Democracy and mysticism are two prominent themes of Walt Whitman's writings, yet few critics have explored the connections that may exist between these areas. Some critics have noted that Whitman holds an ideal of "spiritual democracy," in which all people are equal due to their identity with a transcendent self such as that found in "Song of Myself," but they have not identified the best philosophical model for such a political viewpoint. I believe that the parallel between Whitman's thought and Vedantic mysticism, already developed by V. K. Chart and others, may be expanded to account for Whitman's political thought. Past studies of Whitman and Vedanta have focused only on the advaitic aspects of his writing, but in his later years he came to adopt a visistadvaitic stance similar to that of Ramanuja. In the political sphere, his concept of a Brahmanic self shared by all people led him to not only believe that all people are equal, but that they also possess the capacity to become contributors to a democratic society. Whitman felt that the poet was the primary means by which the masses could attain mystical consciousness and the concomitant social harmony. The ideal poet described in Democratic Vistas and the Preface to the 1855 Leaves of Grass serves as a mediator between the people as they are and Whitman's ideal of a completely unified democratic society and thereby parallels the Vedantic guru's function of bridging the relative and absolute levels of reality. / Department of English

Uppsatsens syfte var att undersöka området personlig utveckling samt personlig avveckling utifrån Sri Nisargadatta Maharajs lära och Abraham Maslows idéer. Frågeställningarna på området var: Är personlig utveckling och personlig avveckling motsatta eller identiska företeelser? Vilka likheter och skillnader finns hos Maharaj och hos Maslow? Vad har språket och dess användning för roll vid en jämförelse av dessa personers texter? De avgränsningar som gjordes för att undersöka området var att välja rörelserna humanistisk psykologi och advaita vedanta eftersom de upplevdes representera detta område på ett centralt sätt. Vidare avgränsades undersökningens metodval till diskursanalys med fokus på hur självförverkligande framställs diskursivt hos Abraham Maslow och Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj. Metoden var diskursanalys med stöd av metodboken Diskursanalys, och materialet koncentrerades till att omfatta Sri Nisargadatta Maharajs verk I am that: talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj samt Abraham Maslows två verk Motivation and personality samt Toward a psychology of being. Den teori som anlades var fenomenologiskt perspektiv. Undersökningen visade att personliga omständigheter, tradition, olika perspektiv men även språkanvändning kan påverka hur man ser på och talar om kategorierna personlig utveckling respektive personlig avveckling. Slutsatsen efter undersökningen är att oavsett vilka termer man använder kommer både personlig utveckling och personlig avveckling vara aktuellt överallt där de grundläggande behoven för människan är tryggade: hur är upp till henne själv.

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Ce mémoire a pour objectif de favoriser non seulement une relecture de la philosophie de l'absurde telle qu'élaborée par Albert Camus à la lumière de l'Advaita-Vedanta, mais également de pouvoir mieux saisir l'engouement de certains auteurs hindous pour cet écrivain. En effet, après avoir constaté que Camus se référait à Jean Grenier et à l'hindouisme dans Le Mythe de Sisyphe, nous avons décidé de pousser plus loin nos recherches afin de savoir dans quelle mesure l'écriture et la pensée de Camus pouvait se rapprocher de celles des penseurs hindous puisque ces derniers avaient eux-mêmes entrepris un exercice équivalent en sens inverse. Pour ce faire nous avons choisi de faire appel aux propos de Nisargadatta Maharaj afin de mieux faire ressortir les analogies et les différences entre les deux pensées. C'est par l'interprétation de la notion d'indifférence clairvoyante de Camus et par celle du détachement affectueux prônée par Nisargadatta Maharaj, qu'il nous a été possible d'établir un lien entre eux. En effet, dans Le Mythe de Sisyphe, l'indifférence « clairvoyante » représente la position idéale à adopter pour appréhender le monde de façon sereine. Synonyme de juste mesure, elle constitue une certaine forme de détachement afin de mieux aborder la question existentielle dans son ensemble. À cet égard, le détachement « affectueux », de Nisargadatta Maharaj englobe cette définition mais donne à l'expression une connotation précise qui implique également une forme d'amour inconditionnel qui est sans attente et sans peur. Cette recherche a donc pour but de nous livrer à une exploration heuristique à partir de l'œuvre d'Albert Camus afin de déterminer dans quelle mesure sa conception de l'indifférence clairvoyante pourrait s'apparenter ou se distinguer de celle du concept de détachement dans l'Advaita-Vedanta. ______________________________________________________________________________ MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : Camus, Absurde, Indifférence clairvoyante, Nisargadatta Maharaj, Advaita-Vedanta, Détachement affectueux

Thesis (Master of Arts)--Miami University, Dept. of Mass Communication, 2005. / Title from first page of PDF document. Document formatted into pages; contains [1], iv, 63 p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 58-63).

The wave of gurus in America brought with them cultural transformations particularly in how they interpret Hinduism, how their teachings have adapted in engaging a Western audience, and the sustainability of their religious communities, thus changing the landscape of contemporary Hindu spirituality. The traditional model of the guru and disciple relationship according to Yoga and Vedanta is undergoing a transformation allowing for greater autonomy of the disciple to make decisions in how they appropriate the authority of the guru. This thesis examines the guru and disciple relationship within the institutional organization of the Yoga Research Foundation, founded by the contemporary guru, Swami Jyotirmayananda. Research of Jyotirmayananda’s unique following of Western disciples illuminates the nature of his authority through the establishment of his order and methods by which disciples navigate identity formation and experience religious transmission.

The post-pandemic classroom dealt with not only the mental health struggles of educators and students, but also the technological and virtual learning dependence in a time ridden with misinformation. At this time, it was important to not only consider the purpose and intent of science education as a learning experience, but also pedagogical approaches that seek to actualize this very intent. The pedagogy of science has at its foundation the experience of inquiry beginning from self and expanding to the natural world. Explained by educationalists like John Dewey and Thomas Kuhn and in theory, implemented into classrooms through the Next Generation Science Standards, the potential of inquiry is to expand from a first-person experience to the wellbeing of community and society. Moreover, contemplative philosophies, such as Yoga, Vedanta, and Buddhist mindfulness, provide novel, yet ancient approaches to teaching this awareness through their pedagogical framework. Contemplative or spiritual pedagogies are those whose approach involves the exploration of subjectivity through introspection and empathy practices like meditation, journaling, and activism. In all, as the practitioner of these traditions and the educator-researcher in the classroom, I performed a qualitative study in phenomenology. I taught an AP Physics C class influenced by the lens of this contemplative paradigm, although this was not detached from the usual curriculum or interventional by nature. From emergent themes in the past student work and evaluation of their experience, I discovered the following: when an educator applied the approach of these wisdom traditions into the classroom curriculum, the resulting environment impacted a positive learning experience as it pertained to engaging science as inquiry. This study had an ambition to provide a novel approach to teaching and learning inquiry informed by the above-mentioned traditions.

This thesis investigates the use of metaphorical language in The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda. Vivekananda is one of the most influential modern-day Hindu scholars, and his interpretation of the ancient Hindu scriptural lore is very significant. Vivekananda’s influence was part of the motivation for choosing his Complete Works as the empirical domain for the current study. Vivekananda’s Complete Works were mined using AntConc, for water-related terms which seemed to have a predilection for metaphoricity. Which terms to search for specifically was determined after a manual reading of a sample from the Complete Works. The data was then tagged, using a convention inspired by the well-known MIPVU procedure for metaphor identification. Thereafter, a representative sample of the data was chosen, and the metaphors were mapped and analysed thematically. This study had as its main aim to investigate whether Hindu religious discourse uses metaphors to explain abstract religious concepts, and if so, whether this happens in the same way as in Judaeo-Christian traditions. Furthermore, following Jäkel (2002), a set of sub-hypotheses pertaining to ubiquity, domains, models, unidirectionality, invariance, necessity, creativity and focussing is assessed. Key findings in this study include a general confirmation of the above-mentioned hypotheses, with the exception of ‘invariance’, which proved to be somewhat contentious. The data allowed for the postulation of underlying conceptual metaphors, which differed somewhat from the metaphors used in traditional Judaeo-Christian philosophy. / Linguistics and Modern Languages / D. Litt. et Phil. (Linguistics)

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