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2022/02/26

Aldous Huxley and Alternative Spirituality | Reading Religion

Link to Publisher's Website

Aldous Huxley and Alternative Spirituality

Texts and Studies in Western Esotericism

Jake Poller

Aries, Vol. 27

Boston, MA:
Brill
, August
2019.
366 pages.
$203.00.
E-Book.
ISBN
9789004406902.
For other formats: Link to Publisher's Website.

Review

Aldous Huxley is among the most important thinkers of the 20th century. He was a key figure among a network of intellectuals and writers interested in transcendence and transformation, and he enormously influenced the Human Potential Movement, the 1960s psychedelic counterculture, the New Age Movement, and deep ecology.

In Aldous Huxley and Alternative Spirituality, Jake Poller reviews Huxley’s investigations and experiments in sociology and mysticism in comparison to the differing perspectives on similar themes in his fiction, including Brave New World (Chatto & Windus, 1932) and Island (Chatto & Windus,1962). Poller skillfully shows the modern literary influence of H.G. Wells and D.H. Lawrence on Huxley’s early aesthetic and also defines a cultic milieu for the Perennial Philosophy, which is contrasted to historical antecedents and similar variations. The author draws heavily from the literary criticism of David Bradshaw and cites Wouter J. Hanegraaff and Jeffrey J. Kripal in positing a Western esoteric tradition. Finally, Poller situates Huxley in a sequence of mind-altering drug champions that include P.D. Ouspensky and Aliester Crowley as predecessors, scientific researchers Humphrey Osmond and Albert Hoffman, and popularizers such as Timothy Leary and Terence McKenna.

Huxley critiqued the aims of Gerald Heard’s Open Conspiracy Club, which envisioned a collective eschatology in Western psychology when an elite group of scientists and industrialists displace nationalist states with a rational, technocratic planetary government. During the first phase, the vague beginnings of organization sought to define the aims with proposals and propaganda, intimate contact with educational reformers, and actual development of the Earth’s resources in a global economy and world banking system. Huxley, who was a member of Heard’s Peace Pledge Union, worried about the dangers of machines intended to elevate humanity instead enslaving people, and he also warned about the possibility of exploitation when humans are trained (and drugged) to be obedient workers and predictable consumers. Huxley believed that peace is not possible without a religious philosophy agreeable to all nations. He rejected behavioralism in favor of Immanuel Kant’s transcendental idealism and proposed a Minimum Working Hypothesis and FourFundamental Tenets of the Perennial Philosophy, which is not universal (found in all religions at all times) but recurs in several traditions. Huxley was intrigued by examples of socially and spiritually mandated forms of sexual promiscuity, and his ideal politics would make the world safe for mystical experience.

Poller traces the varieties of perennialism starting with definitions: “spiritual” is neither secular nor is it institutional religion; “alternative” is not mainstream culture. Mysticism (as defined by William James and Rudolf Otto) is not esotericism (a Renaissance synthesis and polemic Other to Enlightenment discourse) which is not occultism (like Theosophy and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn).

Moreover, Huxley’s Perennial Philosophy is historically distinct from both De Perennis Philosophia (the Vatican librarian’s response to Luther’s protest) and also Marsilia Ficino’s Prisca Theologia (a Platonic worldview derived from the wisdom mythologized in legends of Moses, Hermes Trismegistus, Zoroaster, Orpheus, etc). The late 19th-century and early 20th-century cultic milieu was strongly determined by three inspirations: The Secret Doctrine by Madame Helena P. Blavatsky (Theosophical Publishing Society, 1875), which proposed hidden masters attempting to reconcile all sects and nations under a common system of ethics (later interpretations by Annie Besant and Alice Bailey expanded this concept into administrative offices of a planetary government); Traditionalism (represented by Rene Guenon, Julius Evola, Ananda Coomaraswamy, and Frithjof Schuon) which claimed to transmit a superior but partially corrupted and incomplete ancient knowledge which is inaccessible except through initiation rites similar to the Sufis and Freemasons; and, Neo-Vedanta which emerged from the cross-pollination of Unitarian Christianity and American Transcendentalism and produced a “New Dispensation” that claimed right guidance and practice will enable correct perception of the truth which has been concealed or distorted.

Huxley drafted the prospectus for Heard’s Trabuco College of Prayer, an intentional community imitating the charity and compassion of religious orders. It was imagined as an undogmatic, nonhierarchical, nondenominational club for mystics and rest center for social workers. It was open to maladjusted youth seeking to regain control of themselves and return to an integrated life in the world. Heard was interested in the regeneration of the individual (168), but he also believed the only hope for our derelict civilization is in the emergence of Neo-Brahmins who have attained the next stage of evolution and assumed leadership of humanity (158). Heard practiced an idiosyncratic discipline seeking a telepathic connection to an impersonal psychic field which had no resemblance to Patanjali’s yoga or Swami Vivekananda’s program (151). Huxley visited six times, once with Jiddu Krishnamurti who was disturbed and declined to return. Heard judged his attempt to be a failure and donated the compound to Swami Prabhavananda. Huxley’s interest pivoted toward tantra, which Poller compares to descriptions by Heinrich Zimmer, John Woodroofe, and Hugh Urban.

Huxley believed human progress results not from an evolutionary leap or paranormal training, but through cultivating existing potential aided by pharmacology. Heard also promoted LSD as an educational tool to right-wing Libertarian groups and introduced the drug to the engineers at the Sequoia Seminars who were in pursuit of a man-machine symbiosis through computer-augmented and artificial intelligence. Huxley regarded LSD as “moksha-medicine” (liberation) and the cure-all for modern problems. He took psilocybin at MIT with Leary, who dosed members of the Vedanta Center in Boston using Ganges water in a chalice. Huxley advised Leary to “turn on the elites” and advocated appropriate set-and-setting, but Allen Ginsburg persuaded Leary to reach out to the public instead. The movement that emerged was chaotic and dangerous.

There was a time when perennialism flourished in the counterculture (through Alan Watts) and in the academy (through Mircea Eliade). However, this important branch of intellectual history and associated figures (including Carl J. Jung, Joseph Campbell, and Huston Smith as exemplars in their respective fields) was stigmatized and rejected in the postmodernist demolition project. Poller rescues Huxley from the disdain heaped on his “synthetic Yoga-Buddhic-Christian religion” and shows the connection between Huxley’s experiments in lived ideology as reflected in his creative literary achievements. Poller’s compelling book enhances appreciation and deepens respect for Huxley’s fiction and visionary mysticism.

About the Reviewer(s):

Patrick Horn is a Public Scholar and the Membership Committee Chairman for the Religion Communicators Council Board of Governors.

Date of Review:

July 30, 2020

About the Author(s)/Editor(s)/Translator(s):

Jake Poller, Ph.D. (2010), Queen Mary University of London, is the editor of Altered Consciousness in the Twentieth Century (Routledge, 2019).

Categories:

comparative religions

new religious movements

Keywords:

Aldous Huxley, alternative spirituality, mysticism, neo-Vedanta, Taoism, Mahayana, Zen-Buddhism, Western esotericism, mesmerism, spiritualism, paranormal, fiction, Tantric, New Age

2022/01/11

Ananda Coomaraswamy - Wikipedia

Ananda Coomaraswamy - Wikipedia

Ananda Coomaraswamy
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Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy

Coomaraswamy in 1916
Born 22 August 1877

Colombo, British Ceylon
Died 9 September 1947 (aged 70)

Needham, Massachusetts, U.S.
Nationality British Ceylonese American
Known for Contributions to metaphysics, philosophy of art, and history

Notable work The Dance of Shiva (1918), Hinduism and Buddhism (1943)
Spouse(s)

Ethel Mairet (m. 1902–1913)
Ratna Devi (m. 1913–1922)
Stella Bloch (m. 1922–1930)
Luisa Runstein (m. 1930–1947, his death)

Ananda Kentish Muthu Coomaraswamy (Tamil: ஆனந்த குமாரசுவாமி, Ānanda Kentiś Muthū Kumāraswāmī; Sinhala: ආනන්ද කුමාරස්වාමි; 22 August 1877 − 9 September 1947) was a Ceylonese metaphysician, pioneering historian and philosopher of Indian art who was an early interpreter of Indian culture to the West.[1] In particular, he is described as "the groundbreaking theorist who was largely responsible for introducing ancient Indian art to the West."[2]

Contents
1Life
2Contributions
3Methodology
4Traditional symbolism
5Perennial philosophy
6Works
7See also
8References
9Sources
10Further reading
11External links
Life[edit]
See also: Ponnambalam–Coomaraswamy family

Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy was born in Colombo, British Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, to the Ceylonese Tamil legislator and philosopher Sir Muthu Coomaraswamy of the Ponnambalam–Coomaraswamy family and his English wife Elizabeth Beeby.[3][4][5] His father died when Ananda was two years old, and Ananda spent much of his childhood and education abroad.[6]

Coomaraswamy moved to England in 1879 and attended Wycliffe College, a preparatory school in Stroud, Gloucestershire, at the age of twelve. In 1900, he graduated from University College, London, with a degree in geology and botany. On 19 June 1902, Coomaraswamy married Ethel Mary Partridge, an English photographer, who then traveled with him to Ceylon. Their marriage lasted until 1913. Coomaraswamy's field work between 1902 and 1906 earned him a doctor of science for his study of Ceylonese mineralogy, and prompted the formation of the Geological Survey of Ceylon which he initially directed.[7] While in Ceylon, the couple collaborated on Mediaeval Sinhalese Art; Coomaraswamy wrote the text and Ethel provided the photographs. His work in Ceylon fueled Coomaraswamy's anti-Westernization sentiments.[8] After their divorce, Partridge returned to England, where she became a famous weaver and later married the writer Philip Mairet.

By 1906, Coomaraswamy had made it his mission to educate the West about Indian art, and was back in London with a large collection of photographs, actively seeking out artists to try to influence. He knew he could not rely on museum curators or other members of the cultural establishment – in 1908 he wrote "The main difficulty so far seems to have been that Indian art has been studied so far only by archaeologists. It is not archaeologists, but artists … who are the best qualified to judge of the significance of works of art considered as art." By 1909, he was firmly acquainted with Jacob Epstein and Eric Gill, the city's two most important early Modernists, and soon both of them had begun to incorporate Indian aesthetics into their work. The curiously hybrid sculptures that were produced as a result can be seen to form the very roots of what is now considered British Modernism.[9][10]

His second wife: Alice Coomaraswamy (Ratan Devi) with Roshanara

Coomaraswamy then met and married a British woman Alice Ethel Richardson and together they went to India and stayed on a houseboat in Srinagar in Kashmir. Commaraswamy studied Rajput painting while his wife studied Indian music with Abdul Rahim of Kapurthala. When they returned to England, Alice performed Indian song under the stage name Ratan Devi. Alice was successful and both went to America when Ratan Devi did a concert tour.[11] While they were there, Coomaraswamy was invited to serve as the first Keeper of Indian art in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 1917.[12] The couple had two children, a son, Narada, and daughter, Rohini.

Portrait of Ananda Coomaraswamy, published 1907

Coomaraswamy divorced his second wife after they arrived in America.[12] He married the American artist Stella Bloch, 20 years his junior, in November 1922. Through the 1920s, Coomaraswamy and his wife were part of the bohemian art circles in New York City, Coomaraswamy befriended Alfred Stieglitz and the artists who exhibited at Stieglitz's gallery. At the same time, he studied Sanskrit and Pali religious literature as well as Western religious works. He wrote catalogues for the Museum of Fine Arts and published his History of Indian and Indonesian Art in 1927.

After the couple divorced in 1930, they remained friends. Shortly thereafter, on 18 November 1930, Coomaraswamy married Argentine Luisa Runstein, 28 years younger, who was working as a society photographer under the professional name Xlata Llamas. They had a son, Coomaraswamy's third child, Rama Ponnambalam (1929-2006), who became a physician and convert at age 22 to the Roman Catholic Church. Following Vatican II, Rama became a critic of the reforms and author of Catholic Traditionalist works.[13] He was also ordained a Traditionalist Roman Catholic priest, despite the fact that he was married and had a living wife.[14] Rama Coomaraswamy studied in England and then in India, learning Hindi and Sanskrit.[15] Became a psychiatrist in the United States, he was an opponent of Pope John Paul II [15] and remain a wider correspondent of mother Teresa of Calcutta, whose first healing attribution was recognized by Wojtyła in 2002.[16]

In 1933 Coomaraswamy's title at the Museum of Fine Arts changed from curator to Fellow for Research in Indian, Persian, and Mohammedan Art.[8] He served as curator in the Museum of Fine Arts until his death in Needham, Massachusetts, in 1947. During his long career, he was instrumental in bringing Eastern art to the West. In fact, while at the Museum of Fine Arts, he built the first substantial collection of Indian art in the United States.[17] He also helped with[clarification needed] the collections of Persian Art at the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Museum of Fine Arts.

After Coomaraswamy's death, his widow, Doña Luisa Runstein, acted as a guide and resource for students of his work.
Contributions[edit]

Coomaraswamy made important contributions to the philosophy of art, literature, and religion. In Ceylon, he applied the lessons of William Morris to Ceylonese culture[citation needed] and, with his wife Ethel, produced a groundbreaking study of Ceylonese crafts and culture. While in India, he was part of the literary circle around Rabindranath Tagore, and he contributed to the "Swadeshi" movement, an early phase of the struggle for Indian independence.[18] In the 1920s, he made pioneering discoveries in the history of Indian art, particularly some distinctions between Rajput and Moghul painting, and published his book Rajput Painting. At the same time he amassed an unmatched collection of Rajput and Moghul paintings, which he took with him to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, when he joined its curatorial staff in 1917. Through 1932, from his base in Boston, he produced two kinds of publications: brilliant scholarship in his curatorial field but also graceful introductions to Indian and Asian art and culture, typified by The Dance of Shiva, a collection of essays that remain in print to this day. Deeply influenced by René Guénon, he became one of the founders of the Traditionalist School. His books and essays on art and culture, symbolism and metaphysics, scripture, folklore and myth, and still other topics, offer a remarkable education to readers who accept the challenges of his resolutely cross-cultural perspective and insistence on tying every point he makes back to sources in multiple traditions. He once remarked, "I actually think in both Eastern and Christian terms—Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Pali, and to some extent Persian and Chinese."[19] Alongside the deep and not infrequently difficult writings of this period, he also delighted in polemical writings created for a larger audience—essays such as "Why exhibit works of art?" (1943).[20]

In his book The Information Society: An Introduction (Sage, 2003, p. 44), Armand Mattelart credits Coomaraswamy for coining the term 'post-industrial' in 1913.
Methodology[edit]

Coomaraswamy was a firm believer in the comparative method. The analysis of both texts and symbols across a wide variety of cultures and time periods allowed him to see below the surface of local interpretations and religious exclusivism to locate the bedrock of tradition. By tradition, he meant that which has been handed down from time beyond memory.

The folk has thus preserved, without understanding, the remains of old traditions that go back sometimes to the indeterminably distant past, to which we can only refer as “prehistoric”.[21] Had the folk beliefs not indeed been once understood, we could not now speak of them as metaphysically intelligible, or explain the accuracy of their formulations.[22]

His extensive knowledge of ancient languages allowed him access to primary sources and his understanding of metaphysics helped him discern the deeper meanings that other scholars often missed. Given the specialization and compartmentation of knowledge that was part of the Western academic tradition, his efforts were not always appreciated. He expressed some of his feelings in a letter to Graham Carey:

What the secular mind does is to assert that we (symbolists) are reading meaning into things that originally had none: our assertion is that they are reading out the meaning. The proof of our contention lies in the perfection, consistency and universality of the pattern in which these meanings are united.[23]

His criticism of the academic world was centered around a number of related issues. First, the academic method, by itself, was ill-equipped to deal with the way in which ideas where transmitted in non-literate cultures, due to an over-reliance on written documentation. Too much was left out.

By “folklore” we mean the whole and consistent body of culture which has been handed down, not in books but by word of mouth and in practice, from time beyond the reach of historical research, in the form of legends, fairy tales, ballads, games, toys, crafts, medicine, agriculture, and other rites, and forms of social organization, especially those that we call “tribal.” This is a cultural complex independent of national and even racial boundaries, and of remarkable similarity throughout the world.[24]

A second point of conflict was the obsessive tendency of Western scholarship to divide cultures, religions, and time periods into discrete categories in order to fit into academic organizational and mental structures.

It is equally surprising that so many scholars, meeting with some universal doctrine in a given context, so often think of it as a local peculiarity.[25]

As a traditionalist, Coomaraswamy emphasized the continuity of culture. He was well aware of historical change but he felt that the connecting elements had been lost by the extreme emphasis placed on change and “progress”. Conflict between a new religion and an older one often obscured the commonalities that linked them.

The opposition of religion to folklore is often a kind of rivalry set up as between a new dispensation and an older tradition, the gods of the older cult becoming the evil spirits of the newer.[26]

He pointed out that the Greek word daimon, which at root indicates something given, was synonymous with the Christian Holy Spirit, God’s gift of life. If Christian propagandists chose to emphasize the demonic at the expense of the daimon it was only to further their own cause. Ideas like this did not go over well with other scholars and his correspondence has its share of angry or condescending responses to his work which he deflected with a combination of erudition, tact, and humor.[27]

A third issue that raised his ire was the racism inherent in the Western world’s criticism and misinterpretation of traditional and tribal cultures, attitudes tied closely to literacy and the attendant idea of progress.

It was possible for Aristotle, starting from the premise that a man, being actually cultured, may also become literate, to ask whether there is a necessary or merely an accidental connection of literacy with culture. Such a question can hardly arise for those to whom illiteracy implies, as a matter of course, ignorance, backwardness, unfitness for self-government: for you, unlettered people are uncivilized peoples and vice versa—as a recent publisher’s blurb expresses it: “The greatest force in civilization is the collective wisdom of a literate people."[28]

Like Franz Boas and a handful of others, Coomaraswamy waged a constant war against racism with the press and academic world. He was a strong advocate for Indian independence and was pressured to leave England for publicly suggesting that Indians not fight in the First World War.[29]

Unlike Rene Guenon and others who shared many of his understandings, he was not content to describe traditional ideas from the inside out, in metaphysical terms alone. His commitment to the Western intellectual tradition was deep. He didn’t believe that science and metaphysics were in opposition but were two different ways of looking at the world.[30] He was trained as a geologist and was well equipped to deal with science as well as metaphysics.

Nor did his work suffer from the oversimplifications and distortions that can afflict comparative studies. He was critical of the writings of Carl Jung and of Theosophy which he believed distorted the meaning of traditional ideas.[31] The details he provided in support of his arguments could daunt the ablest scholar; his footnotes sometimes took up more room on a page than the text. The comparative method has achieved a good deal of success in linguistics but its application to culture had rarely gone beyond mere documentation before Ananda Coomaraswamy.
Traditional symbolism[edit]

One of Coomaraswamy’s most important contributions was his profound understanding of how people communicated in early times and how their ideas were transmitted and preserved in the absence of writing. He felt that traditional symbolism could best be understood by means of images, which preceded writing and which contained ideas that had been handed down from the earliest times and preserved in a vast array of media.

To have lost the art of thinking in images is precisely to have lost the proper linguistic of metaphysics and to have descended to the verbal logic of “philosophy.[32]

His study of traditional symbols had taught him that symbols were meant to express ideas and not emotions and that a study of “styles” and “influences” would reveal little of significance.

An adequate knowledge of theology and cosmology is then indispensable to an understanding of the history of art, insofar as the actual shapes and structures of works of art are determined by their real content. Christian art, for example, begins with the representation of deity by abstract symbols, which may be geometrical, vegetable, or theriomorphic, and are devoid of any sentimental appeal whatever. An anthropomorphic symbol follows, but this is still a form and not a figuration; not made as though to function biologically or as if to illustrate a text book of anatomy or dramatic expression. Still later, the form is sentimentalised; the features of the crucified are made to exhibit human suffering, the type is completely humanised, and where we began with the shape of humanity as an analogical representation of the idea of God, we end with the portrait of the artist’s mistress posing as the Madonna and a representation of an all-too-human baby; the Christ is no longer a man-God, but the sort of man we can approve of.[33]

In keeping with his traditionalist stance, he saw this process as one of gradual decay in which the human life world began to encroach gradually on the divine with an attendant growth of sentimentality and loss of meaning. He was fond of quoting the curator, John Lodge: “From the Stone Age until now, quelle dégringolade.”[34]

Coomaraswamy spent a lot of his time documenting themes and images that appeared to be very old, given their widespread distribution. Major areas of study included:• Solar symbolism• Symbolism of the wheel• The Flood story• The “Water Cosmology” and the “Plant Style”• Soma and the Water of Life• Traditional cosmologies (the three worlds)• The symbolism of snakes and reptiles• The symbolism of birds and other “psychopomps” (soul carriers)• The heavenly ladder• The cosmic dome and the hole in the sky with its guardian figure• The Thread-spirit (sutratman) doctrine that underlies the symbolism of the fiber arts• The concept of ether and the symbolism of fire• Divine bi-unity (male/female) as one• The inverted tree and arboreal symbolism• The Symplegades (Clashing Rocks) and the Coincidence of Opposites

He found these symbols in many cultures and time periods, both in religious writings and in folklore. He saw little opposition between religion and folklore. Folklore was transmitted in the vernacular as compared to the sacred languages in which scripture was delivered and interpreted. Folklore was less moralistic but its themes shared a common source with those of religion; Jack’s beanstalk was Jacob’s ladder. Religion was not “contaminated” by folklore but used it to express the same ideas in a more rationalized and moralized setting, just as Plato used myths to explain his philosophy.

The designs we found in Neolithic times were derived from older images. Thus the continuity of tradition reveals itself best in art, which expresses ideas. Even when religious philosophies developed with writing, a continuity of meaning could be observed often because the change was gradual and the old and the new existed side by side.

In the Vedas, the belief {that all life began in the “Waters”} appears in the form of an old popular theory, for which are substituted the successively more philosophical concepts of Space Cosmology, of a belief in the origin of the world in Non-being, in an origin of the world from Being, and finally in the conception of Brahman (the Absolute) as world-ground. The Water Cosmology, it is true, persists side by side with, and linked with these deeper views, even in post-Vedic literature; but it is typically not a creation of the Vedas and seems to belong to an even older stratum of ideas than that which is developed in the Vedas.[35]

The ideas expressed by images were made explicit by writing, which allowed for a greater degree of abstraction and elaboration but since the concrete preceded the abstract, all philosophy started with images. In the absence of writing, the tribal cultures of the world have preserved a good deal of this older symbolism.

Coomaraswamy also maintained that traditional technologies (like the needle or the fire drill) were applications of metaphysical ideas, just as modern technology is an expression of scientific principles.

Primitive man knew nothing of a possible divorce of function and meaning: all his inventions were applied meaning.[36]

The American art historian, Carl Schuster, who corresponded with Coomarawamy and learned much from him, would go on to identify some of the Paleolithic sources of this symbolism.[37]
Perennial philosophy[edit]

Portrait of Coomaraswamy printed in the April 1916 issue of The Hindusthanee Student

He was described by Heinrich Zimmer as "That noble scholar upon whose shoulders we are still standing."[38] While serving as a curator to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in the latter part of his life, he devoted his work to the explication of traditional metaphysics and symbolism. His writings of this period are filled with references to Plato, Plotinus, Clement, Philo, Augustine, Aquinas, Shankara, Eckhart, Rumi and other mystics. When asked how he defined himself foremost, Coomaraswamy said he was a "metaphysician", referring to the concept of perennial philosophy, or sophia perennis.

Along with René Guénon and Frithjof Schuon, Coomaraswamy is regarded as one of the three founders of Perennialism, also called the Traditionalist School. Several articles by Coomaraswamy on the subject of Hinduism and the perennial philosophy were published posthumously in the quarterly journal Studies in Comparative Religion alongside articles by Schuon and Guénon among others.

Although he agrees with Guénon on the universal principles, Coomaraswamy's works are very different in form. By vocation, he was a scholar who dedicated the last decades of his life to "searching the Scriptures".[clarification needed] He offers a perspective on the tradition that complements Guénon's.[clarification needed] He was extremely perceptive regarding aesthetics and wrote dozens of articles on traditional arts and mythology. His works are also finely balanced intellectually. Although born in the Hindu tradition, he had a deep knowledge of the Western tradition as well as a great expertise in, and love for, Greek metaphysics, especially that of Plotinus, the founder of Neoplatonism.

Coomaraswamy built a bridge between East and West that was designed to be two-way: among other things, his metaphysical writings aimed at demonstrating the unity of the Vedanta and Platonism. His works also sought to rehabilitate original Buddhism, as he believed that the distance (i.e. differences) between Buddhism and Hinduism was artificially created by Western Indologists. In his book, Hinduism and Buddhism, he wrote:

The more superficially one studies Buddhism, the more it seems to differ from the Brahmanism in which it originated; the more profound our study, the more difficult it becomes to distinguish Buddhism from Brahmanism, or to say in what respects, if any, Buddhism is really unorthodox.[39]
Works[edit]

For a complete bibliography, see James S. Crouch, A Bibliography of Ananda Kentish Coomarswamy. Indira Gandhi, National Center for the Arts, Manohar, New Delhi, (2002).Traditional art
Elements of Buddhist Iconography, Harvard University Press, 1935.
Figures of Speech or Figures of Thought?: The Traditional View of Art, (World Wisdom 2007)
Introduction To Indian Art, (Kessinger Publishing, 2007)
Buddhist Art, (Kessinger Publishing, 2005)
Guardians of the Sundoor: Late Iconographic Essays, (Fons Vitae, 2004)
History of Indian and Indonesian Art, (Kessinger Publishing, 2003)
Teaching of Drawing in Ceylon (1906, Colombo Apothecaries)
The Indian craftsman (1909, Probsthain: London)
Voluspa; The Sibyl's Saying (1909, Essex House Press, London)
Viśvakarmā; examples of Indian architecture, sculpture, painting, handicraft (1914, London)
Vidyāpati: Bangīya padābali; songs of the love of Rādhā and Krishna], (1915, The Old Bourne press: London)
The mirror of gesture: being the Abhinaya darpaṇa of Nandikeśvara (with Duggirāla Gōpālakr̥ṣṇa) (1917, Harvard University Press; 1997, South Asia Books,)
Indian music (1917, G. Schirmer; 2006, Kessinger Publishing,
A catalog of sculptures by John Mowbray-Clarke: shown at the Kevorkian Galleries, New York, from May the seventh to June the seventh, 1919. (1919, New York: Kevorkian Galleries, co-authored with Mowbray-Clarke, John, H. Kevorkian, and Amy Murray)
Rajput Painting, (B.R. Publishing Corp., 2003)
Early Indian Architecture: Cities and City-Gates, (South Asia Books, 2002) I
The Origin of the Buddha Image, (Munshirm Manoharlal Pub Pvt Ltd, 2001)
The Door in the Sky, (Princeton University Press, 1997)
The Transformation of Nature in Art, (Sterling Pub Private Ltd, 1996)
Bronzes from Ceylon, chiefly in the Colombo Museum, (Dept. of Govt. Print, 1978)
Early Indian Architecture: Palaces, (Munshiram Manoharlal, 1975)
The arts & crafts of India & Ceylon, (Farrar, Straus, 1964)
Christian and Oriental Philosophy of Art, (Dover Publications, 1956)
Archaic Indian Terracottas, (Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1928)Metaphysics
Hinduism and Buddhism, (Kessinger Publishing, 2007; Golden Elixir Press, 2011)
Myths of the Hindus & Buddhists (with Sister Nivedita) (1914, H. Holt; 2003, Kessinger Publishing)
Buddha and the gospel of Buddhism (1916, G. P. Putnam's sons; 2006, Obscure Press,)
A New Approach to the Vedas: An Essay in Translation and Exegesis, (South Asia Books, 1994)
The Living Thoughts of Gotama the Buddha, (Fons Vitae, 2001)
Time and eternity, (Artibus Asiae, 1947)
Perception of the Vedas, (Manohar Publishers and Distributors, 2000)
Metaphysics, (Princeton University Press, 1987)Social criticism
Am I My Brothers Keeper, (Ayer Co, 1947)
The Dance of Shiva - Fourteen Indian essays Turn Inc., New York; 2003, Kessinger Publishing,
The village community and modern progress (12 pages) (Colombo Apothecaries, 1908)
Essays in national idealism (Colombo Apothecaries, 1910)
Bugbear of Literacy, (Sophia Perennis, 1979)
What is Civilisation?: and Other Essays. Golgonooza Press, (UK),
Spiritual Authority and Temporal Power in the Indian Theory of Government, (Oxford University Press, 1994)Posthumous collections
Yaksas, (Munshirm Manoharlal Pub Pvt Ltd, 1998) ISBN 978-81-215-0230-6
Coomaraswamy: Selected Papers, Traditional Art and Symbolism, (Princeton University Press, 1986)
The Essential Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, (2003, World Wisdom)
See also[edit]
Ivan Aguéli
Titus Burckhardt
Calico Museum of Textiles
Comparative Religion
Esoterism
René Guénon
Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Martin Lings
Whitall Perry
Huston Smith
William Stoddart
Mateus Soares de Azevedo
Michel Valsan
Advaita Vedanta
Carl Schuster
References[edit]

^ Murray Fowler, "In Memoriam: Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy", Artibus Asiae, Vol. 10, No. 3 (1947), pp. 241-244
^ MFA: South Asian Art. Archived from the original Archived 15 June 2010 at the Wayback Machine
^ "The Annual Ananda Coomaraswamy Memorial Oration 1999". Retrieved 7 April 2016.
^ Kathleen Taylor, Sir John Woodroffe Tantra and Bengal, Routledge (2012), p. 63
^ Journal of Comparative Literature & Aesthetics, Volume 16 (1993), p. 61
^ "Seeing the glory of localism that transcends the narrow boundaries of localism". Silumina. Retrieved 7 June 2021.
^ Philip Rawson, "A Professional Sage", The New York Review of Books, v. 26, no. 2 (February 22, 1979)
^ Jump up to:a b "Stella Bloch Papers Relating to Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, 1890-1985 (bulk 1917-1930)". Princeton University Library Manuscripts Division.
^ Arrowsmith, Rupert Richard. Modernism and the Museum: Asian, African and Pacific Art and the London Avant Garde. Oxford University Press, 2011, passim. ISBN 978-0-19-959369-9.
^ Video of a Lecture discussing Coomaraswamy's role in the introduction of Indian art to Western Modernists, School of Advanced Study, March 2012.
^ Alice Richardson, Making Britain, Open University, Retrieved 17 October 2015
^ Jump up to:a b G. R. Seaman, Coomaraswamy, Ananda Kentish (1877–1947), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, accessed 17 Oct 2015
^ "Rama P.Coomaraswamy (1929-2006)" by William Stoddart and Mateus Soares de Azevedo (3 pdfs)
^ "On the Validity of My Ordination" by Dr. Rama P. Coomaraswamy
^ Jump up to:a b Father Rama Coomaraswamy (1981). ""About"". The Destruction of the Christian Tradition. holyromancatholicchurch.org (2nd ed.). Archived from the original on 9 February 2010. His son, born in Massachusetts in 1932, plays the same role in the catholic resistance guerilla against so-called 'II Vatican Council' and so-called 'John Paul II'. He studied in England and later in India,
^ "Profile: 'Living Saint' Mother Teresa". BBC.com. 18 December 2015. Archived from the original on 1 November 2005. In 2002, five years after her death, Pope John Paul II judged that the healing of a woman suffering from an abdominal tumour was the result of Mother Teresa's supernatural intervention.
^ Princeton University Press, The Door in the Sky: Coomaraswamy on Myth and Meaning
^ Antliff, Allan (2001). Anarchist Modernism : Art, Politics, and the First American Avant-Garde. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p. 129. ISBN 9780226021041.
^ "Anand Coomaraswamy A Pen Sketch By - Dr. Rama P. Coomaraswamy". Archived from the original on 20 April 2008. Retrieved 21 November 2007.
^ Why Exhibit Works of Art? Archived 28 August 2010 at the Wayback Machine, essay. He also published a book of that title.
^ Ananda Coomaraswamy, Christian and Oriental Philosophy of Art, p. 139; quoting René Guénon
^ Ananda Coomaraswamy, Christian and Oriental Philosophy of Art, p. 140.
^ Selected Letters of Ananda Coomaraswamy, p. 213. Graham Carey (1892-1984) was an architect, essayist, lecturer and the co-author, with A. K. Coomaraswamy, of Patron and Artist, Pre-Renaissance and Modern (1936).
^ The Collected Works of Ananda Coomaraswamy, vol. 1, p. 286.
^ Ananda Coomaraswamy, The Greek Sphinx in Guardians of the Sun-Door pg. 120 ft. 5
^ The Collected Works of Ananda Coomaraswamy, vol. 1, p. 286, ft.2.
^ See Selected Letters of Ananda Coomaraswamy, passim, for many examples.
^ Ananda Coomaraswamy, The Bugbear of Literacy, p. 23, quoting Aristotle, Metaphysics, VI 2, 4, and XI: 8, 12.
^ See Selected Letters of Ananda Coomaraswamy, passim, for his stance on Indian independence.
^ See Ananda Coomaraswamy, What is Civilisation and Other Essays. “Gradation and Evolution” Chapters 7 and 8.
^ See "Vedanta and Western Tradition" in The Collected Works of Ananda Coomaraswamy, vol. 2, and The Selected Letters of Ananda Coomaraswamy, p. 150 and p. 157.
^ The Collected Works of Ananda Coomaraswamy, vol. 1, pp. 296-297.
^ Ananda Coomaraswamy, Christian and Oriental Philosophy of Art, pl. 45.
^ "From the Stone Age until now, what a downfall.
^ "Ananda Coomaraswamy, Yaksas, pp. 98-99.
^ Selected Letters of Ananda Coomaraswamy, p. 291, in a letter to George Sarton.
^ See Selected Letters of Ananda Coomaraswamy, pp. 220-221, for one example. The two men met in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the 1930s.
^ Multiworld.org/m_versity/althinkers... - StumbleUpon
^ Coomaraswamy, Ananda (1943). Hinduism and Buddhism. ISBN 1497675847 .
Sources[edit]
T.Wignesan, "Ananda K. Coomaraswamy’s Aesthetics" # Tamil studies Now published in the collection: T.Wignesan. Rama and Ravana at the Altar of Hanuman: On Tamils, Tamil Literature & Tamil Culture. Allahabad:Cyberwit.net, 2008, 750p. & at Chennai: Institute of Asian Studies, 2007, 439p.
"Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy" in One Hundred Tamils of the 20th Century
"Coomaraswamy, Ananda K.", Encyclopaedia of Indian Literature, vol. 1, ed. Amaresh Dutta, Sahitya Akademi (1987), p. 768. ISBN 81-260-1803-8
Mattelart, Armand. The Information Society: An Introduction, Sage: London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi, 2003, p. 44.
Further reading[edit]
Ananda Coomaraswamy: remembering and remembering again and again, by S. Durai Raja Singam. Publisher: Raja Singam, 1974.
Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, by P. S. Sastri. Arnold-Heinemann Publishers, India, 1974.
Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy: a handbook, by S. Durai Raja Singam. Publisher s.n., 1979.
Ananda Coomaraswamy: a study, by Moni Bagchee. Publisher: Bharata Manisha, 1977.
Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, by Vishwanath S. Naravane. Twayne Publishers, 1977. ISBN 0-8057-7722-9.
Selected letters of Ananda Coomaraswamy, Edited by Alvin Moore, Jr; and Rama P. Coomaraswamy (1988)
Coomaraswamy: Volume I: Selected Papers, Traditional Art and Symbolism, Princeton University Press (1977)
Coomaraswamy: Volume II: Selected Papers, Metaphysics, Edited by Roger Lipsey, Princeton University Press (1977)
Coomaraswamy: Volume III: His Life and Work, by Roger Lipsey, Princeton University Press (1977)
External links[edit]