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depths for the benefit of all."
Mrs. Elizabeth Cattell, who wrote these words, became a lifetime friend to Gurudev and Pramoda. She offered to share her small apartment in Manhattan with them. A Quaker from birth, she also introduced Gurudev to the Quakers who, in 1974, invited him to open the Friends' General Conference in Ithaca, New York, and to lead a retreat at Powell House with Douglas Steere.
The formal meetings of the Conference at Harvard Divinity School on October 11-14 stood out as a high point in interreligious communication. Distinguished ministers, priests, rabbis, holy men, scholars and seekers met as brothers and sisters concerned with “Religion in the Seventies” and how to usher in a new age of optimism, friendship, and serious inquiry into the meaning of life.*
Right from the beginning of his talk, Gurudev punctured the bubbles of dogmatic thinking and sectarianism. He related a quarrel among four blind men at an eye clinic. One asserted that the window pane next to him was red, another insisted that it was green. All four argued for a different color on the
*They came from near and far to represent Jainism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, Confucianism, Taoism, several African religions, Judaism, and Christianity. Besides Gurudev and Swami Ranganathananda, Swami Chinmayananda and Father Masson flew from India. From the Middle East were Rabbi Ezra Spiahandler and Dr. M. Kamel Hussein. Dr. Wei Tat arrived from Hong Kong, Reverend Marcus Braybrooke from England, and Chogyam Trungpa Rimpoche from Colorado.
Noted American delegates included Professor Harvey Cox of the Harvard Divinity School, Reverend Krister Stendahl, Dean of the Harvard Divinity School, Reverend Dr. Lowell Ditzen, Director of the National Presbyterian Center in Washington, D.C., and Dr. Huston Smith, Professor at M.I.T. Other Western religious groups represented were the Society of Friends, the Unitarian Church, the Universalist Church, and nearly all other Protestant denominations.
Messages of support and prayers poured in from around the globefrom U. Thant, Secretary-General of the United Nations, Princess Poon Diskul, President of the World Fellowship of Buddhists, Dr. Eugene Larson Blake, General Secretary of the World Council of Churches, and Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, philosopher, author and former President of India.
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