The Writer and Vedanta

Christopher Isherwood gave this lecture, The Writer & Vedanta, at the Santa Barbara Vedanta Temple on November 11, 1960. As both a successful writer and a longtime earnest spiritual aspirant, Isherwood brings a wealth of experience to bear in this original and personal approach to the topic. 

The synthesis of art and spirituality was an issue that would continue to occupy him. At the time of this lecture, he was in the midst of writing Ramakrishna and His Disciples. In the decade following this talk, he gave a series of lectures at California universities on the craft of writing, including “the problem of the religious novel.” 

And it must be remembered that his most overtly spiritual books were still to come — A Single Man, A Meeting by the River, and My Guru and His Disciple, not to mention the completion of Ramakrishna and His Disciples.

The Writer and Vedanta was recorded live at the Santa Barbara Vedanta Temple on November 11, 1960 on a wire recorder. The wire recording was preserved by the Vedanta Society of Southern California and later digitized by the Vedanta Archives. The sound was engineered by mondayMEDIA and released on CD in 2012 by Vedanta Press and GemsTone.