Download or read book 33 GURUS OF MODERN INDIA written by Dr C. Norman Williams and published by Yogi Impressions Books Pvt. Limited (India). This book was released on 2016-08-30 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is life simply the flow of time? You are born... you get old... and you die. What is the Truth that pervades our existence? Here is a unique book that brings together the Truth as perceived by 33 Spiritual Masters of India who have influenced spiritual thought and practice - at home and abroad. The basic thrust of their messages remains the same. The eternal principles which are universal in nature are Satyam (Truth), Dharmam (Righteousness), Premam (Love), and Seva (Service to others). Spanning across 200 eventful years, 33 Gurus of Modern India features spiritual luminaries like Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa, Sri Ramana Maharshi, Sri Paramahansa Yogananda, Anandamayi Ma, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Mata Amritanandamayi (Amma), and Sadguru Jaggi Vasudev, among others. Their teachings, which are relevant for all times, inspire you to realize and achieve your full potential as a human being.
Download or read book Gurus in America written by Thomas A. Forsthoefel and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gurus in America provides an excellent introduction to the guru phenomenon in the United States, with in-depth analyses of nine important Hindu gurus—Adi Da, Ammachi, Mayi Chidvilasananda, Gurani Anjali, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Osho, Ramana Maharshi, Sai Baba, and Swami Bhaktivedanta. All of these gurus have attracted significant followings in the U.S. and nearly all have lived here for considerable periods of time. The book's contributors discuss the characteristics of each guru's teachings, the history of each movement, and the particular construction of Hinduism each guru offers. Contributors also address the religious and cultural interaction, translation, and transplantation that occurs when gurus offer their teachings in America. This is a fascinating guide that will elucidate an important element in America's diverse and ever-changing spiritual landscape.
Download or read book The Saints of Vraja written by O. B. L. Kapoor and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collective biography of followers of Chaitanya (Sect) of Vrindāvan, India.
Download or read book J Krishnamurti written by Pupul Jayakar and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2000-10-14 with total page 775 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A classic biography of one of the greatest spiritual teachers of our times In 1909, when he was just fourteen, Krishnamurti was proclaimed the world teacher in whom Maitreya, the Bodhisattva of compassion, would manifest. The proclamation was made by Annie Besant, then president of the Theosophical Society, a movement that combined Western occult philosophy with Buddhist and Hindu teachings. Besant trained Krishnamurti in his role as the chosen one but twenty years later he chose to disband the order he was head of and set out alone on his endless journey— As a contemporary of Krishnamurti and one of his closest associates. Pupul Jayakar offers an insider's view of the fascinating life and thought of an extraordinary individual.
Download or read book Worldly Gurus and Spiritual Kings written by Tamara I. Sears and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2014-06-10 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This pioneering book is the first full-length study of the matha, or Hindu monastery, which developed in India at the turn of the first millennium. Rendered monumentally in stone, the matha represented more than just an architectural innovation: it signaled the institutionalization of asceticism into a formalized monastic practice, as well as the emergence of the guru as an influential public figure. With entirely new primary research, Tamara I. Sears examines the architectural and archaeological histories of six little-known monasteries in Central India and reveals the relationships between political power, religion, and the production of sacred space. This important work of scholarship features scrupulous original measured drawings, providing a vast amount of new material and a much-needed contribution to the fields of Asian art, religious studies, and cultural history. In introducing new categories of architecture, this book illuminates the potential of buildings to reconfigure not only social and ritual relationships but also the fundamental ontology of the world.
Download or read book Homegrown Gurus written by Ann Gleig and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2013-11-01 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring homegrown movements and figures, proclaims American Hinduism as a distinct religious tradition. Today, a new stage in the development of Hinduism in America is taking shape. After a century of experimentation during which Americans welcomed Indian gurus who adjusted their teachings to accommodate the New World context, American Hinduism can now rightly be called its own tradition rather than an imported religion. Accordingly, this spiritual path is now headed by leaders born in North America. Homegrown Gurus explores this phenomenon in essays about these figures and their networks. A variety of teachers and movements are considered, including Ram Dass, Siddha Yoga, and Amrit Desai and Kripalu Yoga, among others. Two contradictory trends quickly become apparent: an increasing Westernization of Hindu practices and values alongside a renewed interest in traditional forms of Hinduism. These opposed sensibilitiesinnovation and preservation, radicalism and recoveryare characteristic of postmodernity and denote a new chapter in the American assimilation of Hinduism.
Download or read book The Guru Who Came Down from the Mountain written by Roshen Dalal and published by . This book was released on 2018-01-10 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dev--charismatic and powerful, a guru with thousands of followers around the world, and a string of ashrams fuelled by a flourishing business in drugs and gun-running. Ashrams that bring him the power and wealth he craves and fulfil his desire for women. But of all the women he knows--and at times, loves--there are three who play a pivotal role in his life: his wife, Gita, whose death is shrouded in mystery, and Cynthia and Madge, who unwittingly launch him into his career as a guru. Nitya is Dev's complete antithesis--pure of heart and deeply spiritual. He comes to Dev as a disciple, and for years his devotion to his guru makes him blind to his failings. But when the truth can no longer be ignored, he is disillusioned. Though he escapes charges of rape and murder, Dev does finally receive a death sentence--he is fatally afflicted with AIDS. As he lies on his deathbed in Rishikesh, Nitya comes to see him, unable to turn away from him completely. Dev tells him his story, and what compelled him to make the choices he did. Nitya also uncovers the truth about Gita's death. When the end finally comes, Nitya has a deeper understanding of the man he once loved so blindly, and realizes how, ultimately, the quest for perfection can be marred by human frailty.
Download or read book How to Become a Hindu written by Subramuniya (Master.) and published by Himalayan Academy Publications. This book was released on 2000 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A history-making manual,interreligious study and names list, with stories by Westerners who entered Hinduism and Hindus who deepened their faith"--Cove
Download or read book American Veda written by Philip Goldberg and published by Harmony. This book was released on 2010-11-02 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating look at India’s remarkable impact on Western culture, this eye-opening popular history shows how the ancient philosophy of Vedanta and the mind-body methods of Yoga have profoundly affected the worldview of millions of Americans and radically altered the religious landscape. What exploded in the 1960s, following the Beatles trip to India for an extended stay with their new guru, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, actually began more than two hundred years earlier, when the United States started importing knowledge--as well as tangy spices and colorful fabrics--from Asia. The first translations of Hindu texts found their way into the libraries of John Adams and Ralph Waldo Emerson. From there the ideas spread to Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, and succeeding generations of receptive Americans, who absorbed India’s “science of consciousness” and wove it into the fabric of their lives. Charismatic teachers like Swami Vivekananda and Paramahansa Yogananda came west in waves, prompting leading intellectuals, artists, and scientists such as Aldous Huxley, Joseph Campbell, Allen Ginsberg, J. D. Salinger, John Coltrane, Dean Ornish, and Richard Alpert, aka Ram Dass, to adapt and disseminate what they learned from them. The impact has been enormous, enlarging our current understanding of the mind and body and dramatically changing how we view ourselves and our place in the cosmos. Goldberg paints a compelling picture of this remarkable East-to-West transmission, showing how it accelerated through the decades and eventually moved from the counterculture into our laboratories, libraries, and living rooms. Now physicians and therapists routinely recommend meditation, words like karma and mantra are part of our everyday vocabulary, and Yoga studios are as ubiquitous as Starbuckses. The insights of India’s sages permeate so much of what we think, believe, and do that they have redefined the meaning of life for millions of Americans—and continue to do so every day. Rich in detail and expansive in scope, American Veda shows how we have come to accept and live by the central teaching of Vedic wisdom: “Truth is one, the wise call it by many names.”
Download or read book Spiritual Despots written by J. Barton Scott and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2016-07-19 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spiritual Despots by historian of religion J. Barton Scott zeroes in on the quaint term "priestcraft" to track anticlerical polemics in Britain and South Asia during the colonial period. Scott's aim is to show how anticlerical rhetoric spread through the colonies alongside ideas about modern secular subjectivity. Through close readings of texts in English, Hindi, and Gujarati, he shows in compelling detail how the critique of priestly conspiracy gave rise to a new ideal of the self-disciplining subject and a vision of modern Hinduism that was based on unmediated personal experience and self-regulation rather than priestly tutelary power. Spiritual Despots offers a new perspective on what some scholars have called "Protestant Hinduism," and, more broadly, contributes to the emerging field of "post-secular" studies by shedding light on the colonial genealogy of secular subjectivity.
Download or read book The Leap written by Steve Taylor and published by New World Library. This book was released on 2017-02-14 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does it mean to be enlightened or spiritually awakened? In The Leap, Steve Taylor shows that this state is much more common than is generally believed. He shows that ordinary people — from all walks of life — can and do regularly “wake up” to a more intense reality, even if they know nothing about spiritual practices and paths. Wakefulness is a more expansive and harmonious state of being that can be cultivated or that can arise accidentally. It may also be a process we are undergoing collectively. Drawing on his years of research as a psychologist and on his own experiences, Taylor provides what is perhaps the clearest psychological study of the state of wakefulness ever published. Above all, he reminds us that it is our most natural state — accessible to us all, anytime, anyplace.
Download or read book Sex and the Spiritual Teacher written by Scott Edelstein and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-03 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the reasons why sexual transgressions between spiritual teachers and student occur, when this type of relationship becomes a problem, and how to avoid it from happening.
Download or read book The Guru Chronicles written by The Swamis of Kauai's Hindu Monastery and published by . This book was released on 2011-10-01 with total page 832 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami (1927¿2001) sailed for Sri Lanka in 1947 to find his guru. After years of arduous training, he fell at the feet of the Tamil master, Siva Yogaswami. Following his guru¿s orders, the illumined yogi returned to America to teach the path of enlightenment. Ultimately, he was recognized and befriended by India¿s spiritual leaders as the first Hindu guru born in the West. Gurudeva, as he was affectionately known, founded the Saiva Siddhanta Yoga Order and established Kauai¿s Hindu Monastery in Hawaii. Hinduism¿s many guru lineages are the spiritual rivers that pass the power on through the ages. The lineage that he joined extends to his guru¿s guru, Chellappaswami, and before him to Kadaitswami, then a nameless rishi and countless others, back to Rishi Tirumular and his guru, Maharishi Nandinatha, some 2,200 years ago in the high Himalayas. These are the illustrated stories of Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, his guru Siva Yogaswami and five preceding masters, who all held truth in the palm of their hand and inspired slumbering souls to ¿Know thy Self.¿
Download or read book Divine Enterprise written by Lise McKean and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1996-05-15 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through shrewd marketing and publicity, Hindu spiritual leaders can play powerful roles in contemporary India as businessmen and government officials. Focusing on the organizations and activities of Hindu ascetics and gurus, Lise McKean explores the complex interrelations among religion, the political economy of India, and global capitalism. In this close look at the business of religion, McKean traces the ideological and organizational antecedents to the Hindu nationalist movement. The Indian state's increasing patronage of Hindu institutions makes competition for its support greater than ever. Using materials from guru's publications, the press, and extensive field research, McKean examines how participation by upper-caste ruling class groups in the Divine Life Society and other Hindu organizations further legitimates their own authority. With a remarkable selection of photographs and advertisements showing icons of spirituality used to sell commodities from textiles to cement to comic books, McKean illustrates the pervasive presence of Hindu imagery in India's burgeoning market economy. She shows how gurus popularize Hindu nationalism through imagery such as the goddess, Mother India, and her martyred sons and daughters.
Download or read book Merging with iva written by Subramuniya (Master.) and published by Himalayan Academy Publications. This book was released on 2002 with total page 1065 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a guide for one who is ready to diligently walk the spiritual path. Great new vistas open up throughout its 365 daily lessons as Gurudeva shares, in the clearest terms, deep metaphysical insights into the nature of God, soul and world, mind, emotions, ultimate realizations, chakras, purpose of life on earth and much, much more. Simple but effective practices are taught: how to remould our nature and karmas, calm the mind, develop self-esteem, begin to meditate, clear up the past and create a bright future. At the same time, the seeker is guided in establishing a regular devotional and yogic practice whereby the gains of his inner life and realizations are stabilized and used in practical ways.
Download or read book The Guru in South Asia written by Jacob Copeman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a set of fresh and compelling interdisciplinary approaches to the enduring phenomenon of the guru in South Asia. Moving across different gurus and kinds of gurus, and between past and present, the chapters call attention to the extraordinary scope and richness of the social lives and roles of South Asian gurus. Prevailing scholarship has rightly considered the guru to be a source of religious and philosophical knowledge and mystical bodily practices. This book goes further and considers the social engagements and entanglements of these spiritual leaders, not just on their own (narrowly denominational) terms, but in terms of their diverse, complex, rapidly evolving engagements with 'society' broadly conceived. The book explores and illuminates the significance of female gurus, gurus from the perspective of Islam, imbrications of guru-ship and slavery in pre-modern India, connections between gurus and power, governance and economic liberalization in modern and contemporary India, vexed questions of sexuality and guru-ship, gurus' charitable endeavours, the cosmopolitanism of gurus in contexts of spiritual tourism, and the mediation of gurus via technologies of electronic communication. Bringing together internationally renowned scholars from religious studies, political science, history, sociology and anthropology, The Guru in South Asia provides exciting and original new insights into South Asian guru-ship. The Open Access version of this book, available at http: //www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
Download or read book The Graceful Guru written by Karen Pechilis and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A distinctive aspect of Hindu devotion is the veneration of a human guru, who is not only an exemplar and a teacher but is also understood to be an embodiment of the divine. Historically, the role of guru in the public domain has been exclusive to men. The new visibility of female gurus in India and the U.S. today, and indeed across the globe, has inspired this first-ever scholarly study of the origins, variety, and worldwide popularity of Hindu female gurus. In the Introduction, Karen Pechilis examines the historical emergence of Hindu female gurus with reference to the Hindu philosophy of the self, women spiritual exemplars as wives and saints, Tantric worship of the Goddess, and the internationalization of gurus in the U.S. in the twentieth century. Nine essays profile specific female gurus, presenting biographies of these remarkable women while highlighting overarching issues and themes concerning women's status as religious leaders; these themes are nuanced in the afterword to the volume. The essays explore how Hindu female gurus embody grace in both senses--as a feminine ideal and an attribute of the divine-and argue that their status as leaders is grounded in their negotiation of these two types of grace. This book provides biographical profiles of the following female gurus plus sensitive scholarly analysis of their spiritual paths: Ammachi, Anandamayi Ma, Gauri Ma, Gurumayi, Jayashri Ma, Karunamayi Ma, Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati, Mother Meera, Shree Maa and Sita Devi.
