virtues!‘ And, ‘The scorching sun of duty!’

(Vivekananda – Complete Works, Advaita Press, Kolkata).

That Eckhart, in 1312 ca, got his hands on a copy Marguerite’s ‘Mirror’ is pretty certain.

Eckhart held the Dominican chair at Paris University from 1311-13 and, while in Paris, he lived in the same ‘St. Jacques’ Dominican convent as did Guillaume Humbert (a Dominican friar).

Humbert was the prosecutor (appointed by the king) who rigged Porete’s trial and condemnation as a heretic, using 21 Doctors of Theology from Paris University as judges. Paris University was the mouthpiece of the French king, receiving royal funds, the king making all appointments.

[This king expelled all Jews from France in order to ‘purify‘ the country, make it more Christian! 2 weeks before Marguerite’s execution, this king had had executed 54 Knights Templar – soldier-monks, many were nobility with enormous influence – using false accusations of heresy (again Paris University’s Doctors of Theology were brought in as judges), under the guise of defending the church against heretics! He really had designs on their vast wealth as wars had emptied his coffers].

Marguerite was a terrible thorn for the church; she was outside any control by a convent, among her charismatic teachings were, ‘See that you are One with God through your Soul!’ – ‘Be free! Going to church won’t help you’ (Priests were superfluous). – ‘The sufferings of Christ mean nothing’. – ‘I am all molten with God!’ when in Rapture.

Already the ‘Mirror’ had its power, its momentum!

Humbert knew the magnitude of Marguerite’s book immediately – he had specially saved at least one copy, having Marguerite’s name removed. As her prosecutor, he knew her and had felt her charisma, especially when she refused to reply to his questions. She was burnt into his brain. She was well educated, likely tutored by a teacher from Paris University (her style of writing is debating, as was common at Paris University, but never before in spiritual texts) and she was at his level – she said of herself that she was ‘high-born’. Her thoughts are original.

For 600 years, the ‘Mirror’ was to survive, in demand by those in the know, translated into other languages with several Latin versions, without any of the dramatic end of its author (there are 4 versions in middle-English in UK, from 1400s). Marguerite’s authorship is only confirmed in 1946 by the Italian historian Romana Guarnieri after extensive research. There are lengthy records of Marguerite’s trial in the French archives. Someone (unlikely to have been Humbert) in that Dominican convent of St Jaques must have seen the book’s value and arranged for a scribe to make copies of it. Or from the few earlier copies circulating, its message took on the power for new copies to be made. The ‘Mirror’ was unstoppable!

‘By a Woman from Valenciennes’ –

The ‘Mirror’ continues to circulate in high Paris circles; some 100 years after Marguerite’s execution, around 1410, it reaches the Chancellor of Paris University, the famous poet, scholar, reformer, Jean de Gerson (1363-1429). (Today, the Dominican convent of ‘St. Jacques’ at Rue de Tanneries is 30 mins walk to the university).

Chancellor de Gerson describes it as, ‘A book of incredible subtlety, by a woman from Valenciennes’.

100 years later, with her name not on the book, still he knows, accurately, it’s by a ‘Woman from Valenciennes’.

‘By a Woman from Valenciennes’ may have been attributed as the author, written into early copies – all hand scribed (no printing presses till after 1450!).

The ‘Mirror’ was sailing! (No hint of heresy). On the wind of Marguerite’s energies, anonymous, still carrying her power for centuries.

It had educated Eckhart and would many more.