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Alongside its importance in the Hindu faith, the Bhagavad Gita has influenced many thinkers, musicians including Sri Aurobindo, Swami Vivekananda, Mahatma Gandhi, Aldous Huxley, Henry David Thoreau, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Carl Jung, Bulent Ecevit, Hermann Hesse, Heinrich Himmler, George Harrison, Nikola Tesla among others. The main source of the doctrine of Karma Yoga in its present form is Bhagavad Gita.
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Huxley on Huxley is a 2009 documentary directed by Mary Ann Braubach, narrated by Peter Coyote and includes interviews with Laura Huxley, drummer John Densmore, spiritual leader Ram Dass, Esalen co-founder Michael Murphy, artist Don Bachardy, philosopher Huston Smith and actor Nick Nolte, star of the adaptation of Aldous Huxley's 1955 novel The Genius and the Goddess. The film features archival footage of Aldous Huxley, Timothy Leary, Mike Wallace, and Igor Stravinsky, and photographs from Laura and Aldous Huxley’s personal collection, as well as other historical archives.
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The monastery was originally developed in 1942 during WWII by Gerald Heard, a disciple of Swami Prabhavananda of the Vedanta Society of Southern California an American branch of the Ramakrishna Order of India. Established as Trabuco College, it was originally meant to be a religious, non-sectarian, co-ed monastery, unaffiliated with any particular religious organization. Aldous Huxley, a close friend of Heard, spent 6 weeks there working on his book The Perennial Philosophy.
Bhagavad Gita - The Song of God is the title of the Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood's translation of the Bhagavad Gītā, an important Hindu scripture. It was first published in 1944 with an Introduction by Aldous Huxley. This translation is unusual in that it is a collaboration between a world-renowned English language author and an adept in Vedanta Philosophy and Hindu scripture. With this translation, "...the very purpose of life in Hindu terms becomes luminously clear.”. The 2023 edition includes the standardized verse markings that were left out from the original, published in 1944.
References
- ↑ Jackson, Carl (1994). Vedanta for the West. Indiana University Press. p. 124. ISBN 0-253-33098-X.
- ↑ SRINIVAS, SMRITI. “Utopian Settlements and Californian Vedanta.” A Place for Utopia: Urban Designs from South Asia, University of Washington Press, 2015, pp. 87–120. "Many of these were collaborations with scholars and intellectuals such as Frederick Manchester and Christopher Isherwood; and many were later published as books through the Vedanta Press (established in 1947)" JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvcwnx0v.7. Accessed 24 July 2023.
- 1 2 Editorial (1947). "Reviews". Publishers Weekly. 147: 1573.
- ↑ Introduction to the Bhagavad Gita – The Song of God by Aldous Huxley, page 15 2023 Edition, Vedanta Press
- ↑ Rice, Laban Lacy. “Reply to Mr. Viereck.” The American Scholar 21, no. 2 (1952): 246–48." "Vedanta and the West A Periodical of Exploration and Expression of the Perennial Philosophy Editor: Swami Prabhavananda Managing Editor: John R. Yale Editorial Advisers: Gerald Heard, Aldous Huxley, Christopher Isherwood... http://www.jstor.org/stable/41206900
- ↑ Jackson, Carl (1994). Vedanta for the West. Indiana University Press. p. 124. ISBN 0-253-33098-X.
- ↑ Bridges, Hal. Aldous Huxley: Exponent of Mysticism in America. Journal of the American Academy of Religion, vol. 37, no. 4, 1969, pp. 341–52. JSTOR, "After [Huxley's] meeting with Prabhavananda, he undertook an intensive study of the lives and teachings of outstanding mystics in the major religions. The ideas thus derived from study and practice flowed into writings dominated by mystical concern -- into essays for the magazine Vedanta and the West" http://www.jstor.org/stable/1460759. Accessed 29 July 2023.
- ↑ Index of the publication history of Vedanta and the West.