What Is Humanism?

There are two reasons why it is important today to answer this question with a sufficient degree of precision.

The first is that humanism is often conceived today exclusively in terms of secular humanism, as an affirmation of the dignity of man, or humanity, understood in naturalistic terms, and as a negation of theism and sometimes of any real spiritual dimension.

The second is that humanism has long been confused with or in substance identified with what Irving Babbitt called humanitarianism, the sentimental, romantic view of humanity that underlies the modern ideologies, not least underpinning (in the distinctly modern dialectic and synthesis of romanticism and rationalism) the abstractly universalist notion of human rights. Hence it has become a central part of the polemic arsenal deployed against the truths of traditional views of human nature. Increasingly, humanism is attacked and rejected by critics of today’s dominant political correctness as simply part of the latter’s propagandistic terminology.

These partly related developments are most unfortunate. In order to clarify and specify at least much of what I mean by humanism, I will now publish Babbitt’s essay ‘What Is Humanism?’ from his first book, Literature and the American College, published in 1908.

Babbitt was critical of some of the dogmatic positions of orthodox Christianity, although defending other, ethical aspects of it as essential elements of true humanism. But he explicitly and repeatedly affirmed the existence of a higher level of “meditation”, above the humanistic level of ethical “mediation”. Thus not only the less dogmatic tradition of Christian humanism, but Babbitt’s own New Humanism, which was also influenced by his own contribution to the introduction of Eastern thought – primarily Buddhism and Confucianism – in the West, is reconcilable with spirituality and religion as I understand and defend them.

In my texts not least in the category Value-Centered Historicism I have devoted much space to his criticism of humanitarianism, and, more generally, of the modern dynamic of combined rationalism and romanticism. Sometimes, in this criticism, he includes modern philosophical idealism among his targets; Babbitt seems to have kept a significant distance to his philosophical colleagues – Royce and others – at Harvard in the Golden Age of American philosophy.

Partly following Folke Leander and Claes Ryn, but going much further than they, I have tried to show why and how idealism needs to be defended against, or rather, is in fact not invalidated by this criticism; why and how idealism must rather be reformulated in a way which assimilates the New Humanist criticism.

Although dubious and weakened forms of idealism have certainly supported and been part of the distorted humanism that is humanitarianism, the modified and adjusted idealism that would result from the incorporation of the Babbittian analysis is of course likewise harmonizable with the superior spiritual level of “meditation”. I submit, in accordance with my extensive argumentation in my various articles and shorter texts in the Philosophy category (with all its three sub-categories) and other publications, that such idealism is an essential part of true humanism.

Readers familiar with these texts will also, when reading Babbitt’s essay, see more clearly the reasons for my suggested personalistic supplementation and modification of Babbitt’s humanism.

The Dhammapada

Translated by Irving Babbitt

New Directions, 1965 (1936)

Back Cover:

BabbittThe 423 verses in the collection known as The Dhammapada (pada: “the way”; dhamma: “the teaching”; hence, “The Path of Truth”) are attributed to the Buddha himself and form the essence of the ethics of Buddhist philosophy. There are a number of English translations of The Dhammapada, but this version by Irving Babbitt, for many years professor at Harvard and founder, with Paul Elmer More, of the movement known as “New Humanism”, concentrates on the profound poetic quality of the verses and conveys, perhaps more than any other, much of the vitality of the original Pali text.

Babbitt devoted many years to this translation – it was a labor of love. Together with his essay on “Buddha and the Occident”, which is also included in this edition, The Dhammapada was one of the basic Components of his view of world history, a view which has influenced leaders of thought as diverse as Newton Arvin, Walter Lippmann, David Riesman and T.S. Eliot. Eliot, indeed, once wrote that “to have been a student of Babbitt’s is to remain always in that position.”

Philip Goldberg: American Veda – From Emerson and the Beatles to Yoga and Meditation

How Indian Spirituality Changed the West

Harmony, 2013 (2010)     Amazon

Book Description:

GoldbergIn February 1968 the Beatles went to India for an extended stay with their new guru, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. It may have been the most momentous spiritual retreat since Jesus spent those forty days in the wilderness.

With these words, Philip Goldberg begins his monumental work, American Veda, a fascinating look at India’s remarkable impact on Western culture. This eye-opening popular history shows how the ancient philosophy of Vedanta and the mind-body methods of Yoga have profoundly affected the worldview of millions of Americans and radically altered the religious landscape.

What exploded in the 1960s actually began more than two hundred years earlier, when the United States started importing knowledge as well as tangy spices and colorful fabrics from Asia. The first translations of Hindu texts found their way into the libraries of John Adams and Ralph Waldo Emerson. From there the ideas spread to Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, and succeeding generations of receptive Americans, who absorbed India’s “science of consciousness” and wove it into the fabric of their lives. Charismatic teachers like Swami Vivekananda and Paramahansa Yogananda came west in waves, prompting leading intellectuals, artists, and scientists such as Aldous Huxley, Joseph Campbell, Allen Ginsberg, J. D. Salinger, John Coltrane, Dean Ornish, and Richard Alpert, aka Ram Dass, to adapt and disseminate what they learned from them. The impact has been enormous, enlarging our current understanding of the mind and body and dramatically changing how we view ourselves and our place in the cosmos.

Goldberg paints a compelling picture of this remarkable East-to-West transmission, showing how it accelerated through the decades and eventually moved from the counterculture into our laboratories, libraries, and living rooms.  Now physicians and therapists routinely recommend meditation, words like karma and mantra are part of our everyday vocabulary, and Yoga studios are as ubiquitous as Starbuckses. The insights of India’s sages permeate so much of what we think, believe, and do that they have redefined the meaning of life for millions of Americans – and continue to do so every day.

Rich in detail and expansive in scope, American Veda shows how we have come to accept and live by the central teaching of Vedic wisdom: “Truth is one, the wise call it by many names.”

Reviews:

“American Veda is an illuminating, gracefully written and remarkably thorough account of  India’s spectacular impact on Western religion and spirituality.”  Deepak Chopra

“American Veda shows us how we got to where we are. It chronicles a revolution in consciousness and describes India’s lasting influence on our culture, from gurus, meditation, and yoga to sitar music and aromatic  curries. Savor it.”  Michael Bernard Beckwith, author of Spiritual Liberation: Fulfilling Your Soul’s Potential

“This book demonstrates the far reach of Indian thought into the American psyche and sense of spiritual self. A well written, superbly researched book, it should be read by all the 15 million Americans practicing meditation and yoga!”  Christopher Chapple, Doshi Professor of Indic and Comparative Theology, Loyola Marymount University

“Wonderfully comprehensive, positive, tremendously insightful, and illuminating. For anyone interested in the deep influence of yoga philosophy in American culture, I highly recommended this masterful book.”  John Friend, Founder of Anusara Yoga

“Immensely smart, wise and brilliantly written. This book should be required reading for everyone interested in ecumenical spirituality which is the one hope for the survival of the human race, and India’s great gift to us in our crisis.”  Andrew Harvey, author of The Hope: The Guide to Social Activism and The Sun at Midnight

“In this important and engaging book, Philip Goldberg chronicles the long neglected history of Hinduism’s encounter with the US. He astutely examines how Hinduism has been constructed and consumed within the larger American spiritual landscape.  A must read for those interested in Hinduism and its transmission.”  Varun Soni, Dean of Religious Life, University of Southern California

“American Veda documents an important cultural change and is an impressive book: informed and informative, well researched and readable.”  Roger Walsh MD, Ph.D., University of California Medical School, author of Essential Spirituality: The Seven Central Practices

“Intriguing reading, fascinating profiles and great storytelling of Yoga luminaries adapting the teachings to fit modern American life. This book inspires us to continue to deepen in our body, mind, and spiritual journey.”  Lilias Folan, PBS Host and author Lilias! Yoga Gets Better with Age

“Goldberg weaves a tale as only a true storyteller can, drawing the reader into this Vedic web that has no weaver, providing us with a fresh view of how Vedic strands have woven their way into the daily fabric of every American. He masterfully unfolds this ancient play of spiritual unfolding that is just now beginning to emerge into early adolescence in America.”  Richard Miller, PhD, author of Yoga Nidra: A Meditative Practice for Deep Relaxation and Healing, co-founder of the International Association of Yoga Therapy and the founding president of the Integrative Restoration Institute.

“A breathtaking trek across time, American Veda shows us something extraordinary, surprising, and precious about where we come from, who we are at this moment, and what we may yet become.”  Chip Hartranft, author of The Yoga-Sutra Of Patañjali: A New Translation With Commentary

“In a delightful, compelling way, American Veda shows how India’s ancient wisdom has permeated our lives, including many of the self-improvement teachings that have benefited millions.  I loved reading this book.”  Marci Shimoff, NY Times bestselling author, Happy for No Reason and Chicken Soup for the Woman’s Soul

“Nothing short of remarkable. Within the pages of this fairly short volume, Goldberg manages to cover every major figure, movement, and idea that originated in India’s spiritual terrain and arrived on our shores to forever alter the landscape of our thought and culture…Writing with empathy and discernment, he covers highly controversial issues regarding the impact of the transmission of Indian spiritual culture in a way that inspires deeper understanding. American Veda is an insightful guide to the fascinating history of a phenomenon that will be seen in the future as one of the watershed moments of American history.”  Rita D. Sherma, Ph.D., Executive Director, School of Philosophy & Religious Studies, Taksha University

“American Veda is a bright light on the historical path to enlightenment in America. Philip Goldberg is an acharya of words and research. Highly recommended.”  Larry Payne Ph.D., coauthor, Yoga for Dummies, Yoga Rx and The Business of Teaching Yoga

“We imagine the United States as a Christian island far from the exotic teachings of India. We imagine wrong. As Phil Goldberg’s masterful American Veda shows we have been under the sway of Hindu spiritual thought for centuries. If you want to understand American spirituality today, and get a glimpse into its future, read this book.”  Rabbi Rami Shapiro, author of Recovery, the Sacred Art

“This book, American Veda is a landmark! Easy to read it shines a light of understanding on the American Vedic Hindu path which started with the transference of knowledge from India, and equally important by its acceptance by the Americans of western orientation. It is a path on which now, the immigrant Vedic Hindu community and its progeny are grafting on to and traveling along with many in the mainstream community, resulting in, we hope increased understanding. The integrated approach of this book helps fill in the gaps of this historical journey, especially for those of us who see ourselves as fellow travelers working to bridge the east-west divide.”  Anju Bhargava, Management Consultant and Founder of Hindu American Seva Charities

About the Author:

Philip Goldberg is the author or coauthor of nineteen books, including Roadsigns: On the Spiritual Path and The Intuitive Edge. Based in Los Angeles, he is an ordained interfaith minister, a public speaker and seminar leader, and the founder of Spiritual Wellness and Healing Associates. He is director of outreach for SpiritualCitizens.net and blogs regularly on religion for the Huffington Post.

JOB’s Comment:

Then one of course has to start looking at everything described in this book with the proper kind of discernment… It is desperately needed.

Yes: The Remembering

From the album Tales from Topographic Oceans (1973).

The full title is ‘The Remembering – High the Memory’.

–

Together with ‘The Revealing Science of God – Dance of the Dawn’, which it follows and completes on this double album, and ‘The Ancient – Giants Under the Sun’ and ‘Ritual – Nous Sommes Du Soleil’, the two remaining songs, or movements, on the same album (the album whose title, it should be said, is a somewhat strange linguistic construction, although it does seem to have a kind of explanation), this is the supreme achievement of symphonic progressive rock. This genre is the highest sub-genre of progressive rock, which, in turn, is the highest genre in rock, as it were, for the simple reason that it is not really rock at all, or because it is defined by its striving to progress beyond that problematic genre into something altogether different, better, higher. In other words, this is a high point in music in general.

I have called Yes the apotheosis of hippiedom, but using apotheosis in the original Greek sense which implies a transformation – in this case from all-too-human hippiedom into something divine, or at least more divine. They are certainly not a culmination of hippiedom. But perhaps they were never really hippies at all. Or even “rock stars”. At least some of them had a “classical” education in music. I remember how I was immediately attracted when, in the mid-1970s, I heard how they were vegetarians and spent free time on tours peacefully, back in their hotel rooms, drinking – milk. And, in the case of Jon Anderson, reading Paramahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi, “the lengthy footnote on page 83″ of which he mentions on the cover of this album. 

Yes were influenced by the vague spiritual longing that, when it was real, was about the only thing that was to the hippies’ credit. But they, or at least some of them, were obviously rising above the ordinary, lowest romantic spirituality of the hippies, the drugs, the general lifestyle, and had begun to take spirituality more seriously, in life as well as in their art. Yes are the apotheosis of hippiedom in the sense that they transform it into something that is almost exclusively a realization of its only valuable potential, the spiritual. Their name indicates it. Much of their work is a serious attempt, from the perspective of that generation, and with the musical and lyrical means at their disposal, to affirm and express the reality of spiritual awakening and spiritual enlightenment, and to do so in contrast, by no means neglected, to the painfully real but, in that ultimate perspective, lesser reality of the darkness of ignorance and illusion of life in this world.

They are not perfect. There is still too much rock, or one should perhaps rather say too much electric guitar and drums – in the Yes sound picture, they are subdued and deeply embedded in a non-rock totality, and it must be said that also in themselves the guitars for the most part have a distinctly non-rock quality. Still, not even Yes have progressed far enough beyond rock, have fully developed and established the new genre as a wholly independent and separate one. In their worldview is also still found too much of the characteristic, modern, new agey romanticism of the period; they remain caught in some of the general illusions of their time, although this is not so evident in their main sequence of albums in the 1970s.

But in their best work, there is a clear movement away from lower and ordinary forms of this kind of modern romanticism to one aspect at least of what can be called higher romanticism; their affirmation includes a dimension of transcendence. It is the maturity and fullness of their vision, even more than the sublime, relative perfection of its artistic realization in their main sequence, that puts them far ahead of other symphonic progressive rock bands; none comes even close. And in that sequence, the Tales album is the most important. It is so because it is the most fully developed, the one which progresses the most beyond rock. It must be the most advanced piece of music ever played with these instruments – and when I say this I have in mind neither the mere technical skill of the musicians, which is often much too one-sidedly focused on in the Yes literature, nor just compositional complexity as such.

The Beatles helped stimulate and inspire in the second half of the 1960s the development of serious rock and even progressive rock; and they too were drawn to spirituality, and showed some interest in both Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. Yes certainly arose to some extent out of the post-Sgt Pepper musical and cultural milieu. And yet, saying that an ordinary pop, rock’n’roll, and ultimately even to some extent serious rock group like The Beatles is sometimes like Monteverdi, and that some of their songs are better than Schumann’s, as did the literary critic and professor of American and English literature at Rutgers, Richard Poirier, is clearly exaggerated. But the situation is at least to some considerable extent different with the masters of symphonic prog at their best, for reasons not yet fully explored in the Yes literature.

Because of the spiritual-religious vision it expresses, as well as its melodic level and compositional structure, it could at least be suggested that the Tales album is the Bach B minor mass of symphonic progressive rock. The hymnic quality (which we of course find in other works of Yes too) is in important respects the same. Bach’s mass isn’t perfect either. But it is hard to imagine that any of these works will be surpassed in their respective genres. If you do not already understand and appreciate works of music which have in common what these works have in common, you will have made spiritual progress if you devote your life to trying to learn to do so. Here is Anderson’s impressionistic interpretation of the Vedic shastra on the album cover, explaining the theme of the album and of each of the four movements:

“We were in Tokyo on tour and I had a few minutes to myself in the hotel room before the evening’s concert. Leafing through Paramahansa Yogananda’s ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’ I got caught up in the lengthy footnote on page 83. It described the four part shastric scriptures which cover all aspects of religion and social life as well as fields like medicine and music, art and architecture. For some time I had been searching for a theme for a large scale composition. So positive in character were the shastras that I could visualise there and then four interlocking pieces of music being structured around them. That was in February. Eight months later the concept was realised in this recording.

While still on tour, first in Australia and then the U.S., I had spelled out the idea to Steve. He liked it and the two of us at once began holding sessions by candlelight in our hotel rooms. By the time we reached Savannah, Georgia, things had come together very clearly. There, during one six-hour session, which carried on until 7 a.m., we worked out the vocal, lyrical and instrumental foundation for the four movements. It was a magical experience which left both of us exhilarated for days. Chris, Rick and Alan made very important contributions of their own as the work evolved during the five months it took to arrange, rehearse and record.

1st Movement: Shrutis. The Revealing Science of God can be seen as an ever-opening flower in which simple truths emerge examining the complexities and magic of the past and how we should not forget the song that has been left to us to hear. The knowledge of God is a search, constant and clear.

2nd Movement: Smritis. The Remembering. All our thoughts, impressions, knowledge, fears, have been developing for millions of years.  What we can relate to is our own past, our own life, our own history. Here, it is especially Rick’s keyboards which bring alive the ebb and flow and depth of our mind’s eye: The Topographic Ocean. Hopefully we should appreciate that given points in time are not so significant as the nature of what is impressed on the mind, and how it is retained and used.

3rd Movement: Puranas. The Ancient probes still further into the past beyond the point of remembering. Here Steve’s guitar is pivotal in sharpening reflection on the beauties and treasures of lost civilisations, Indian, Chinese, Central American, Atlantean. These and other people left an immense treasure of knowledge.

4th Movement: Tantras. The Ritual. Seven notes of freedom to learn and to know the ritual of life. Life is a fight between sources of evil and pure love. Alan and Chris present and relay the struggle out of which comes a positive source. Nous sommes du soleil. We are of the sun. We can see.”

Rhoda F. Orme-Johnson & Susan K. Andersen, eds: The Flow of Consciousness

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi on Literature and Language

Maharishi University of Management Press, 2010

Back Cover:

MaharishiOver the years, His Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi recorded brilliant and inspiring lectures on the literary process, as well as on critical theory and technique, emphasizing the relevance of the state of consciousness of both writer and reader. He explained how only from an expanded basis can the writer spontaneously experience and express refined emotions and ideas and only from such a basis can the reader hope to understand and enjoy such writings. A fully developed consciousness can express the ocean in a drop, and from that drop flows a river of meaning, power, and enjoyment. Literature itself can be a means to evolve one’s consciousness through sound, rhythm, and meaning, swinging the reader’s attention from concrete to abstract, thus purifying consciousness and producing bliss.

Immersing oneself in the transcripts of Maharishi’s lectures allows readers to feel his presence, to hear his voice, his rhythms of speech, his humor, and to appreciate his skill as a teacher. His exposition of the power of poetry, particularly the poetry of the Veda, gives the reader a taste of his intellect and his profound understanding of language and literature. It is a journey through a great mind and an exploration of a topic familiar and beloved by all.

This volume is a valuable resource to teachers, students, and all readers of literature, to all those interested in higher human development and the literary process.

JOB’s Comment:

The term “abstract”, which appears in the text above, has a special meaning in Maharishi’s works, different from the ordinary;  and both “abstract” and “concrete” are used in senses different from the ones they have in my own philosophical texts. Maharishi’s meanings are close to “subtle” and “gross”, respectively; and especially “subtle” is one of his most commonly used terms.