Jyotipriya was born Judith Tyberg on May 17, 1902, in
California, to Danish parents who were Theosophists. Throughout the nine months
of her gestation, her mother, a serious student of Oriental philosophy, chanted
a Vedic hymn to the newly embodied soul. At an early age, Judy could recite
section of the Gita by heart.
Educated at the Theosophical Society's Point Loma Raja Yoga School and The
Theosophical University, Judith learnt from a young age about karma,
reincarnation and meditation. She received her M.A. in Religion and Philosophy
from the Theosophical University, with a specialization in Oriental Thought.
Here she also obtained another graduate degree in Sacred Scriptures and Ancient
Civilizations and her doctorate in Sanskrit Studies.
From very early on, Judith knew that her destiny was to teach and help others.
While still a teenager, she began to formally teach in the Raja Yoga School.
Later she taught in the High School and the Theosophical University. She was
Assistant Principal of the Raja Yoga School from 1932 - 1935 and held the post
of Dean of Studies at the Theosophical University from 1935 - 1945. To all her
teaching, she brought a breadth of erudition and an intellectual brilliance
that matched the intensity of her soul's call to serve.
Together with Gottfried de Purucker, Judith and a select group of Theosophical
scholars committed to print the meanings of all the Sanskrit, Greek, Hebrew,
Tibetan, Zoroastrian and technical terms used in Theosophy. Then she began an
intensive study of the Bible and the Kabbalah in the original. But it was
Sanskrit that became her passion and her life's work.
In 1940, Judith was appointed Head of the Sanskrit and Oriental Division of the
Theosophical University. She became a member of the American Oriental Society
and in 1941, her first Sanskrit textbook, Sanskrit Keys to the Wisdom Religion,
was published, climaxing eleven years of concentrated study.
"Sanskrit Keys" presented the meanings of over 500 Sanskrit terms used in
religious and occult literature, and was a practical pronounciation guide. Set
in Devanagari, it was the first occasion for the script to be typed by
linotype. By adapting a modern Indian Sanskrit keyboard, Judith and Geoffrey
Barborka of Point Loma designed a special Sanskrit linotype, composed of dozens
of matrices. It is worth noting that Judith's "Sanskrit Keys" and "First
Lessons in Sanskrit Grammar and Reading" were the only books on Sanskrit to be
found in the Central Research Library in 1940's Los Angeles.
In 1947, at the age of 45, Judith left for India to work towards an M.A. in
Indian Religion and Philosophy at the Benares Hindu University. But Judith had
a deeper purpose - she had come on a spiritual quest. As she explained at her
first meeting with her departmental Chair, she had come seeking the lost secret
of the Veda. Indeed, she said, if all of India's unfathomable spiritual culture
acknowledged the authority of the Veda, there must be illimitably more to it
than what she had been given to understand in America. The prevailing view of
the time, promoted by Max Meuller and other "Orientalists", was that the hymns
of the Veda were at best glorified Nature poetry, or more commonly, "an
interesting remnant of barbarism". She was told that she had come to the wrong
place, that the secret was still lost.
Disappointed, she turned to leave; but a young Philosophy lecturer by the name
of Arabinda Basu had overheard her conversation, and brought to her a copy of
Sri Aurobindo's "Bases of Yoga" and a typescript of his not-yet-published
"Secret of the Veda". Judith stayed awake reading all night for in her hands,
she discovered, were the answers she had been seeking for so long.
In October 1947, Judith arrived at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram at Pondicherry. She
reached on the evening of Lakshmipuja - just as the Mother was about to give
Pranams. At the touch of the Mother's hands on her head, "electric forces" went
right through her being. At her first private meeting with the Mother, Judith
expressed her longing to give her life to all that was Beauty and Truth. "You
chose long ago to serve", was Mother's reply. She then told Judith that she and
Sri Aurobindo had been waiting for Judith to arrive. Judith asked the Mother
for a spiritual name. Next morning, the Mother handed her a chit written in Sri
Aurobindo's hand - "Jyotipriya, the Lover of Light", it read.
Jyotipriya accepted Sri Aurobindo and the Mother as her gurus. She finished her
studies at BHU and spent many hours with many of India's illustrious spiritual
personalities - Anandamoyee ma, Swami Sivananda of Rishikesh, Yogi Krishna
Prem, Ramana Maharshi and others. But the Sri Aurobindo Ashram became her
"spiritual home". Here, she found the answer to her "deepest heart's longings
since childhood", and in the Ashram residents and close friends like Nolini
Kanta Gupta, A.B. Purani, Indra Sen, Sisir Mitra and Prithvi Singh, she found
the "cream of Hindu culture".
Jyotipriya left the Ashram in 1950, to return to America and become Sri
Aurobindo and the Mother's premier pioneer in the United States. On May 1, she
founded the East-West Cultural Center in a small room in the home of a friend
in Los Angeles. In 1955, the Center moved to a home of its own, with a
125-person capacity auditorium. Revered friends and eminent personages from
India such as Swami Chidananda, Swami Ramdas, Mother Krishnabai, Jagadguru
Shankaracharya of Puri, V.K. Gokak, Madhusudhan Reddy, Dilip Roy and Indira
Devi, brought their light to shine. Swamis Muktananda, Satchidananda, and
Visnudevananda were all early East-West Cultural Center guests.
"Judith Tyberg is at home in the library sharing the wisdom and yoga of Sri
Aurobindo and the Mother" - was the heading for her Thursday night satsangs on
the East-West Cultural Center Bulletin of Events. Those evenings she would sit
in the library before Sri Aurobindo and the Mother's photographs and read with
golden glow about the Master's Yoga which encompassed all life, and his vision
of a glorious future for humanity, ot the Mother's expert instructions for
voyaging to Tomorrow.
She spoke out of the realization of her soul, for as one sadhika observed,
Jyoti "did not interpret or ever become vague, or indulge in cliches, but
seemed able to identify so completely with Sri Aurobindo and the Mother that
one continually felt their presence."
Anyone who stayed long enough in the company of Jyotipriya developed a deep and
sincere love for Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and grew in that silent
comradeship understood by devotees in this collective yoga for
world-transformation.
Jyotipriya left her body on October 3, 1980. For countless seekers, through the
history of the East-West Cultural Center, she was truly "a golden bridge".