Shunyata, My Friend

He first came to India on the invitation of Rabindranath Tagore who asked him to “come and teach silence at Shantiniketan.” Alfred Julius Emmanuel Sorensen, better known to his Indian friends as Shunyata, was a Danish mystic who loved India, felt himself to be Indian, and lived as a sadhu in silence and solitude in the hills of Almora, UP, for nearly forty years.
In the spring of 1952, Shivanath, a writer, translator, and Dogri scholar of repute, then holding charge of Almora Head Post Office in the Kumaon hills as a probationer of the Indian Postal Service, met Sorensen. And so started a deep and abiding friendship rooted in philosophy, a search for the Self, and Shunyata.
This is a selection of Sorensen’s essays, musings, and letters written to Shivanath, whom he fondly often refers to as “Beloved Royalty of the Middle Realm,” or “the Nath of Shiva.” Himself widely read, Sorensen’s writing is delightfully idiosyncratic, often obscure, his language playful and irreverent, his insights diverse and original.

Author – Shivanath