The Aghora trilogy have been embraced world-wide for their frankness in broaching subjects generally avoided and their facility for making the 'unseen' real. We enter the world of Vimalananda who teaches by story and living example.
Book 2 of the trilogy explores the kundalini, the force of forces. Tantra, mantra, the sacred fire, chakras and consciousness. Written in the personable form of Vimalananda's storytelling and recounting of life's episodes we are able to truly enter the invisible realms.
Aghora, described in this volume as super-tantra , is a Path of Devotion to the Great Mother Goddess Kundalini, here manifesting with the Name and Image of the Goddess Tara. This way is one of extraordinary extremes and intensities, even for tantra, and its aim is nothing less than to destroy the human limitations of the practioner, so that he or she becomes a super-human in fact, a kind of deity.
"More than four decades have passed since I met the Aghori Vimalananda, and it has been thirty-three years since I last heard him speak. Happily for me he permitted me to write down many of his musings so that I would have them to remind me of the wisdom that he embodied. And, thanks to his compassion for others, he instructed me to publish some of this material after he was gone, which I did in the three Aghora books, books that I continue to regularly read and that continue to offer me thought-provoking guidance at any step along my own path.An aghori is someone who plunges so deep into darkness that he emerges into light. Aghora is a spiritual path that because of its extreme heterodoxy has been¿ough I cannot myself claim to be an aghori, the example that he thus set has inspired my own sophomoric attempts to transmute into equanimity all that is both gratifying and grotesque in life, focusing on the subtle world while living in mundane reality, for Vimalananda always emphasized the importance of living with reality." Dr. Robert E. Svoboda Illustrated by Satya Moses
"Aghor Medicine moves seamlessly between an ethnography of religion and medical anthropology. The stories of suffering and renunciation, of collective experience that turn Indian hierarchy and discrimination upside down are quite marvelous. The writing is clear and direct and the interpretations balanced and scrupulously documented. Barrett has written one of the best accounts on local traditions "modernizing" in ways that combine indigenous significance with globally crucial changes that react against health and social inequalities."—Arthur Kleinman, Harvard University "Ronald Barrett's fine account of aghor medicine reveals essential characteristics of India's popular culture, and, since an ashram in California has an important role in the story, of American popular culture as well."—Charles Leslie, author of Death Row Letters (forthcoming)
Robert Svoboda addresses Vāstu, the classical Indian art (or science) of architectural form, in a wholly unique way. Instead of presenting lists of rules and architectural injunctions to which builders and interior designers must scrupulously adhere at all times, he sensitizes the reader to the dynamics of space, alignment, and form in ever-expanding orbits of individual life. In the process of guiding the reader through a series of meditations on the dynamics of space and alignment, Dr. Svoboda enters the realms of classical Indian medicine (Āyurveda) and astrology (Jyotiša), which, it turns out, are of the greatest importance to realizing Vāstu and its contours in one’s life. Dr. Svoboda allows readers and home builders to understand the complex dynamics of individual, terrestrial, and celestial energetic systems. This leads to a greater awareness of the nature of space and its application to house construction, interior spaces, gardens, one’s relationship with the land, and, consequently, one’s relationship with oneself.
The telling of mythic stories has always been a powerful form of therapy, bringing healing to people facing adversity. The greatness of Saturn is such a therapeutic myth, told and retold through many centuries. Taken from the East Indian Vedic tradition, it honors the planet Saturn, who personifies time, limitations, loss, and all forms of adversity.