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vited him to speak to them.* He taught several courses at the State University of New York at Purchase. His courses all focused on the implementation of spiritual values in everyday life: “Aspects of Eastern Wisdom in Contemporary Life,' ‘Applied Comparative World Religions,' 'Upāyoga The Yoga of Awareness.' He has been the keynote speaker for the Quakers at their Annual Friends General Conference in 1974, at a World Conference on Religion and Peace held at Catholic University in Louvain, Belgium, and at a Conference on World Community at Cornell that same year. He has spoken at many schools: The Westover School, Kent, Ethel Walker, The Emma Willard School, Choate, Edgemont High School, St. Paul's School, Fordham University, and others. For several years, he spoke on Friday evenings at the West 72nd Street Yoga Center. From time to time, he led retreats at Ananda Ashram in Monroe, New York. In 1973, in a space dedicated to universality and peace, The United Nations Chapel, people from all over the world became aware of the life of the father of non-violence as Gurudev led the Mahāvir Jayanti celebration there.
During these years, many of Gurudev's students availed their apartments to him so that he could give talks there, and organized vegetarian dinners in their homes to introduce their friends to Gurudev and Pramoda. Now they were inspired to create an organization which would reflect Jain values. They wanted to share with others the great privilege they felt in being able to study with Gurudev. They called their project
*He has spoken to such diverse groups as follows: New York Theosophical Society, New York Center for the Association for Research and Enlightenment, Spiritual Frontiers, New Jersey State Bureau of Researchers in Neurology and Psychiatry, Unity Fellowship of Westchester, Unitarian Society of Rutherford, New Jersey, New Jersey Society of Parapsychology, Norfield Congregational Church in Westfield, Connecticut, Westchester Ethical Humanist Society, Ethical Culture Society of Queens, Medgar Evers University in Brooklyn, New York, Drew University and Caldwell College in New Jersey, Koinonia Foundation in Baltimore, Maryland, Wainwright House in Rye, New York, Vedanta Center in Cohasset, Massachusetts, School for the Blind, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Harvard Divinity School, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Brockton Art Center in Brockton, Massachusetts, Pendle Hill, Pennsylvania.
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