Ralph Waldo Emerson

American transcendentalist (1803–1882) — the “American Plato” — whose poem Brahma is a near-direct rendering of Gita 2.19, and whose Harvard Divinity School address anticipated core Vedantic claims a generation before Vivekananda reached the United States.

Overview

Emerson is the pivot figure in nineteenth-century American intellectual life where the Upanishadic/Vedantic current first enters the Western stream. His close reading of the Bhagavad Gita and Upanishads (many books passed to him from Thoreau’s collection after Thoreau’s death) shaped a philosophical stance that was, in substance, Advaitic — universal consciousness, non-duality, the personal deity as local manifestation of an impersonal absolute.

His 1857 poem Brahma is a compact version of 2.19’s teaching — “If the red slayer think he slays, / Or if the slain think he is slain, / They know not well the subtle ways / I keep, and pass, and turn again.” Swami Sarvapriyananda reads it verse-by-verse as a direct transposition of the Gita’s argument: atman is not the slayer, not the slain, not the doer, not bound by time; the same consciousness that runs the doubt and the faith runs the hymn the brahmin sings.

Emerson’s 1838 Harvard Divinity School address — in which he argued that Jesus was not uniquely divine but that consciousness is universally so — resulted in a 28-year ban from Harvard. He was eventually welcomed back with honor.

Related

• Henry David Thoreau — fellow transcendentalist; Emerson inherited his Gita/Upanishads collection
• Relevant via atman, brahman, advaita-vedanta — Emerson’s Brahma as a Western expression of 2.19

Lecture evidence

• Ep. 7 [19:55]: Emerson introduced as the “American Plato”; his poem Brahma recited and read alongside 2.19.
• Ep. 7 [24:50]: Harvard Divinity School address — Emerson’s Vedantic position on Jesus led to a 28-year ban.
• Ep. 7 [25:45]: Swami’s formulation — “in Emerson you see the meeting of the Upanishads and America a generation before Vivekananda arrived.”