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American Veda: From Emerson And The Beatles To Yoga And Meditation How Indian Spirituality Changed The West (2010)

by Philip Goldberg(Favorite Author)

3.86 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0385521340 (ISBN13: 9780385521345)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Crown Archetype

review 1: Amazing, awesome book! The kind that made me extra eager for my nighttime reading fix! We met Phil the author at Bhaktifest. He was the MC for a session there about the Beatles influence on bringing Eastern spirituality to the West - with a very cool 4 piece band of yogi rockers doing the Beatles songs. Anyway, we got autographed copy from him there. Took me a long time to get through the book. It has great depth and no wasted words. It is as thorough and well-researched as it is enlightening and captivating. I loved it. Folded down about a million pages to refer back to particular points. I gained a lot of perspective on the oneness movement. And he has a superb writing style; what a way with words!A few keepers...The three classic paths of enlightenment in the Bhagavad ... moreGita: Jnana, karma, and Bhakti. Intellect, action, devotion.Three kinds of Vedic transmitters: pandits, acharyas, and gurus. Scholars, scholars who also address personal concerns of students, and those with higher spiritual attainment aka divine incarnations (sometimes) whose mere presence or darshan has spiritual impact. Fowler's six stages of faith. Gotta get to know Phil!
review 2: A decent starting point, and I enjoyed the chapters on Vivekananda and Yogananda) but the central argument sort of breaks down, and the second half of the book devolves into a guru-per-3-pages format, to the point where it seemed more like a narrative catalog than a monograph. That said, I left the book wanting to read more to fill in the gaps (for example, the ambivalent relationship between yoga and modernity, or cultural commodification) and that's never a bad thing. less

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