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This book throws new light upon events relating to the Irani mystic Meher Baba (1894-1969). Part One is a biographical overview. Part Two describes Meher Baba's teaching. Part Three affords a comparison with the Zoroastrian Kaivan school of the Mughal era. Part Four profiles critics and supporters of Meher Baba, and locates obscured data contradicting the well known dismissal by Paul Brunton. An annotated bibliography is also supplied.
In 1897, an Indian yogi named Bava Lachman Dass exhibited himself at the Westminster Aquarium in London, demonstrating forty-eight yoga positions to a bemused audience. Four years earlier, Hindu philosopher Swami Vivekananda had spoken at the first World Parliament of Religions in Chicago, where theosophist Annie Besant rhapsodized about 'his inborn sense of worth' and the 'exquisite beauty' of his spiritual message.The Victorians had conflicted views on the religious beliefs and practices of the Indian sub-continent, blending fascination and suspicion. But within two generations, legions of young Westerners would be following the 'hippie trail' to India, and the Beatles would be meditating at the feet of the guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Journalist Mick Brown's vivid account charts the eccentric history of the West's evolving love affair with Indian religion through a curious cast of scholars, seekers, charlatans and saints.From Edwin Arnold, whose epic poem about the life of the Buddha became a best-seller in Victorian Britain, to the occultist and magician Aleister Crowley; and from spiritual teachers Jiddu Krishnamurti, Meher Baba and Ramana Maharshi to the controversial guru Rajneesh, The Nirvana Express is an exhilarating, sometimes troubling journey through the West's search for enlightenment.
An illustrated A to Z reference containing more than 700 entries providing information on the theology, people, historical events, institutions and movements related to Hinduism.
In this biographical study, Antonio Rigopoulos explores the fundamental role of a hagiographer within a charismatic religious movement: in this case, the postsectarian, cosmopolitan community of the Indian guru Sathya Sai Baba. The guru's hagiographer, Narayan Kasturi, was already a distinguished litterateur by the time he first met Sathya Sai Baba in 1948. The two lived together at the guru's hermitage more or less continuously from 1954 up until Kasturi's death, in 1987. Despite Kasturi's influential hagiography, Sathyam Sivam Sundaram, little scholarly attention has been paid to the hagiographer himself and his importance to the movement. In detailing Kasturi's relationship to Sathya Sai Baba, Rigopoulos emphasizes that the hagiographer's work was not subordinate to the guru's definition of himself. Rather, his discourses with the holy man had a reciprocal and reinforcing influence, resulting in the construction of a unified canon. Furthermore, Kasturi's ability to perform a variety of functions as a hagiographer successfully mediated the relationship between the guru and his followers. Drawing on years of research on the movement as well as interviews with Kasturi himself, this book deepens our understanding of this important pan-Indian figure and his charismatic religious movement.
The Sai Baba movement, centered on the Indian guru Sathya Sai Baba (b. 1926), today attracts a global following from Japan to South Africa. Regarded as a divine incarnation, Sathya Sai Baba traces his genealogy to Shirdi Sai Baba (d. 1918), a mendicant in colonial India identified with various Sufi and devotional genealogies. The movement, thus, has “roots” in Shirdi Sai Baba but as it globalizes, it has developed conjunctions with other religious traditions, New Religious movements, and New Age ideas. This book offers an account of the Sai Baba movement as a pathway for charting the varied cartographies, sensory formations, and cultural memories implicated in urbanization and globalization. It traverses the terrain between social theories for the study of religion and cities ---themselves a product of modernity---and the radical, creative, and unexpected modernity of contemporary religious movements. It is based on ethnographic research carried out in India, Kenya, and the US.
Devotional Spaces of a Global Saint focuses on the presence and contemporaneity of Shirdi Sai Baba (d.1918), who has a vast following in postcolonial South Asia and an ever-growing global diaspora. Essays consider the saint’s influence on everyday life and how visual, narrative, textual, sensorial, performative, political, social, and spatial practices interpenetrate to produce multiple terrains of devotion. Contributions by twelve scholars of several academic disciplines explore eruptions and circulations of sacred materials, spatialities of devotional practices, visual and digital imaginaries, transcultural narrativizations, and material affects and effects of Sai Baba. The presentation transcends routine scholarly discussions about sainthood, cultures of worship, religious objects, Hinduism and Islam. Shirdi Sai Baba’s presence conveys inspiration and healing energies and he accepted the entreaties of people of all castes and creeds, offering an alternative to communal ideologies of his time – and the present. Considerations of Shirdi Sai Baba’s milieux of devotional praxis situate and localize debates about the meaning of nation and religion, past and present, urbanization, and class identity in transitions from colonial to postcolonial/global South Asia. The book expands the boundaries of the study of Shirdi Sai Baba and makes important contributions to South Asia Studies, Anthropology, Religious Studies, Global Studies, Urban Studies, Indian Ocean Studies, Inter-Asian Studies, Visual and Media Studies, and Cultural Geography.
Written in 1984 during his Cambridge amateur period, this was the author's first phase explication of his daring alternative science. It is the most important of his early works. Commencing with a riposte to the cultural materialist trend in anthropology, the thesis branches out over various disciplines, attempting to expand upon leitmotifs supplied in the early chapters. There are critical surveys of evolutionist thought, anthropological theories, the history of science, the history of religions, psychological theories, mind-brain philosophy, Western philosophy and sociological theories. A polymathic ideal is expressed in part one, while the extension in critical surveys comprises part two, which forms the main bulk of the book.
The lengthy introduction, which has been described as a book in itself, includes a vigorous critique of the new age counterculture. A confrontation occurs with Eliade, Jung, Leary, Grof, Aldous Huxley, Ken Wilbur, Colin Wilson and others. The author objects to popular theories of the perennial philosophy and provides an alternative set of references from specialist scholarship. scholarly theories. The legendary prophet Zarathushtra gains life in this overview. The focus moves to the Sassanian era of Gnostic associations, encompassing not only Manichaeism, but also the more obscure Mazdakism. civilization to the Upanishadic era. Part four covers the six classical systems of Hindu philosophy, and includes the medieval Vedantic exponents Shankara and Ramauja. Part five investigates the Shramana philosophers who included Gautama Buddha, and an attempt is made to chart occurrences in Jainism, a subject more rarely dealt with.
First trace the rise of new religious movements throughout history, with special emphasis on the past century, then learn about contemporary movements that have arisen since the Second World War, and finally discover the differences from previous generations of New Religious Movements that make them more controversial.