Alfred Lord Tennyson, (1809-1892)

[KALKI]

Alfred Lord Tennyson, (1809-1892) one time Poet Laureate of England sings:

“The sun, the moon, the stars, the hills and the plains,
Are not these, O Soul, the vision of Him who reigns?
The ear of man cannot hear, and the eye of man cannot see;
But if we could see and hear this vision – were it not He?”

"Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), whose Transcendentalism earned him the appellation of "the Boston Brahmin." Reading through his writings and essays we find several passages which insists, as the Hindu texts on the subordinate character of the visible material creation."

The work of physicists like Currie, Rutherford, Fermi, Cockcroft, Chadwick, Anderson and Millikan has brought us to the practical and proven scientific principle that the inner structure of matter is reducible to a single fundamental substance, an essential and immortal energy which is the "life" of the myriad forms that make up the universe. Modern development in the laboratory will vindicate the theory of a single element underlying all the visible and different manifestations of material Nature, we shall have to grant that the assertions of the Hindu philosophers, made thousands of years ago....are but results of the insight practiced by keenly perceptive and concentrated minds."

"The ancient Hindus took their philosophic statements in the nature of a revelation from on high, as issuing forth from their seers as a result of a personal self-experience in the spiritual domain. Our Western scientists have no such experience, and if they are approaching similar conclusions, it is because they are working their way from the profoundest depths of this material world up to its farthest frontier where the ions elude them and vanish into mystery……the wisest men of the ancient East and the modern West…are beginning to arrive at precisely the same conclusions."

" This Indian doctrine declares human cognition of the entire manifold universe to be illusionary in character. The vast multitude of tangible objects and tangible creatures which we so plainly witness around us were said to be the product of the constructive imagination of the One Hidden Self. Man and his material environments were but finite dreams passing through the mind of the Infinite Dreamer. Consequently all that we know of the world is nothing more or less than a series of idea held in our consciousness. Thus we arrive at a completely idealistic metaphysics which, because of its very nature, must apparently remain for ever purely speculative and beyond the scope of the finest instruments which can be devised to prove or disprove. Nevertheless the strangeness and unfamiliarity of the doctrine fascinated the Indian mind to an amazing extent. That this early foreshadowing of modern idealistic philosophy was not merely a worthless superstition is evidenced by the fact that some brilliant minds of the West have been equally fascinated and perplexed. "

One of the greatest 19th century scientists was Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895), his work, Collected Essays vol. VI, serve to show how much ancient Indian philosophy anticipated modern Western thought.

(source: Indian Philosophy and Modern Culture - By Paul Brunton p. 9 - 92 London Rider & Co. Paternoster House, E. C). For more on Paul Brunton refer to chapter on Glimpses VI).

272. William Cooke Taylor (1800-1849) author of several books including A popular history of British India, commercial intercourse with China, and the insular possessions of England in the eastern seas. He spoke glowingly of Sanskrit literature:

"It was an astounding discovery that Hindustan possessed, in spite of the changes of realms and chances of time, a language of unrivalled richness and variety; a language, the parent of all those dialects that Europe has fondly called classical - the source alike of Greek flexibility and Roman strength. A philosophy, compared with which, in point of age, the lessons of Pythagoras are but of yesterday, and in point of daring speculation Plato's boldest efforts are tame and commonplace. A poetry more purely intellectual than any of those which we had before any conception; and systems of science whose antiquity baffled all power of astronomical calculation. This literature, with all its colossal proportions, which can scarcely be described without the semblance of bombast and exaggeration claimed of course a place for itself - it stood alone, and it was able to stand alone."

"To acquire the mastery of this language is almost the labor of life; its literature seems exhaustless. The utmost stretch of imagination can scarcely comprehend its boundless mythology. Its philosophy has touched upon every metaphysical difficulty; its legislation is as varied as the castes for which it was designed."

(source: Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Vol. II (1834) - W. C. Taylor's paper on Sanskrit Literature).