[Advaita-l] ADMIN: Returning member reintroduction

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

I would like to warmly welcome Guy Werlings again to our midst, after a gap 
of 7-8 years. He used to be a member of the Advaita list when the list was 
still in its infancy, but could not continue for personal reasons. As many 
current members would not know of his background, I am posting his full 
introduction below. I am very glad that he has been able to rejoin the list.

Regards,
Vidyasankar

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Guy Werlings - My interest in advaitam goes back to my teen ages, when in 
1960 (I was then only 15 years old), I happened to read the French 
translation of jnAna yoga of svAmi vivekAnanda. I started to frequent the 
French rAmakRshNa vedAnta centre and came there into a tight relationship 
with a brahmacAri disciple of the late svAmi siddheSvarAnanda, who had 
created the centre and had passed away in 1957. My main subject of study 
with my Vedanta teacher was avasthAtraya vicAra, as taught to the above 
mentioned revered svAmi by his guru rAjasevAsakta V. Subrahmania Iyer, 
himself a disciple of His Holiness SRI SACCIDANANDA SIVABHINAVA NARASIMHA 
BHARATI MAHASVAMI Jagadguru of Sringeri(1878-1912).

Apart from a repeated and in-depth study of the mANDUkyakArikA, I read again 
and again and studied "vedanta, or the Science of Reality" of  SrI K.A. 
KRISNASVAMI IYER, a book of which I have the good fortune of getting from my 
teacher a copy of the first edition of 1930.

Having also studied all four volumes of THE CULTURAL HERITAGE OF INDIA, 
published by the RAMAKRISHNA INSTITUTE OF CULTURE, I translated into French 
the two articles from volume III :

MAN'S INTEREST IN PHILOSOPHY by V. SUBRAHMANIA IYER

and PHILOSOPHY OF ADVAITA by K.A. KRISHNASVAMI IYER but these translations 
remain unpublished in my drawers. Both of these are dealing especially with 
avasthAtraya vicAra.

Since then I have made many other translations from the same authors.

>From 1974 to 1981, then living in Paris, I delivered 104 lectures, mostly 
but not exclusively on Indian philosophy and other aspects of the sanAtana 
dharma. I was extremely sorry not to be blessed to reach the figure of 108, 
but I shall try to make it in my next life! Now a handicapped person and 
officially retired reaching my 60th anniversary this week, unable to travel, 
living in a secluded village surrounded by forests, like the vAnaprastha-s 
of yore I have a lot of time for further investigation, meditation and 
making use of the material accumulated when preparing for my above mentioned 
lectures to write possibly articles or essays with the help of my younger 
son, a student in philosophy at the ÉCOLE NORMALE SUPÉRIEURE, a very famous 
French college (of University level) preparing for the higher posts in 
teaching (Now, in 2005, he is an assistant junior teacher in the famous 
SORBONNE in PARIS).

Finally, I'd like to tell that I feel myself so ignorant that if you accept 
me in ADVAITA-L, I shall probably have more questions to ask than articles 
or contributions to make.

shruti smR^iti purANAnA.M AlayaM karuNAlayam.h |
namAmi bhagavatpAdaM sha~NkaraM lokasha~Nkaram.h ||

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