Illumination.
An International Journal Devoted to the Enlightenment of Man.
Man, Know Thyself! One God, One Life
1930--1931 Monthly
New York, NY. Language: English, French and German. Publisher: School of Life Foundation.
1/1, November 1930-1/5, March 1931. $3.00 a year, 42 pp.

The School of Life Foundation, the publisher of this journal, was another of the attempts made between the wars to harmonize all beliefs, promote "non-provincial, non-sectarian, non-partisan, non-racial" "cooperation and service, not competition," leading to "world peace and harmony." It was the work of Shri Vishwanath Keskar (1880-?), a university-educated Brahman from Maharastra who arrived in the United States in October 1929 after establishing his Foundation throughout Europe. He was notable enough to find a respectful mention in Wendell Thomas's Hinduism Invades America (1930). In New York he established his residence at the Roerich Museum on Riverside Drive, lecturing--for free--on meditation, Patanjali, the Bhagavad Gita, and, more generally on "Successful Living," "Shakespeare and Emerson," "Spiritual Synthesis," and the like. The journal carried several of his lectures in each issued, together with articles and excerpts from prominent proponents of his universalist, pacifistic and internationalistic beliefs: Walt Whitman, Edward Carpenter, Roberto Assagioli, Rabindranath Tagore, Roerich, Auribindo Ghose, Havelock Ellis, Claude Bragdon, Alice A. Bailey, and others, many of whom lectured before the Foundation. The journal carried notices of events not only for the Foundation, but for a variety of groups with similar aims: the Roerich Museum, Alice Bailey's Arcane School, Lady Blomfield's World's Supreme Peace movement, Mme. Olga Froebe-Kapteyn's International Centre for Spiritual Research in Ascona (which published the Eranos lectures), Unity School of Christianity, The Temple of the People in Halcyon, California, and, surprisingly, Groupe des Polaires and its founder, Zam Bhotiva. Besides notices of the Temple of the People, the journal carried a letter from William H. Dower, announcing that Master Hilarion had ordered the movement to give its knowledge "to the world at large." The journal seems to have expired after its fifth issue. LOC; Stanford University; NYPL.

IAPSOP materials are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
IAPSOP respects people's privacy and personal data rights.