Lomaland, Sri Aurobindo Judith Tyberg Papers
Katharine Tingley's Theosophical center Lomaland (1900-1942) was established in the suburbs of San Diego at Point Loma. The curatorial is archiving the papers of Judith Tyberg who was born at Lomaland in 1902 and whose parents were key teachers at Lomaland. As a child Tyberg studied Sanskrit and Hindu literature with Gottfried de Purucker, a leader of the Theosophical Society. In 1940 Tyberg became Head of the Sanskrit and Oriental Division of the Theosophical University and became a key disseminator of Eastern philosophy in California. In 1947 Tyberg had her first darshan with Sri Aurobindo and Mirra Alfassa (the Mother) at their ashram in Pondicherry, India. Sri Aurobindo would also become a key influence upon the Stanford professor and philosopher Frederich Spiegelberg who brought Aurobindo's devotee Haridas Chaudhuri to teach at the American Academy of Asian studies in San Francisco which later became the California Institute of Integral Studies. In 1951 Tyberg became Professor of Indian Religion and Philosophy at the American Academy of Asian Studies which would later see Alan Watts teach Zen Buddhism; and Hodo Tobase taught calligraphy and Saburō Hasegawa lectured. The school was a seminal influence upon many California artists particularly Gordon Onslow Ford, Ruth Asawa and Rudolph Schaffer, the founder of the Rudolph Schaffer School of Rhythmo-Chromatic Design. In 1953 she founded the East-West Cultural Center in Los Angeles which became a nexus for Southern California's spiritual activity. It was Tyberg who arranged Swami Vishnudevananda's Los Angeles program during the time he was also a subject of the early medical research on the effects of meditation, conducted at the University of California at Los Angeles. Tyberg's letters include many worldwide spiritual teachers ranging from Gandhi, Miira Alfalsa to Aurobindo and many others. Tyberg's collection of rare publications and manuscripts includes many first edition publications of Madame Blavatsky, the co founder of the Theosophical movement and many of its key Point Loma writers revealing a critical window into this little known period in California history. Tingley's Utopian ideas one of which included the eradication of prisons for spiritual rehabilitation was vastly influential to the formative culture of Southern California. The objectives of this archive will assemble the publications, photos, letters and ephemera for a public research center for future scholarship. The research seeks to illustrate the key role Eastern philosophies played upon the landscape of the arts joining Annie Besant's establishment of Krotona and later Krishna Murti in Ojai as well as Vendanta, Ding Lei Mei, Paramahansa Yogananda and other figures who had spoken at the renowned 1893 Parliament of World Religions.