Download or read book The Anti Guru written by U. G. Krishnamurti and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2011-04-02 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE ANTI GURU is a selection of some of the greatest talks ever given by U.G. Krishnamurti, the famed anti-guru who refused to be a guru and shot down all attempts by his followers to deify him. While he has no relation to the famous Jiddu Krishnamurti, who merely shares the same name, he spoke with the other Krishnamurti extensively, and you'll find much commentary U.G. made about him within this book. The first chapter is the full text of a very unique early talk given by U.G. very soon after he experienced his "calamity", the transformation that many have likened to enlightenment. The words are incredibly powerful and direct, and pierce to the heart of his philosophy. This book was published to make U.G. more accessible to the general public. His revolutionary ideas have largely been ignored by our society. The low price of this book shows the editor's desire to make U.G.'s material easier to access for a wider range of audiences. Unfortunately, his books are very hard to find in public library catalogs. Hopefully this will change.
Download or read book The Guru Challenge written by Elmar Schenkel and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2023-03-27 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Indian Gurus remain an important issue in the contemporary world and affect politics, culture and commerce alike. This spiritual/economic figure has become a worldwide phenomenon, signalling that syncretism is taking place on a global scale. At the same time, the concept of the guru will remain a constant challenge to ideas of enlightenment and democracy. The present book focusses on this challenge presenting contributions from an interdisciplinary perspective. German, Indian and American scholars have explored guruism in tradition, economy and Jungian psychology as well as in contemporary literature, travel writing and film. Individual studies of gurus such as Ramana Maharshi or Osho/Bhagvan, but also Gandhi and Tolstoi furthermore illustrate the spiritual globalization that has been taking place over the last century.
Download or read book The Anti Guru Guide to Self Help written by Kristine Ann Kreska and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2015-06-17 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fun practical guide to pinpointing the core beliefs in one's life as a first step to making changes. The "Guru" is you in this cut to the chase approach to self-help. Operating in a false illusion can result in very bad decision making. Skip the "Guru" and begin your own path to enlightenment. Science proves the body emits a frequency. Raise your frequency to a higher vibration by creating more harmony in your life.
Download or read book American Guru written by William Yenner and published by Epigraph Publishing. This book was released on 2009-08 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American Guru is a multifaceted account of life in the contemporary spiritual community known as EnlightenNext, and the controversial "teaching methods" of its New York-born founder, self-proclaimed "guru" Andrew Cohen. With contributions from several of Cohen's former students, William Yenner recalls the thirteen-year trajectory of his career as a leader and manager in Cohen's community--his early days as an idealistic "seeker," his years of service on EnlightenNext's Board of Directors, his ultimate disillusionment and departure, and his efforts to make sense of his experiences as a once-devoted follower of a "Teacher of Evolutionary Enlightenment." With wit and insight, Yenner and his colleagues have produced a riveting cautionary tale on the dangers of authoritarian spirituality, and an insider'scase study on the promises and pitfalls of postmodern discipleship. "William Yenner's courageous expos , American Guru, is a powerful reminder that all of our tendencies toward idealization of dharma teachers must be carefully examined." -William Morgan, Psy.D., member of the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy, co-author of Mindfulness and Psychotherapy "William Yenner's true, uncensored-and finally ungagged-moving personal story, in combination with the powerful reflections, recollections and contributions of other former community members, makes American Guru an essential source document for the study and understanding of authoritarian spiritual sects." -Hal Blacker, former editor of EnlightenNext magazine "American Guru is not a mean-spirited book. It is, rather, a refreshingly honest one." -David Christopher Lane, Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy, Mt. San Antonio College Check out the book online at www.americanguru.net
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 Stripping the Gurus written by Geoffrey D. Falk and published by . This book was released on 2009-06 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Armed with wit, insight, and truly astonishing research, Falk utterly demolishes the notion of the enlightened guru who can lead devotees to nirvana.--John Horgan, author of "Rational Mysticism."
Download or read book Guru English written by Srinivas Aravamudan and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-06-27 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Guru English is a bold reconceptualization of the scope and meaning of cosmopolitanism, examining the language of South Asian religiosity as it has flourished both inside and outside of its original context for the past two hundred years. The book surveys a specific set of religious vocabularies from South Asia that, Aravamudan argues, launches a different kind of cosmopolitanism into global use. Using "Guru English" as a tagline for the globalizing idiom that has grown up around these religions, Aravamudan traces the diffusion and transformation of South Asian religious discourses as they shuttled between East and West through English-language use. The book demonstrates that cosmopolitanism is not just a secular Western "discourse that results from a disenchantment with religion, but something that can also be refashioned from South Asian religion when these materials are put into dialogue with contemporary social move-ments and literary texts. Aravamudan looks at "religious forms of neoclassicism, nationalism, Romanticism, postmodernism, and nuclear millenarianism, bringing together figures such as Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo, Mahatma Gandhi, and Deepak Chopra with Rudyard Kipling, James Joyce, Robert Oppenheimer, and Salman Rushdie. Guru English analyzes writers and gurus, literary texts and religious movements, and the political uses of religion alongside the literary expressions of religious teachers, showing the cosmopolitan interconnections between the Indian subcontinent, the British Empire, and the American New Age.
Download or read book A Taste of Life written by Mahesh Bhatt and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2009-06-08 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: U.G. Krishnamurti famously described enlightenment as a neurobiological state of being with no religious, psychological or mystical implications. He did not lecture, did not set up organizations, held no gatherings and professed to have no message for mankind. Known as the ‘anti-guru’, the ‘raging sage’ and the ‘thinker who shuns thought’, U.G. spent his life destroying accepted beliefs in science, god, mind, soul, religion, love and relationships—all the props man uses to live life. Having taken away all support systems from those who came to him, he refused to replace them with those of his own; always insisting that each must find his own truth. And when U.G. knew that it was time for him go, he refused all attempts to prolong life with medical help. He let nature, and his body, take their course. On the afternoon of 22 March 2007, U.G. Krishnamurti passed away in Vallecrosia, Italy.
Download or read book A Guru s Journey written by Sarah Morelli and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2019-12-20 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An important modern exponent of Asian dance, Pandit Chitresh Das brought kathak to the United States in 1970. The North Indian classical dance has since become an important art form within the greater Indian diaspora. Yet its adoption outside of India raises questions about what happens to artistic practices when we separate them from their broader cultural contexts. A Guru's Journey provides an ethnographic study of the dance form in the San Francisco Bay Area community formed by Das. Sarah Morelli, a kathak dancer and one of Das's former students, investigates issues in teaching, learning, and performance that developed around Das during his time in the United States. In modifying kathak's form and teaching for Western students, Das negotiates questions of Indianness and non-Indianness, gender, identity, and race. Morelli lays out these issues for readers with the goal of deepening their knowledge of kathak aesthetics, technique, and theory. She also shares the intricacies of footwork, facial expression in storytelling, and other aspects of kathak while tying them to the cultural issues that inform the dance.
Download or read book The Other Side of Belief written by Mukunda Rao and published by Penguin Books India. This book was released on 2005 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: RAO/OTHER SIDE OF BELIEF
Download or read book My Life in Orange written by Tim Guest and published by HMH. This book was released on 2016-03-01 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A memoir of formative years spent on a series of communes: A “wonderful account of a frankly ghastly childhood . . . Hilarious and heartbreaking” (Daily Mail). At the age of six, Tim Guest was taken by his mother to a commune modeled on the teachings of the notorious Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. The Bhagwan preached an eclectic doctrine of Eastern mysticism, chaotic therapy, and sexual freedom, and enjoyed inhaling laughing gas, preaching from a dentist's chair, and collecting Rolls Royces. Tim and his mother were given Sanskrit names, dressed entirely in orange, and encouraged to surrender themselves into their new family. While his mother worked tirelessly for the cause, Tim—or Yogesh, as he was now called—lived a life of well-meaning but woefully misguided neglect in various communes in England, Oregon, India, and Germany. In 1985 the movement collapsed amid allegations of mass poisonings, attempted murder, and tax evasion, and Yogesh was once again Tim. In this extraordinary memoir, Tim Guest chronicles the heartbreaking experience of being left alone on earth while his mother hunted heaven. “An intelligent, wry, openhearted memoir of surviving a childhood and a cultural phenomenon that were both extraordinary.” —Booklist (starred review)
Download or read book The Guru Papers written by Joel Kramer and published by Frog Books. This book was released on 1993-05-20 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of “the most comprehensive, erudite, and timely” explorations of power dynamics and authoritarianism in religions, institutions, relationships and even personal struggles (San Francisco Chronicle Book Review) Authoritarian control, which once held societies together, is now at the core of personal, social, and planetary problems, and thus a key factor in social disintegration. Authoritarianism is embedded in the way people think—hiding in culture, values, daily life, and in the very morality people try to live by. In The Guru Papers, authors Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad unmask authoritarianism in areas such as relationships, cults, 12-step groups, religion, and contemporary morality. Chapters on addiction and love show the insidious nature of authoritarian values and ideologies in the most intimate corners of life, offering new frameworks for understanding why people get addicted and why intimacy is laden with conflict. By exposing the inner authoritarian that people use to control themselves and others, the authors show why people give up their power, and how others get and maintain it.
Download or read book Schools and Politics written by Taufik Abdullah and published by Equinox Publishing. This book was released on 2009 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The driving force of Minangkabau history arises from the struggle to build a balanced social order on a convergence of seemingly contradictory social and cultural aspects. From the time when Islam was conceived as a pillar of the Minangkabau world, the history of Minangkabau has been dominated by an effort to attain an acceptable equilibrium between the doctrine of a universal religion and the wisdom and ideals of the pre-existing pillar, the indigenous element or adat. The idea that Islam is an inseparable part of Minangkabau has generated constant internal struggle. A traditional notion that ideas which came from the outside world (the rantau) might endanger the foundation of Minangkabau or stimulate disturbing potentialities already inherent in it resulted in ambivalence toward Western-oriented modernization. The purpose of this study is to trace the development of the Kaum Muda movement and to inquire into its intellectual and social impact on Minangkabau. The principal actors were actually from the second generation of Islamic modernists, the students of the Kaum Muda ulama. We will examine the way they confronted their social and political environment; the path they followed in carrying out their various programs; their encounter with the Dutch government; and their relationship with the adat authorities. We will seek to determine the impact of the activities and intellectual development of these young Islamic modernists upon their own group and upon their relationship with their former mentors, the Kaum Muda ulama. For this reason, the study concentrates on the period beginning in early 1927 and ending with the third quarter of 1933. - Taufik Abdullah
Download or read book Gurus and Media written by Jacob Copeman and published by UCL Press. This book was released on 2023-09-25 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gurus and Media is the first book dedicated to media and mediation in domains of public guruship and devotion. Illuminating the mediatisation of guruship and the guru-isation of media, it bridges the gap between scholarship on gurus and the disciplines of media and visual culture studies. It investigates guru iconographies in and across various time periods and also the distinctive ways in which diverse gurus engage with and inhabit different forms of media: statuary, games, print publications, photographs, portraiture, films, machines, social media, bodies, words, graffiti, dolls, sound, verse, tombs and more. The book’s interdisciplinary chapters advance, both conceptually and ethnographically, our understanding of the function of media in the dramatic production of guruship, and reflect on the corporate branding of gurus and on mediated guruship as a series of aesthetic traps for the captivation of devotees and others. They show how different media can further enliven the complex plurality of guruship, for instance in instantiating notions of ‘absent-present’ guruship and demonstrating the mutual mediation of gurus, caste and Hindutva. Throughout, the book foregrounds contested visions of the guru in the development of devotional publics and pluriform guruship across time and space. Thinking through the guru’s many media entanglements in a single place, the book contributes new insights to the study of South Asian religions and to the study of mediation more broadly. Praise for Gurus and Media 'Sight, sound, image, narrative, representation and performance in the complex world of gurus are richly illuminated and deeply theorised in this outstanding volume. The immensely important, but hitherto under-explored, visual and aural dimensions of guru-ship across several religious traditions have received path-breaking and wide-ranging treatment by best-known experts on the subject.' Nandini Gooptu, University of Oxford ‘Gurus and Media casts subtle light on a phenomenon that too often shines so brightly that it is hard to see. This collection is a tremendously rich resource for anyone trying to make sense of that ambiguous zone where authority appears at once as seduction and as salvation, as comfort and as terror.’ William Mazzarella, University of Chicago 'This remarkable collection uses the figure of the mass-mediated guru to throw light on how modern Hindu mobilization generates a highly diverse set of religious charismatics in India. Because of the diversity of the contributors to this volume, the book is also a moveable feast of cases, methods and cultural styles in a major cultural region.' Arjun Appadurai, Emeritus Professor of Media, Culture and Communication, New York University
Download or read book Betrayal of the Spirit written by Nori J. Muster and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2013-03-15 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Combining behind-the-scenes coverage of an often besieged religious group with a personal account of one woman's struggle to find meaning in it, Betrayal of the Spirit takes readers to the center of life in the Hare Krishna movement. Nori J. Muster joined the International Society of Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON)--the Hare Krishnas--in 1978, shortly after the death of the movement's spiritual master, and worked for ten years as a public relations secretary and editor of the organization's newspaper, the ISKCON World Review. In this candid and critical account, Muster follows the inner workings of the movement and the Hare Krishnas' progressive decline. Combining personal reminiscences, published articles, and internal documents, Betrayal of the Spirit details the scandals that beset the Krishnas--drug dealing, weapons stockpiling, deceptive fundraising, child abuse, and murder within ISKCON–as well as the dynamics of schisms that forced some 95 percent of the group's original members to leave. In the midst of this institutional disarray, Muster continued her personal search for truth and religious meaning as an ISKCON member until, disillusioned at last with the movement's internal divisions, she quit her job and left the organization. In a new preface to the paperback edition, Muster discusses the personal circumstances that led her to ISKCON and kept her there as the movement's image worsened. She also talks about "the darkest secret"–child abuse in the ISKCON parochial schools--that was covered up by the public relations office where she worked.
Download or read book Gurus in America written by Thomas A. Forsthoefel and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2005-10-06 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating look at Hindu gurus with significant followings in the United States.
Download or read book The Guru Has No Turban Why Perfect Masters Don t Exist written by and published by MSAC Philosophy Group. This book was released on with total page 12 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
