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Foreword
We are glad to publish Dr. Amrita Paresh Patel's doctoral thesis under the title : A Lover of Light among Luminaries : Dilip Kumar Roy, which is the first systematic study of a genuine seeker of Truth, Dilip Kumar Roy (1897-1980). He was brought up in one of the most cultured families of Bengal. Educated at the Cambridge University, he preferred music to civil services and received musical training in France, Italy and India, too. His search for Truth brought him into contact with many renowned intellectual and spiritual personalities of his times, like Bertrand Russell, Romain Rolland, Ronald Nixon (Sri Krishnaprem), Mahatma Gandhi, Sri Aurobindo, Ramana Maharshi, Swami Ramdas, etc. He recorded the “jewelled sayings" of these luminaries in his Bengali as well as English books.
Dr. Amrita Paresh Patel, through her assiduous research, has derived that the chief object of Dilip Roy in writing numerous books, was not to cultivate different forms of literature for the sake of literary art, but it was to enlighten himself and his readers by presenting the concrete examples of those great spiritual dignitaries. The other intention, as many of his English books were published from America and Europe, was to show the peculiarities of the Indian spiritual tradition to the western readers.
Dr. Patel has found that Dilip Roy himself was a saint, oriented towards ancient wisdom, via the modern mystic philosophers. He loved greatness wherever it appeared. Persistent singing of the glory of the great transformed him also in due course into a genuine saint who had been, in a moderate sense, himself a philosopher. As Dr. Amrita Patel's work elucidates the literature of such a distinguished writer, it deserves publication.
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