Book Review

The Mind of the Guru

Rajiv Mehrotra. Penguin Books,

11 Community Centre,

Panchsheel Park,

New Delhi 110 017. 2003. xv + 256 pp. Rs.395.

At a crucial juncture of human life dawns the insubstantiality of this world of day-to-day experience, and life seems a bottomless abyss with shadows flitting all over. The heart then seeks the spiritual light that can guide one out of this maddening labyrinth. A new hunt begins––for the great ones who know the way. The series of dialogs in this book is an outcome of such a search conducted by Rajiv Mehrotra for many years by interviewing gurus from different traditions.

The term guru has come to have various connotations in different traditions and in colloquial usage. Whatever be our understanding of the term, here we are in the presence of twenty exceptional minds––intellectual and spiritual masters of our times whose expanse encompasses a range wide enough to exclude none. Each has his perspective, rooted in a tradition different frtom another, yet they all play the same melodious note––that of love, compassion, humanistic impulse, selfless-ness, service and sacrifice.

Swami Shuddhidananda

© "Prabuddha Bharata" (September, 2004) published by Advaita Ashrama, 5 Dehi Entally Road, Kolkata 700 014. Website: www.advaitaonline.com. Reprinted with permission.

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