Haridas Chaudhuri

For other uses, see Haridas (disambiguation).

Bust of Chaudhuri by Jan-Michelle Sawyer

Haridas Chaudhuri (Bengali: হরিদাস চৌধুরী) (May 1913 – 1975), Bengali integral philosopher, was a correspondent with Sri Aurobindo and the founder of the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS).

Early life and career

He was born in Kolkata. He studied at the Scottish Church College and later at the University of Calcutta 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 of Stanford University to join the staff of the newly formed American Academy of Asian Studies in San Francisco, having been recommended for that post by Sri Aurobindo during the final year of Aurobindo's earthly life. 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. The influence of both Haridas and Bina Chaudhuri (and their early protégés in San Francisco) upon the emergence of Asian philosophies and ways of knowing within the American cultural mainstream would be difficult to overestimate. They both worked tirelessly until the ends of their lives in this world to bring a truly integral perspective to the philosophical, scientific, and religious mainstream of the incipient world culture, and in so doing did great service to the memories of their own teachers, and all who were privileged to learn from them or to know them.

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, 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

• The philosophy of integralism: The metaphysical synthesis in Sri Aurobindo's teaching, Sri Aurobindo Pathamandir, 1954
• Prayers of Affirmation: a guide to daily meditation, 1956
• The Rhythm of Truth, Cultural Integration Fellowship, 1958
• Integral Yoga: The Concept of Harmonious and Creative Living Wheaton, Illinois: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1965
• Philosophy of Meditation, 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: ISBN 0-8356-0494-2
• Modern man's religion, 1984. ISBN 0-916985-00-8
• Being, Evolution and Immortality, 1988. ISBN 0-8356-0449-7
• The Philosophy of Love, 1988. ISBN 0-14-019117-8
• Evolution of Integral Consciousness, 1989. ISBN 0-8356-0494-2
• The Essence of Spiritual Philosophy, 1990. ISBN 1-85274-074-4
• Sri Aurobindo: The Prophet of Life Divine
• Indian Culture
• (with Frederic Spiegelberg) The integral philosophy of Sri Aurobindo: a commemorative symposium, Allen & Unwin, 1960

Further reading

• Shirazi, Bahman (2001) "Integral psychology, metaphors and processes of personal integration", Cornelissen, Matthijs (Ed.) Consciousness and Its Transformation, Pondicherry: http://ipi.org.in/texts/ip2/ip2-1.2-.htm