Ed Sarath, spiritual seeker, author

Edward Noah Sarath, a spiritual seeker who completed college at age 72 and then wrote two books, died Oct. 7 at home on Lakeside Drive, surrounded by his family — Florence, his wife of 50 years, seven children, and eight grandchildren.
“He was a social and spiritual visionary, and displayed a deep conversance with Eastern and Western thought in his life, work and interactions,” wrote his son, Ed, in a biography passed out at services that drew well over 100 people to Jesse Lee Memorial United Methodist Church Tuesday. “He was a longtime and devoted practitioner of transcendental meditation, as taught by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and Brahmananda Saraswati.”
Tuesday’s services blended Christian worship with remembrances and tributes by family members and friends, and music — a Chopin piano piece, and jazz on flugelhorn. His son Ed, a jazz musician, had been playing for him at the time of his death, which was anticipated after a year-long battle with cancer.
Born March 7, 1922, he grew up in Depression-era New York. He was attracted to Communism as a young man, and though he lost faith in it he retained a lifelong interest in causes of social justice. Later, he was mildly politically active, often participating in caucuses of Ridgefield’s Democratic Party.
In World War II he served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps in North Africa and Italy. After the war he worked a variety of jobs and at a General Motors plant met his wife, Florence. They were married in 1950 and moved to Ridgefield in 1957. He drove a bread truck, studied electronics and built a career in that field. He was with Data Control Systems of Danbury as a technical writer.
After retirement in 1987 he went to Western Connecticut State University and at age 72 received his bachelor’s degree in English and philosophy. He began graduate studies and worked as a teaching assistant as WestConn, but left to pursue writing.
His first book, An Awakening Soul, the Practical Nature of Spiritual Growth, recounts his spiritual journey, which began when a son introduced a skeptical father to transcendental meditation. “...My son came home from college immersed in a program of Eastern meditation promising inner bliss, world peace and expanded consciousness,” he wrote. “...I remember listening to a lecture at dinner one evening, not hearing a word, but thinking over and over again ‘God! Now what?’ ”
After a shaky start he found the rewards of meditation and ventured into two decades of spiritual growth, eventually becoming a Siddah, a practitioner of advanced meditative techniques. He attained a detachment from many of life’s small trials, though he did not lose his lifelong intellectual hunger, his love of family and friends, or his lively humor.
“I am acutely aware of the present with no attachment to the past or sense of the future,” he wrote. “I watch this future unfold as I watch myself unfold. But in a strange way, the past also changes in the process. Not the events of the past, nor the facts of life. But what they mean and why they occurred take on a deeper meaning and reveal patterns that enliven the transcendent experience of the order and intelligence of the world.”
His second book, The Mark of the Galilean, is a historical novel set in Jewish Palestine 2,000 years ago — “a place,” he wrote, that produced “a man and a teaching that established God’s love, compassion and peace as the highest goals of Western civilization.”
He wrote, “It was a tiny populace in the scheme of the world and one born out of the slave pits of Egypt. But through the love, guidance and promise of their God they were raised up to a mighty nation and given the land on which they resided and from which they were fated to be cast out. Their God was just but demanding, perhaps patient even more than that, for over and over they remembered their covenant with Him and were raised up, and over and over they forgot it and were cast down; despite it all God kept them a people, His people.”
Besides his wife, Mr. Sarath is survived by seven children and their spouses: Carol Sarath and husband Karl Lohmann, Edward Sarath and wife Joan Harris, Maria Ragucci and husband Fred Ragucci, David Sarath and wife Jane Sarath, Patrice Sarath and husband Ben Van Dyke, James Sarath and Steven Sarath. He also leaves eight grandchildren.
Speakers at the service remembered Mr. Sarath’s gentle, love-warmed wisdom. His son wrote: “His radiant smile and concern for others, which characterized his life through his very last days, will be remembered by all who knew him.”
Contributions in his memory may be made to Healing the Children, PO Box 129, New Milford 06776.