"One of today's most vital tasks is to try to understand other cultures, and also their spirituality. Anyone who travels to another country can discover that our efforts to get inside the skin of what is 'foreign' to us can at the same time lead to a deeper understanding of our own culture. In adolescence and youth it seems quite natural to find that the other reflects who we are back to us, gives us deeper insight into ourselves. In adulthood, this takes more conscious effort. The older we grow, the more fixed our point of view can become, and the more rooted we can become within it. This book offers a wholesome remedy." --Anand Mandaiker (from the preface)
Klaus Bracker shows that the Logos, the focus on spirit, and the living Word are not dominant features of only the Hellenistic Judeo-Christian West, but also figure significantly in the Indo-Vedic East. Accordingly, we need to view cultural and spiritual history in a new way. Veda and Living Logos presents an outline of intimately related motifs of Integral Yoga and anthroposophic spirituality, showing striking convergences in the lives and works of Sri Aurobindo and Rudolf Steiner.
What is the role of the avatar Krishna for Rudolf Steiner? And what meaning does Christ have in Aurobindo's spiritual worldview? This book answers these and many other questions concerning Eastern and Western spiritual paths. After many years of research and study, Klaus Bracker has come to see this as his task and to feel it as a burning impulse in the soul. In keeping with Rudolf Steiner's indications, we are to develop our ability to understand the new manifestations and the new language of Christ and a new Christ light, as well as a new light from the East that seeks to unite with the light in the West.
The author regards this as the greatest imperative today for East-West dialogue between Veda and living Logos, which this detailed and accessible book aims to advance.
"Only the most advanced spiritual seekers, and perhaps a few of the most erudite philosophers, would even attempt to elaborate the meaning of the terms
Veda and
Logos, as they have come down to us veiled in the obscurity of ancient languages and cultures, much less attempt to enter meaningfully into their innermost sanctuaries of mystery and significance. Yet Steiner and Sri Aurobindo did exactly this in the early twentieth century. And because they did so, we actually have authoritative texts, written in the languages and under the circumstances of our time, through which those mysteries may be accessed." --
Rod Hemsell (from the foreword)
Banerji, Debashish: - Debashish Banerji, PhD (UCLA, Art History) is Haridas Chaudhuri Professor of Indian Philosophy and Culture at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) and chair of the CIIS East-West Psychology Program. His books include The Alternate Nation of Abindranath Tagore (Sage, 2008); Seven Quartets of Becoming: A Transformative Yoga Psychology Based on the Diaries of Sri Aurobindo (Nalanda University, 2012); and a book of poetry, Half Aroma, Half Face (Writers Workshop, 2017).
Barton, Matthew: - Matthew Barton is a translator, editor, teacher, and poet, and taught kindergarten for many years at the Bristol Waldorf School. His first collection of poems was Learning To Row (1999). He has won numerous prizes for his work, including an Arts Council Writer's Award and a Hawthornden Fellowship.
Bracker, Klaus J.: - Klaus J. Bracker was born in West Berlin in 1956. He is a eurythmist, curative eurythmist, and Waldorf teacher. From 1987 to 2006, he was a Waldorf teacher in Pforzheim and Vaihingen, Germany. Since then, he has worked at a curative pedagogical Waldorf school in northern Germany. As a freelance collaborator of the cultural magazine Novalis, Klaus wrote articles and reviews, including articles on Buddhism and Manichaeism. He has also made numerous contributions to the periodicals Das Goetheanum and Die Drei.
Hemsell, Rod: - Rod Hemsell, educator and author, lived in Auroville and the Sri Aurobindo Ashram from 1968 to 1983. He traveled extensively and spoke at centers and universities in India on Auroville and Sri Aurobindo's yoga philosophy, publishing a feature article on Auroville in the New Delhi Youth Times in 1974. He also published articles and essays in Mother India, World Union, and Auroville Reviewfrom 1970 to 1983.
Mandaiker, Anand: - Anand Mandaiker was born in Madras, India, in 1965 and graduated in 1985 with a BA from the School of Architecture and Planning in Madras. He entered the priests' seminary in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1986. In 1992, he was ordained a priest by The Christian Community, a movement for religious renewal inspired by Rudolf Steiner headquartered in Berlin, Germany. He served The Christian Community in Basle, Switzerland, until 2003, when he moved to Tübingen, Germany, until 2006. In 2006, Rev. Mandaiker was appointed to the leadership (Circle of Seven) of The Christian Community. He is married with two children and resides in Berlin.
McDermott, Robert A.: - Robert McDermott, Ph.D., is president emeritus and chair of the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness Program at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS). His publications include Radhakrishnan (1970); The Essential Aurobindo (1974, 1987); The Essential Steiner (1984); (with Rudolf Steiner) The Bhagavad Gita and the West (2009); and The New Essential Steiner (2009). He has also published on William James, Josiah Royce, M. K. Gandhi, the evolution of consciousness, and American thought. His administrative service includes president of the New York Center for Anthroposophy; president of the Rudolf Steiner [summer] Institute; chair of the board of Sunbridge College (New York) and of Rudolf Steiner College (California). He was a member of the council of the Anthroposophical Society in America (1996-2004). He is the founding chair of the board of the Sophia Project, an anthroposophic home in Oakland, California, for mothers and children at risk of homelessness. He is a Lindisfarne fellow, a Fetzer mentor, and a member of the Esalen Corportion.
