Haridas Chaudhuri (May 1913 – 1975) was an Indian

integral In mathematics, an integral assigns numbers to functions in a way that describes displacement, area, volume, and other concepts that arise by combining infinitesimal data. The process of finding integrals is called integration. Along with ...

philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...

. He was a correspondent with

Sri Aurobindo Sri Aurobindo (born Aurobindo Ghose; 15 August 1872 – 5 December 1950) was an Indian philosopher, yogi, maharishi, poet, and Indian nationalist. He was also a journalist, editing newspapers such as ''Vande Mataram''. He joined the ...

and the founder of the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS).

Early life and career

He was born in May 1913 in Shyamagram in East Bengal (now

Bangladesh Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of . Bangladesh is among the mo ...

)."Haridas Chaudhury" in He studied at the

Scottish Church College Scottish Church College is a college affiliated by Calcutta University, India. It offers selective co-educational undergraduate and postgraduate studies and is the oldest continuously running Christian liberal arts and sciences college in A ...

and later at the

University of Calcutta The University of Calcutta (informally known as Calcutta University; CU) is a public collegiate state university in India, located in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. Considered one of best state research university all over India every yea ...

from where he earned his doctorate in Indian philosophy. He became a professor and later the chair of philosophy at the Krishnagar College, then a constituent college of the University of Calcutta.

California Institute of Integral Studies

In 1951, Chaudhuri was invited by

Frederic Spiegelberg Frederic Spiegelberg (May 24, 1897 – November 10, 1994) was a Stanford University professor of Asian religions. Education and career Spiegelberg was born into a Jewish family in Hamburg, Germany, in 1897 and earned his doctorate at the University ...

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...

to join the staff of the newly formed American Academy of Asian Studies in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...

, having been recommended for that post by Sri Aurobindo during the final year of Aurobindo's life. Other accounts have indicated that Chaudhuri was recommended for the job by K.D. Sethna, an eminent intellectual living at Aurobindo's ashram, based in part on the fact that Chaudhuri was an active devotee of Sri Aurobindo. He accepted the invitation, eager to implement in a Western educational institution the integral approach to education that he had developed as a student of Sri Aurobindo. Soon after his arrival in San Francisco, Chaudhuri and his wife Bina established the Cultural Integration Fellowship (CIF), from which emerged an educational branch later to become California Institute of Integral Studies. Over the past 30 years, the institute's original emphasis on Asian religions and cultures evolved to include comparative and cross-cultural studies in philosophy, religion, psychology, counseling, cultural anthropology, organizational studies, health studies, and the arts. In 1987 the Institute established the Chaudhuri Chair in the name of Haridas Chaudhuri. In 2016 this became "The Haridas Chaudhuri Endowed Chair in Indian Philosophy and Culture" and Dr. Debashish Banerji was appointed as the chair holder.

Integral psychology

Chaudhuri was the first to publish in the West on integral psychology, during the 1970s. His version of integral psychology has almost nothing in common with that of

Ken Wilber Kenneth Earl Wilber II (born January 31, 1949) is an American philosopher and writer on transpersonal psychology and his own integral theory, a philosophy which suggests the synthesis of all human knowledge and experience. Life and career Wilbe ...

, who has written a book of the same name. Bahman Shirazi of the California Institute of Integral Studies has defined integral psychology as "a psychological system concerned with exploring and understanding the totality of the human phenomenon....(which) at its breadth, covers the entire body-mind-psyche-spirit spectrum, while at its depth...encompasses the previously explored unconscious and the conscious dimensions of the psyche, as well as the supra-conscious dimension traditionally excluded from psychological inquiry". (Shirazi 2001) In a paper on the subject he reviews Indra Sen's, Chaudhuri's, and Wilber's definitions, as well as developing the ideas of Chaudhuri.

Bibliography

*"Haridas Chaudhury" in *"Haridas Chaudhury" in: *''The Philosophy of Integralism or The Metaphysical Synthesis Inherent in the Teaching of Sri Aurobindo'', Sri Aurobindo Pathamandir,

Calcutta Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, commer ...

, 1954, 366 p. *''Prayers of Affirmation: a guide to daily meditation'', 1956 *''The Rhythm of Truth'', Cultural Integration Fellowship, 1958 *''

Integral Yoga Integral yoga, sometimes also called supramental yoga, is the yoga-based philosophy and practice of Sri Aurobindo and ''The Mother'' (Mirra Alfassa). Central to ''Integral yoga'' is the idea that Spirit manifests itself in a process of involu ...

: The Concept of Harmonious and Creative Living'' Wheaton, Illinois: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1965 *''Philosophy of

Meditation Meditation is a practice in which an individual uses a technique – such as mindfulness, or focusing the mind on a particular object, thought, or activity – to train attention and awareness, and achieve a mentally clear and emotionally calm ...

'', 1965 *''Mastering the problems of living'', 1968 * "Psychology: Humanistic and transpersonal". Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 15 (1), 7–15, 1975 * ''The Evolution of Integral Consciousness'', 1977. Wheaton, Illinois: Quest Books. 1989 paperback reprint: *''Modern man's religion'', 1984. *''Being, Evolution and Immortality'', 1988. *''The Philosophy of Love'', 1988. *''Evolution of Integral Consciousness'', 1989. *''The Essence of Spiritual Philosophy'', 1990. *''Sri Aurobindo: The Prophet of Life Divine'' *''Indian Culture'' * (with Frederic Spiegelberg) ''The integral philosophy of Sri Aurobindo: a commemorative symposium'', Allen & Unwin, 1960

References

External links