Theosophists, Yogīs, and Pacifism in Troubled Times: Bhagavan Das, Nicholas Roerich, and Gopinath Kaviraj on Humanity and Realms of Transcendence

This chapter investigates select lines of pacifist ideas and their links to a motley of ‘Eastern’ traditions in the first part of the twentieth century. It examines aspects of a heightened ‘modern Indian “traditionalism”’ and key strands within the extended Theosophical family. The Indian Theosophist Bhagavan Das’s (1869–1958) commentaries on yoga, Vedānta, the concept of avatāras (divine incarnation), the unity of all religions, and a science of peace or the Russian author-painter Nicholas Roerich’s (1874–1947) artistic creations, literary works, and, not least, trans-Himalayan and Central Asian expeditions and its underpinning pacifism thus document at once key aspects of the anxieties of the times as well as an idealistic optimism that that generation often found in the realm of spirituality. By contrast, Gopinath Kaviraj (1887–1976)—renowned philosopher and mystic, one of the foremost ‘modern Indian “traditionalists”’—combined his own inner spiritual quest with his conceptualisation of an interwoven cosmos of transcendental space and age. With a particular focus on his Akhaṇḍamahāyoga and his exposition of transcendental journeys we see how key strands of his ideas crystallised to provide a template for the future of humanity that may be both compared and contrasted with Roerich’s Agni Yoga and search for Shambhala, as well as Bhagavan Das’s ‘science of peace’.