It's good to get your letter of Nov 2nd forwarded to me here.2 Too bad my not acknowledging your books—they arrived all right sometime in Septr and I forwarded one copy to the Fords.3 I like the edition—it has a good monumental character about it. Your writing (in this last letter) looks as if you were well as ever, but I expect you vary—and sometimes pretty bad I fear, though never quite beaten. It is strange what a long time of suffering you have had in later life—you who were so healthy when young.
loc.01245.002_large.jpgI have come out here, dear Walt, to spend the winter, partly or chiefly in order to get at first hand the results of the Eastern thought & tradition in matters relating to religion—and the result is very interesting. I am staying just now with my friend Arunáchalam4 whose name you may remember. He has been very much pulled in this direction lately—and his Guru or Teacher is also here. This people has an extraordinary genius for religion and the force with which they abstract themselves from the world in their endeavor towards union with the universal consciousness is something remarkable—& such as we have little idea of in the West. That a certain few attain this union, and with it unusual powers, is quite evident—and in attaining loc.01245.003_large.jpg it they cast off all the bonds of caste & ceremonial & become free; so that one finds here behind the outer religion of the people a hidden few who are perfectly democratic and whose watchwords are Freedom Equality & Joy—and this has been the esoteric teaching of the Vedas5 & Upanishads6 for now thousands of years.
The main method of attaining this union or emancipation is the suppression of Thought [which of course is abundantly indicated in yr L. of G.—tho' I don't know that it is actually formulated there]. When Thought is gone you are one piece with the universe, & by suppression you attain mastery and so can use thought or not use it, as you like.
In the systematising and realising of these ideas these fellows here seem to have far outstripped us. On the other hand I think they are wanting in the loc.01245.004_large.jpg part of Love. The word does not attract them—they do not care for others. They are gentle & kind, but glad after all to forget the world & everybody in contemplation of the divine being. Here I feel I cannot quite go with them—there is something cold & abstract in the business!
However it is possible that in the union of the East & West both sides will be more perfectly represented & balanced in the future than they have ever been before. Wonderful isn't it? how these things have been known & worked out for ages.
Give my love to Dr Bucke7 if you write or see him—not forgetting H. Stafford,8 and with much love to yourself dear Walt & many remembrances & good hopes of rendezvous sometime or other
yrs ever Edw. Carpenter loc.01245.005_large.jpg f'm Edw'd Carpenter | Ceylon loc.01245.006_large.jpgCorrespondent:
Edward Carpenter (1844–1929) was an English
writer and Whitman disciple. Like many other young disillusioned Englishmen, he
deemed Whitman a prophetic spokesman of an ideal state cemented in the bonds of
brotherhood. Carpenter—a socialist philosopher who in his book Civilisation, Its Cause and Cure posited civilization as
a "disease" with a lifespan of approximately one thousand years before human
society cured itself—became an advocate for same-sex love and a
contributing early founder of Britain's Labour Party. On July 12, 1874, he wrote for the first time to Whitman: "Because you
have, as it were, given me a ground for the love of men I thank you continually
in my heart . . . . For you have made men to be not ashamed of the noblest
instinct of their nature." For further discussion of Carpenter, see Arnie
Kantrowitz, "Carpenter, Edward [1844–1929]," Walt Whitman:
An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1998).