US REVIEW OF BOOKS The Bhagavad Gita: Song of God - The Hindu Bhagavad Gita is a portion of the Sanskrit epic Mahabharata, which is the story of the dynastic war between two sets of cousins for the throne of Kuru, an ancient Indian kingdom. Intended for those unfamiliar with the Bhagavad, this excellent translation of the Hindu scripture provides, in simple and clear English, the dialogue between the gentle-hearted Prince Arjuna, and his charioteer, who is actually Krishna in disguise. Not wanting to fight against his friends, family, and former teachers, Prince Arjuna asks Krishna for advice. Krishna's counsel to Arjuna about the pathways to wisdom, self-discipline, and self-sacrifice has inspired and influenced millions from Mahatma Gandhi to Henry David Thoreau and T.S. Eliot. The book lists Hindu theological and philosophical terms to aid the reader, as well as giving clarifications throughout the text. The author has done a wonderful job of making the Bhagavad Gita accessible to the general reader.

The medieval vernacular (non-Sanskrit) traditions of yoga represent an aspect of Hinduism that to date has received much less scholarly attention than classical and contemporary Hinduism. Gordan Djurdjevic here brings together a representative selection of medieval Hindi poetry attributed to the legendary guru Gorakhnath. Gorakhnath is famed as the founder of the influential order of the Nath yogis, who are credited with the development of hatha yoga. The poetry gathered in the collection, known as The Sayings of Gorakh Bani, reflects this worldview. Its major thematic concerns relate to the practice of yoga, engagement with the various chakras within the body, and the attempts to reverse the flow of seminal fluid, by which process yogis believe the state of immortality may be reached. These often-enigmatic texts on the one hand provide a criticism of religious authority based on bookish knowledge, while on the other hand they celebrate yogic engagement with the subtle body and its centers of occult energy and miraculous powers. Sayings of Gorakhnath offers translations or the complete sabad and pad sections from the Gorakh Bani, the two largest sections in the collection. Some additional texts from the collection are also provided. Translations are preceded by an introduction and accompanied by notes, which contextualize and elucidate the subject matter.

Intended to be a treatise on life itself, this epic poem embraces religion and ethics, polity and government, philosophy and the pursuit of salvation. This collection of more than 4,000 verses is supplemented by a glossary, genealogical tables, and an index correlating the verses with the original Sanskrit text.

For those who wonder what relation actual Tantric practices bear to the "Tantric sex" currently being marketed so successfully in the West, David Gordon White has a simple answer: there is none. Sweeping away centuries of misunderstandings and misrepresentations, White returns to original texts, images, and ritual practices to reconstruct the history of South Asian Tantra from the medieval period to the present day.
"Kiss of the Yogini" focuses on what White identifies as the sole truly distinctive feature of South Asian Tantra: sexualized ritual practices, especially as expressed in the medieval Kaula rites. Such practices centered on the exchange of powerful, transformative sexual fluids between male practitioners and wild female bird and animal spirits known as Yoginis. It was only by "drinking" the sexual fluids of the Yoginis that men could enter the family of the supreme godhead and thereby obtain supernatural powers and transform themselves into gods. By focusing on sexual rituals, White resituates South Asian Tantra, in its precolonial form, at the center of religious, social, and political life, arguing that Tantra was the mainstream, and that in many ways it continues to influence contemporary Hinduism, even if reformist misunderstandings relegate it to a marginal position.
"Kiss of the Yogini" contains White's own translations from over a dozen Tantras that have never before been translated into any European language. It will prove to be the definitive work for persons seeking to understand Tantra and the crucial role it has played in South Asian history, society, culture, and religion.

This book provides a summarization of the most essential spiritual knowledge that will give you the key to spiritual awakening. The descriptions will give you greater insights and a new look at who and what you really are as a spiritual being. The idea that we are more than merely these material bodies is pervasive. It is established in every religion and spiritual path in this world. However, many religions only hint at the details of this knowledge, but if we look around we will find that practically the deepest and clearest descriptions of the soul and its characteristics are found in the ancient Vedic texts of India. Herein you will find some of the most insightful spiritual knowledge and wisdom known to mankind. Some of the topics include: How you are more than your body The purpose of life Spiritual ignorance of the soul is the basis of illusion and suffering The path of spiritual realization How the soul is eternal The unbounded nature of the soul What is the Supersoul Attaining direct spiritual perception and experience of our real identity This book will give you a deeper look into the ancient wisdom of India's Vedic, spiritual culture, and the means to recognize your real identity.

Defending Vedic Dharma: Tackling the Issues to Make a Difference The Vedic culture and its philosophy is one of the most deeply spiritual and all encompassing traditions in the world, and has been a major contributor to philosophical thought and the development of civilization. It does not take that long to understand, but it can take some serious consideration. Until then, there can be some aspects of it that are misunderstood or misinterpreted. Therefore, this book takes some of the issues of the day and describes what they are and the remedies for dealing with them in order to make a difference in how we participate in Vedic culture, how we can make it more effective in our lives, and how it can be perceived in a more positive way. All of this makes a difference in the objectives of preserving, protecting, promoting, and perpetuating the Vedic spiritual path. So this book shows some of the many uplifting and insightful qualities we can find in the Vedic tradition, of which everyone should be aware and can appreciate. Some of the stronger and important issues discussed within include: Why it is important to use the proper vocabulary to express Vedic concepts. Why all religions really are not the same, though many Hindus and gurus like to think they are. Time to wake up to reality. The power of a united Vedic community, and how it could rapidly change things if Hindus actually became more united and worked together. The importance of becoming a Dharmic leader and to do your part, and the danger of Hindu teachers who really do not lead in a way they should. The long-term but realistic cure for the corruption in India. The importance of Vedic temples as centers of sacred knowledge, and why temples should be open to everyone. How and why the Vedic texts say that the knowledge within them must be shared with everyone. The real purpose of the natural Vedic way of social arrangement, but why the present caste system in India should be changed or thrown out completely. An eight point action plan for how Hindus in America can best use the freedoms they have, which often exceed the decreasing freedoms in India, to cultivate their tradition to its fullest extent while they have the means to do so. The clarity with which these and other issues are addressed make this an important book for consideration.

Providing a unique and intimate view of Hindu marriage, the essays in this collection explore points at which the margins of marriage are traversed or transgressed. Rather than focus on normative expectations within marriage, they examine times in which norms are tested or rejected. Using stories, songs, and narrated accounts, the essays treat such topics as widowhood, adultery, levirate, divorce, and suttee, as well as the subversion of marriage by devotion to deities and by alternative constructions of conjugal duty and marital experience.

Krishna Deities and Their Miracles This book helps reveal how the Deities of Krishna in the temple are but another channel through which the Divine can be better understood and perceived. In fact, the Deities Themselves can exhibit what some would call miracles in the way They reveal how the Divine accepts the Deity form. These miracles between the Deities of Krishna and His devotees happen in many different ways, and all the time. This is one process through which Krishna, or the Supreme Being, reveals Himself and the reality of His existence. Stories of such miracles or occurrences extend through the ages up to modern times, and all around the world. This book relates an assortment of these events to show how the images in the temples have manifested Their personality and character in various ways in Their pastimes with Their devotees, whether it be for developing their devotion, instructing them, or simply giving them His kindness, mercy or inspiration. This book helps show that the Supreme Reality is a person who plays and exhibits His pastimes in any manner He likes. This is also why worship of the Deity in the temple has been and remains a primary means of increasing one's devotion and connection with the Supreme Being. Besides presenting stories of the reciprocation that can exist between Krishna in His Deity form and the ordinary living beings, other topics include: The antiquity of devotion to the Deity in the Vedic tradition. Historical sites of ancient Deity worship. Scriptural instructions and references to Deity veneration. The difference between idols and Deities. What is darshan and the significance of Deities. Why God would even take the initiative to reveal Himself to His devotees and accept the position of being a Deity. This book will give deeper insight into the unlimited personality and causeless benevolence of the Supreme, especially to those who become devoted to Him.

The stories of the Swami Purana comprise an anthology of the wisdom of the Sanatana Dharma-the eternal Ideal of Perfection, a treasure chest of the folklore of ancient India, and a modern day application of these classical teachings. This collection represents a small bucket drawn from the immense ocean of spiritual wisdom.

The three-thousand-year-old epic Ramayana chronicles Lord Rama's physical voyage from one end of the Indian subcontinent to the other and his spiritual voyage from Man to God. In Arrow of the Blue-Skinned God, anthropologist and journalist Jonah Blank gives a new perspective to this Hindu classic -- retelling the ancient tale while following the course of Rama's journey through present-day India and Sri Lanka. Ultimately, Blank's journey -- like that of Lord Rama -- evolves into a quest: to understand the chimerical essence of India itself, in all its overwhelming beauty and paradox. Quite possibly the most perceptive book that I have come across on India since the British Raj ended. -- Pranay Gupte, The Washington Post; What Hollywood attempted on the big screen with casts of thousands in Gandhi and A Passage to India, Jonah Blank has achieved in 350 stylistically rich pages. -- Los Angeles Times; This informative and entertaining book is something to be thankful for. -- The New York Times Book Review

An Unabridged, Unaltered Printing of the Second Edition to Include All Parts of the Following Upanishads: Isa-Upanishad - Katha-Upanishad - Kena-Upanishad, Taken From the Original Sanskrit Text with Preface and Introduction.

Though Freud never overtly refers to the Mahabharata, many of the Sanskrit epic's themes are illuminated by Freud's thought and, conversely, many incidents in the epic can be used to illustrate Freud's theories. In Freud's Mahabharata, the companion volume to Freud's India, Alf Hiltebeitel offers what he calls a "pointillist introduction" to a new theory about the Mahabharata based on Freud. Chapter 1 introduces the concept of the preoedipal, along with Freud's discussion of burial alive, ghosts and doubles, and castration anxiety, and looks at parallels with Indian theories of karma and reincarnation. In Chapter 2 Hiltebeitel draws on Andre Green's concept of "the dead mother," alive but dead to her child, to tell the epic's main story through the interactions between the peace-loving King Yudhisthira and his bellicose mother Kunti. Chapter 3 takes up three "dead mother" stories in the Mahabharata's early books, all of them featuring Kunti, among a plethora of really dead or divine past mothers in the Pandava lineage. Next, Chapter 4 looks at Fernando Wulff Alonso's hypothesis that the Mahabharata poets worked from Greek sources in modeling their stories. Hiltebeitel explores the epic's divine plan of the unburdening of the Earth, the goddess Earth, and its Greek counterpart in the Iliad's plan of Zeus. Girindrasekhar Bose's concept of the "Oedipus mother" is introduced in Chapter 5 through a discussion of Aravan, a minor figure throughout the Sanskrit epic tradition but one who looms in importance in the Draupadi cult and has a cult of his own, where he is called Kuttantavar. In both cults Aravan is worshiped for his self-mutilating sacrifice as a battle-opening offering to "mother" Kali, and he is worshipped in his own cult by Indian eunuchs or castrati called Aravanis in his honor. The book concludes with a new theory of the epic based on Freud's Moses and Monotheism, in which he argued that religious traditions deserve to be studied not only in what they say consciously about themselves, but in what they have registered unconsciously from past traumas, loss of memory, and the return of the repressed.

Philosophy of The Bhagavad Gita: A Contemporary Introduction presents a complete philosophical guide and new translation of the most celebrated text of Hinduism. While usually treated as mystical and religious poetry, this new translation focuses on the philosophy underpinning the story of a battle between two sets of cousins of the Aryan clan. Designed for use in the classroom, this lively and readable translation: - Situates the text in its philosophical and cultural contexts - Features summaries and chapter analyses and questions at the opening and end of each of the eighteen chapters encouraging further study - Highlights points of comparison and overlap between Indian and Western philosophical concepts and themes such as just war, care ethics, integrity and authenticity - Includes a glossary allowing the reader to determine the meaning of central concepts Written with clarity and without presupposing any prior knowledge of Hinduism, Philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita: A Contemporary Introduction reveals the importance and value of reading the Gita philosophically.

THIS 22 PAGE ARTICLE WAS EXTRACTED FROM THE BOOK: Vedanta Philosophy: Lectures by the Swami Vivekananda on Raja Yoga Also Pantanjali's Yoga Aphorisms, with Commentaries, and Glossary of Sanskrit Terms, by Swami Vivekananda. To purchase the entire book, please order ISBN 1564597970.

THIS 28 PAGE ARTICLE WAS EXTRACTED FROM THE BOOK: Mystic Christianity or the Inner Teachings of the Master, by Yogi Ramacharaka. To purchase the entire book, please order ISBN 0766101681.

THIS 34 PAGE ARTICLE WAS EXTRACTED FROM THE BOOK: Advanced Course in Yogi Philosophy and Oriental Occultism, by Yogi Ramacharaka. To purchase the entire book, please order ISBN 076610169X.

This edition is the black and white edition of Raj Arumugam's "Faces of the Divine, meditations on the Divine." Faces of the Divine takes the reader on an intuitive voyage of discovery of the great Indian experience of bhakti - the absolute and unconditional love of the Divine. Each reading in this book is an insightful meditation and Raj Arumugam, known for his works of deep insight into our various world traditions, offers the reader a seeing into aspects of the Divine in the great flowering of Bhakti that is both ancient and ever-new. (The book was originally written in English - not a translation.) This book is destined to a be classic in its authentic and independent expression of Bhakti in English of the major aspects of the Divine in Hinduism: Ganesha; Laxmi; Siva; Krishna; Sakti; Muruga; and Saraswati.

The first book to analyze why India's caste system has authoritatively endured for so long, this path-breaking text provides, for the first time anywhere, an exhaustive analysis of the historical predecessor to caste: the ancient Indian varna system as it was laid out in the Vedic literature. Presenting a revisionist overview of the way the religion of the Veda is to be understood, Classifying the Universe demonstrates that social classes were systematically reduplicated in taxonomies that organized the universe as a whole. The classification of society, in which some groups were accorded rights and privileges withheld from others, could thus be represented as part of a primordial and universally applicable order of things. Social hierarchy, argues the author, was in this way subtly but powerfully justified by recourse to other realms of the cosmos that were similarly ordered, and this essentially religious understanding of varna is the key to comprehending the Vedic world-view in all its complexity, and the persistence of its power in the social realm.

Revelation is a fundamental concept in practically every religion. This important new book, by the leading theologian Professor Keith Ward, provides the only complete analysis of the idea of revelation as found across all five of the great scriptural religions of the world: Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam. The author examines the nature, sources, and limits of revelation, and its relevance in the modern world today.

A celebration of Neem Karoli Baba, one of the most influential spiritual leaders of our time, the divine guru who inspired and led a generation of seekers-including Ram Dass, Daniel Goleman, and Larry Brilliant-on life-changing journeys that have ultimately transformed our world. In 1967, Baba Ram Dass-former American Harvard professor Richard Alpert-left India to share stories of his mysterious guru, Neem Karoli Baba, known as Maharajji. Introducing idealistic Western youth to the possibilities inherent in spiritual development, Ram Dass inspired a generation to turn on and tune in to a reality far different from the one they had known. From the spring of 1970 until Maharajji died on September 11, 1973, several hundred Westerners had his darshan (in Hinduism, the beholding of a deity, revered person, or sacred object). Those who saw him formed the Maharajji satsang-fellow travelers on the path. Love Everyone tells the stories of those who heard the siren call of the East and followed it to the foothills of the Himalayas. The ways they were called to make the journey, their experiences along the way, and their meeting with Maharajji form the core of this multicultural adventure in shifting consciousness. The contributors share their recollections of Maharajji and how his wisdom shaped their lives. All have attempted to follow Maharajji's basic teaching, his seemingly simple directives: Love everyone, feed everyone, and remember God. All have found their own way to be of service in the world and, in so doing, have collectively touched the hearts and souls of countless others.

H.W.L. Poonja - affectionately known as Papaji - was only nine years old when he experienced his first samadhi, an altered state of consciousness where observer and object merge. As an adult, he sat in devotion with Sri Ramana Maharshi, and went on to become a master teacher in his own right, whose followers trekked across the world to sit in his presence. Wake Up and Roar is a collector's edition of teachings delivered throughout his life, edited by Eli Jaxon-Bear, a longtime student of Papaji. Originally published in two volumes, here is Papaji's landmark work bound in one elegant book with previously unreleased photographs and a new foreword from Gangaji, his best-known student. Presented in a question-and-answer format, Wake Up and Roar offers you an opportunity to awaken, here and now, regardless of background, practice, or personal circumstance. ''The Self contains everything, '' teaches Papaji. ''There is nothing apart from it. This is why you can call it emptiness. There is nothing beyond emptiness.'' Blending humor, logic, and eye-opening storytelling, Papaji extends a gracious wisdom that speaks to the earnest seeker investigating the nature of mind, enlightenment, and ''how to be in the world.'' In Wake up and Roar, he brings comfort and encouragement to practitioners from all traditions, at any stage of their inquiry into awakening

This book deals with powerful sacred mantras of different Hindu deities and their blessings. These energy based sound, syllable, word or group of words mantras when chanted with faith, patience and devotion create energy vibrations that can replace negative energy with positive one eventually leading to a peaceful quiet mind; and positive and beneficial results. There is now growing evidence that repeating a mantra is good for mental health. The individuals who are in stressful situations are able to cope better with stress by using a mantra. Even those who see themselves as not having any religious affiliations can still benefit from mantra because it has spiritual significance. I decided to write about mantras firstly because of my own experience of using them as tools to help me not to ponder over negative thoughts but to find peace, solace, create positive energy and thoughts; and face the challenges of everyday life. Chanting of mantras has allowed me to conquer my mind. Secondly, over the years, I found it extremely difficult to find a book of mantras along with sufficient description of the prominent Hindu deities. After looking into the matter extensively, I discovered that a large number of Asians outside India are looking for the same in a book form so that they can carry or keep the book with them.