Features
- Cover Type: Hard Cover with 256 pages
- Published by: Harmony/Bell Tower January 25, 2005
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 140008038X
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-1400080380
-
Book Dimensions:
8.1 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
- Weighs: 14.1 ounces
From Publishers Weekly
It is 1969 in Beverly Hills. After experimenting with mind-altering substances, a 19-year-old dropout leaves his prosperous family and heads for India to find himself. Cartouche, a fellow traveler, recommends an English-speaking guru. The young man renames himself Rampuri and begins an apprenticeship involving deities, servitude, ceremonies and a fair amount of cannabis. After two years, he is initiated into the Great Renunciation and becomes a yogi. After his guru falls ill and dies, Rampuri is horrified to discover that the guru has possessed him. Cartouche reappears at just the right moment, gives Rampuri a stiff dose of language philosophy and helps him interpret his quest. By the mid-1980s, India's first blue-eyed yogi has founded an ashram. Rampuri mixes his story with fanciful tales of deities and holy men, gurus who converse with crows and people who fly out of their bodies at night. Linear thinkers may be perplexed by his conflation of myth and autobiography: "The line separating mythology and this Extraordinary World in which I was now living became blurred, and increasingly I couldn't see it at all." But readers nostalgic for magical mystery tours who don't mind frequent Hindi-laced sentences ("The microcosm of the twin
dhunis mirrored the beehive activity of the
akhara, which in turn reflected the electricity of the
mela") may enjoy this exotic tale of enlightenment and self-realization.
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Product Review
“This book will entertain and enlighten you. A bold journey that explores the true intersections of Eastern and Western thought.” —Deepak Chopra, author of
The Book of Secrets “Rampuri’s search has carried him into the very depths of one of the great ancient wisdom lineages of India. He has gone where very few Westerners have gone.” —Krishna Das, “Chant Master of American Yoga” (
New York Times)
“An authentic and fascinating account of a Western yogi who has made India his home for his body and his spirit.
Baba is bound to challenge your view of reality and the spiritual life. It is not just the story of a personal quest but of a journey beyond the Western civilization mind-set to the real India of the yogis, where the limitations of both our cultural ideas and our egos are continually exposed. An adventure into a different kind of reality.” —David Frawley, author of
Yoga and Ayurveda and
Yoga and the Sacred Fire and director of the American Institute of Vedic Studies
Reader Reviews
The writing doesn't *seem* bad....but there's definitely something missing here. There are lots of details and interesting stories, and some self-reflection. But in the end, I just don't get it. The connections, the analysis, the context just isn't enough to make this story captivating to a person who hasn't had this sort of experience. Which would be most of us. Perhaps after thirty years as a yogi, the author no longer hs much connection to the boy who left home and moved to India and became naked. But in order to understand his story, we need to be able to understand who that boy was and how he changed. Though the surface story is here, the true inner depth seems gone, maybe erased through spiritual practice or ganja, or maybe just not clarified through careful enough writing. It's hard to put my finger on what's missing in this book, but something just isn't there.
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