Alfred Sorensen
| Alfred Sorensen | |
|---|---|
| Born |
October 27, 1890 North Denmark |
| Died | July 13, 1984 (aged 93) Fairfax, California, US |
| Other names | Sunyata |
Alfred Julius Emmanuel Sorensen (October 27, 1890 – August 13, 1984), also known as Sunyata, Shunya, or Sunyabhai, was a Danish mystic, horticulturalist and writer who lived in Europe, India and the US.
Alfred Sorensen was the son of peasant farmer near Arhus in Northern Denmark. His formal education ended after the family sold their farm when Sorensen was 14 years old. Sorensen then worked as a gardener on estates in France, Italy and finally England.
In the 1929, while working at Dartington Hall, near Totnes, Devon Sorensen met Rabindranath Tagore, the Indian Nobel Laureate poet. The two shared conversation and Sorensen introduced Tagore to gramophone recordings of Beethoven's Late Quartets, the poet then invited him to his newly created university, Shantiniketan in Bengal to 'teach silence'.
For three years in 1930–33, Sorensen visited India and came to see the country as his home. After initially staying at Shantiniketan, he travelled around India visiting places of interest. In 1933, he returned to the west to tie up loose ends there, before heading back to India where he would stay until the mid-1970s. When Sorensen returned to India he started wearing Indian clothing, a style of dress he would continue for the rest of his life.
Tagore had introduced Sorensen to Nehru, and in 1934 he visited the home of Nehru’s sister and brother-in-law at their house Khali, Binsar where he stayed and used his horticultural skills in the garden, while still travelling during the summer. It was while staying with the Nehru family that one of their friends offered Sorensen a piece of land where he could live on Crank's Ridge, near Almora.
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