The Mother of God

The Mother of God

Author: Luna Tarlo

Publisher:

Published: 2009-07

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780982453063

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This is a mother's account of her experience as a disciple of her own son - Andrew Cohen, a well-known American guru - and of her struggle to free herself from his control. What had been a close, affectionate relationship slowly becomes a nightmare of domination. The story begins quiely in India and unfolds with growing intensity as Andrew, his mother, and a few people who have gathered around him, travel to England, Holland, Israel, and finally the United States, but which time Andrew has attracted hundreds of devotees to his "meetings." The abuse of power, incessant fear, and the pyschology of obsession are all explored here from an intimate perspective. Since brainwashing cults and their grandiose gurus are proliferating - in this country and all over the world - this book is not only a mother's lament, but also a finger pointing to the growing appeal everywhere of authoritarianism and absolutism.


A Guru’s Journey

A Guru’s Journey

Author: Sarah Morelli

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2019-12-20

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 0252051726

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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.


My Father's Guru

My Father's Guru

Author: Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

Publisher: Untreed Reads

Published: 2013-03-19

Total Pages: 113

ISBN-13: 1611875374

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As a child growing up in the Hollywood Hills during the 1950s, Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson thought it was perfectly normal that a guru named Paul Brunton lived with his family and dictated everything about their daily rituals, from their diet to their travel plans to his parents' sex life. But in this extraordinary memoir, Masson reflects on just how bizarre everything about his childhood was-especially the relationship between his father and the elusive, eminent mystic he revered (and supported) for years. Writing with candor and charm, Masson describes how his father became convinced that Paul Brunton-P.B. to his familiars-was a living God who would fill his life with enlightenment and wonder. As the Masson family's personal guru, Brunton freely discussed his life on other planets, laid down strict rules on fasting and meditation, and warned them all of the imminence of World War III. For years, young Jeffrey was as ardent a disciple as his father-but with the onset of adolescence, he staged a dramatic revolt against this domestic deity and everything he stood for. Filled with absurdist humor and intimate confessions, My Father's Guru is the spellbinding coming-of-age story of one of our most brilliant writers. REVIEWS "An uncompromising yet compassionate book . . . A coming-of-age memoir unlike any other." -The Toronto Star "AN EXTRAORDINARY CAUTIONARY TALE .... about the enduring human impulse to imbue charismatic individuals with superhuman attributes." -San Francisco Chronicle "Told with a mixture of humor and compassion. . . . Throughout this confessional book a grown man tells of an unusual, even weird childhood and the blind submission that consumed his family's life." -ROBERT COLES The New York Times Book Review "My Father's Guru is an interesting account of a warped upbringing made fascinating by the insight it provides into Masson's adult life. He makes no excuses: in initially revering Freud and other authority figures, Masson realizes he was seeking new and better gurus that Brunton-and was fated to reject them pitilessly when they showed themselves, like Brunton, to be merely human." -Los Angeles Times Book Review "Beneath the guru-bashing, the book is Masson's poignant and loving indictment of his parents, worth reading for his psychological portrait of coming-of-age disillusionment." -Seattle Weekly


The Birth of the Khalsa

The Birth of the Khalsa

Author: Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh

Publisher: SUNY Press

Published: 2005-09-29

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 9780791465844

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A feminist reconsideration of Sikh identity, discussing its original egalitarianism and current hypermasculine quality, which is harmful to both men and women.


A Carnival of Parting

A Carnival of Parting

Author: Ann Grodzins Gold

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2023-07-28

Total Pages: 391

ISBN-13: 0520911555

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Madhu Natisar Nath is a Rajasthani farmer with no formal schooling. He is also a singer, a musician, and a storyteller. At the center of A Carnival of Parting are Madhu Nath's oral performances of two linked tales about the legendary Indian kings, Bharthari of Ujjain and Gopi Chand of Bengal. Both characters, while still in their prime, leave thrones and families to be initiated as yogis—a process rich in adventure and melodrama, one that offers unique insights into popular Hinduism's view of world renunciation. Ann Grodzins Gold presents these living oral epic traditions as flowing narratives, transmitting to Western readers the pleasures, moods, and interactive dimensions of a village bard's performance. Three introductory chapters and an interpretive afterword, together with an appendix on the bard's language by linguist David Magier, supply A Carnival of Parting with a full range of ethnographic, historical, and cultural backgrounds. Gold gives a frank and engaging portrayal of the bard Madhu Nath and her work with him. The tales are most profoundly concerned, Gold argues, with human rather than divine realities. In a compelling afterword, she highlights their thematic emphases on politics, love, and death. Madhu Nath's vital colloquial telling of Gopi Chand and Bharthari's stories depicts renunciation as inevitable and interpersonal attachments as doomed, yet celebrates human existence as a "carnival of parting."


Good, Evil & Supernatural…

Good, Evil & Supernatural…

Author: ANURAG S PANDEY

Publisher: ANURAG S PANDEY

Published: 2020-11-16

Total Pages: 41

ISBN-13:

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Excerpts from the book I saw the main entrance getting a sharp shock. That moment only in the cow house I saw the cow jumping. All the doors from the main gate to the storeroom were pushed one by one by some invisible power. In the end the storeroom door got a big shock. A wave of air entered the storeroom. The cow had given birth to a calf a few days ago. That calf was tied in the storeroom only. The calf was sleeping. But as the wind entered the room, the calf woke up and started bouncing. We brother and sister got scared. Then only I felt the breeze rotating around my neck with some pressure. I got scared if Guru Akhandanand wants to strangle me? ** * She screamed, ‘I can’t leave A.P.! A.P. is mine only! A.P. is mine! A.P….’ I said, ‘Say this to that lady!’ She said fearfully, ‘No! She is scary!’ I asked, ‘Does she have long teeth or scary face?’ She said ‘No! She is beautiful. But I am feeling fear from her.’ I asked ‘How old is that lady?’ She said ‘About 25 years. She is asking me to leave A.P. Call A.P. I have to go to my A.P.’ ** * Then she looked at me and gave me a crooked and mysterious smile. Her face expressions were not of her. It was strange, cold and scary. Doesn’t know why I felt a wave of fear running down my spine. I controlled myself and asked to her, ‘What happened? Su? (I used to call her Su, short form of Sunita).’ She smiled in a way like she was making fun of me. Then she said in a friendly but stone hard, ice cold way, ‘You won’t be able to save her. I will kill your SU drop by drop like this only.’ ** * It was Tuesday night. I was practicing meditation by sitting in Padmasana posture. Suddenly I heard anklet’s sound around me, like some female came and was walking around me. Without getting scared I kept practicing meditation in the same posture. But after some time anklet’s sound came closer to me as if she had stepped on my meditation carpet. Means she had come too near to me. Yet I kept meditating. Then only doesn’t know from where a gust of breeze entered the room despite closed door and windows and began to hug me. The touch of the breeze was very ecstatic and it was giving me very deep pleasure. I found myself unable to keep the breeze away from me. ** * Again I felt myself laid in the jungle. Then only I saw an angry wolf stepping towards me, towards my head from 10 feet distance. Wolf’s stepping on the dry leaves was producing rattling sound. That wolf came near my left ear and growled fiercely. A chilled vibe ran through my whole body. The wolf started entering my body through my left ear hole. ** * That night in my half-waken sleep and half-waken dream, suddenly I felt weightlessness. A strange beautiful girl whose colour was unfair and skin was glowing, came in my dream. Her presence was not unfamiliar at all. She took my hand in her hand with love and flown off holding my hand and took me on a high branch of a tree in an unknown place. In my dream, I was realizing that she was a ghost. But yet I had no feeling of fear. I was totally fearless and I was feeling oneness with her. She poured a lot of love on me through her silent presence. When I woke up in the morning, I was feeling deeply contented and light. ** * He stepped on the road. As he reached the middle of the road, he became hundreds of feet tall. He was moving towards the field in his front. That field ended to some localities. Just in three steps he crossed the long field, entered some locality and got out of my eyes. ** * Life is the most precious gift which the God has given us just for free. We should value it. I was lucky that I was saved despite taking in 78 sleeping pills. But if I was not saved, how could I enjoy my life after the end of those dark days. We should always remember – good days always come and bad days always go. ** * Namaskar! I am Anurag Pandey (since 1978). I am writer, author, poet, lyricist and computer programmer. My poems have been published in national newspapers and magazines of India like Navbharat Times, Kadambini etc. I have written Story/ Dialogues/ Screenplay for various TV Shows like Lady Inspector, Shaka Laka Boom Boom, Indonesian TV shows etc. At present I live in Bhubaneswar, India. Meditation, yoga, mystery, paranormal, supernatural, love, relationships are some of my favorite topics to read and write. I hope you would enjoy reading this book. Your invaluable reviews requested.