>From Paul Masons website. Speech quoted in 'Amrit Kana' (a book of quotations of Guru Dev, Shankaracharya Swami Brahmanand Saraswati. The speech is from an event on 22nd December 1950, and the speaker is 'Dr. Paal', most probably Professor Paul Arthur Schilpp:- 'To-day we are here to do homage to his Holiness, Shri Jagatguru Shankaracharya Ananta Sri Vibhusita Swami Brahmananda Saraswati of Jyotirmath, Badarikasram - the Superman, the seer, the sage, who is one of the few rare individuals amongst the billions of the citizens of the world, whom we would unhesitatingly choose if and when we would be called upon to describe the spiritual and cultural capital of our nation, if and when the world would feel the need of evoking the part our nation can play in it, who is beyond any controversy, one of the rare few who have contributed and can still contribute something to universal peaceful progress, who have risen by their talent and genius above their fellow countrymen, above their fellowmen of the world and have thus gained a place for themselves at the head of humanity, at the extreme spearhead of civilization. Standing here at a time when everywhere in the world everybody feels not a little bewildered at an immense increase in the sense of human power, we can hardly exaggerate the necessity of teachers like his Holiness the Jagatguru. You will pardon me if I venture; at this assemblage of eminent philosophers, to refer to an aspect of our Hindu Philosophy which seems for the time being, to be too much belittled by the power-intoxicated world. Our Vedic philosophers.... .... The civilized world today is indeed in an age of spiritual chaos, intellectual doubt and political decadence. Civilized man today no doubt has acquired immense scientific and mechanical resources, but seems hopelessly to lack the wisdom to apply them to the best advantage. This is why we witness a growing sense of frustration seizing every mind almost everywhere. The whole world seems to be suffering from an epidemic of hysteria................. We do not know which way the truth lies. Perhaps even here it will be true to say that every truth, however true in itself, yet taken apart from others, becomes only a snare. In reality, perhaps, each is one thread of a complex weft, and no thread can be taken apart from the weft. But this much seems to be certain that there is this paralysing fear and alarm almost everywhere in the world-everywhere even the most powerful minds have not succeeded in escaping it altogether. Everywhere humanity is beginning to feel that we are being betrayed by what is false within, - we are almost giving way to find ourselves spiritually paralysed. This indeed is a deadly malady. The patient here must first of all be brought to see that he is sick and to want to get well and to do of himself what is needed to get well. Perhaps something is away both with the heart and the brain. The world needs philosopher-teachers like His Holiness Shri Jagatguru Shankaracharya who can reveal the world of values and can make us realize that, that is the real world. The world badly needs guidance to a creed of values and ideals. The world needs a teacher who can dispel our fears and can remove all sense of frustration or least in so far as it is only an internal malady. We need a teacher who has succeeded in gaining for himself freedom to be alone, who does not require any power, who can cure both heart and Brain. We are in an age in which the meeting of the traditionally alien cultures of the Orient and the Occident has become inevitable. We need a teacher with sufficient gift of intellectual imagination and divine inspiration who can help the smooth working of this meeting, the working out of this meeting in such a way that the values of each civilization complement and re-inforce rather than combat and destroy those of the other. We cannot avoid the sight of conflicting economic, political, religious, artistic and other ideological doctrines and the consequent fear and feeling of helplessness, We need a teacher who can teach us how to get out of the crisis in valuation in this realm of conflict, who can teach us how to avert the danger of spiritual paralysis facing us. His Holiness Sri Jagatguru Shankaracharya, having gained the freedom to be alone, did also fully realize the means of escaping from loneliness. In these days of doubts and difficulties if we can at all safely turn our eyes for guidance to any one it should be to this superman the overpowering influence of whose genius appears indeed in the light of divine inspiration, the superman who has succeeded in ridding himself of any ambition for power. Saintly guidance from a seer like Sri Jagatguru alone can ensure an abiding peace.' Dr. Paal's biography from the Northwestern University website: Paul Arthur Schilpp was born in Dillenburg, Germany on February 6, 1897. His father, a Methodist minister, moved the family to the Midwest when Schilpp was 16. In 1913 he enrolled at Baldwin-Wallace College, Ohio. Although he was still unable to speak English; he taught himself the language as he attended school. In 1916, he received his A.B. from Baldwin-Wallace College. In 1918 he became the minister of Calvary Church in Terre Haute, Indiana. After three years Schilpp decided to return to school, and in 1922 he received a Bachelors of Divinity from Garrett Theological Seminary and an M.A. in Philosophy and Religion from Northwestern University. He spent one semester at the University of California, Berkeley in 1924 and audited courses at the University of Munich in 1928. In 1936 Schilpp received his Ph.D. from Stanford University for his dissertation entitled A Critical Analysis of Kants Ethical Thought of the Pre-Critical Period. He received four honorary doctorates over the course of his life, from Baldwin-Wallace College, Springfield College in Massachusetts, Kent State University, and Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Schilpp joined Northwestern University as a lecturer in the Department of Philosophy in 1936 after being fired from his previous positions at the College of Puget Sound, WA (1922-23) for religious radicalism and the College of the Pacific, CA (1923-36) for political, economic, and social radicalism. He was named Associate Professor in 1936 and became a full professor in 1950. While at Northwestern Schilpp was appointed to many special lectureships around the United States and the world. He was invited to teach at the University of Munich in 1948, the first American professor invited to teach at a German university since the end of World War II. Schilpp also received a grant from the Watumuli Foundation to lecture for a year (1950-51) at over fifteen Indian, Kashmiri, and Ceylonese universities. Over the course of his career at Northwestern he was frequently at the center of controversy. Shortly after Franklin D. Roosevelts death Schilpp gave a speech that labeled FDR a Judas Iscariot for leading the United States into World War II. This declaration caused an outcry among students, with many calling for the University administration to formally censure Schilpp. His sometimes rocky relationship with the University administration during the early part of his career was reflected in his being the only faculty member not to receive an automatic pay raise in 1947. In spite of these problems, Schilpp remained at Northwestern for nearly thirty years, retiring from the University when he reached its mandatory retirement age of 68. He did not, however, stop teaching. After leaving Northwestern in 1965 as Professor Emeritus, he became the Visiting Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, a position that he held for fifteen years until he finally retired for good in 1980. Despite a number of important individual texts, including Kants Pre-Critical Ethics, Do We Need a New Religion?, The Quest for Religious Realism, Human Nature and Progress and The Crisis in Science and Education, Schilpp is best known for founding, editing, and contributing to the first nineteen volumes of the Library of Living Philosophers series. The first volume, on John Dewey, was published in 1939. The series includes works covering the work of Bertrand Russell, George Santayana, G. E. Moore, and Albert Einstein among others. After his retirement from Southern Illinois University in 1980 Schilpp stepped down as Editor of the Series, which is still being published today. Schilpp was also active outside of the university setting. He remained a Methodist minister all his life, even though his viewpoints on religion differed widely from those of mainstream Methodists. He was an avowed advocate of world government and of prohibiting the use and production of nuclear energy and weapons. He was on the Board of Directors of the ACLU, the National Board of SANE (an anti-nuclear energy group), and was a member of the Board of Directors of the United World Federalists. Schilpp met his first wife, Louise Gruenholz while he attended Baldwin-Wallace College. They had four children: Erna, a Northwestern University graduate; Marjorie; Robert; and Walter. In 1950 he married his second wife, Madelon Golden (WCAS 1945), a reporter who was a former student of Schilpps. They adopted two children: Erich in 1958 and Margot Marlene in 1962. Schilpp died on September 6, 1993, at age 96, of respiratory failure.
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