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Rating: 
Summary: Debunking Paul Brunton
Review: Amazing story of a family subjagated by the pseudo guru Paul Brunton. I remember that after reading "A Secret Search in India" and "A Secret Search in Egypt" I was somehow fascinated by Paul Brunton and his tellings. But they were so unbelievable, that I droped him. In the present book Brunton is exposed as a total fraud. The autobiography about the childhood of Masson unfolds step by step how his family became involved and enslaved by Brunton. Althrough as a reader one may ask why such a dependency on such a betrayer may have been possible, it is still so that many people who are save from cults are prone to become victim to this one-person-cult kind of cult. It is shown in detail, how Brunton established his position of someone beeing advanced, close to the final goal of life. Then they had to follow his advices to get there, too. It also did then not matter, that other people thought it was all crap. They were just underdeveloped. Not everyone could understand and accept, that Brunton came from Sirius. Bruntons case is all too strange, but he found disciples, nevertheless. The book also contains Masson's way out of this missery. The absurdities of Bruntons teachings, further information from other teachers, also the confusions after the wrong third world war prediction and finally university saved Masson's mental life. The book is an easy reader, and one delves deep into the authors inner mental workings.
Rating: 
Summary: growing up and learning your parents are human
Review: I have to say that I liked this book a great deal. Perhaps it was because I was exposed as a young adult to many of these odd ideas that Paul Brunton had. There is a large subculture that believes all of that stuff to this day. I have to wonder what it is about that that is so appealing to some people. Is it because it seems romantic that there are "perfect" masters sneaking around secretly keeping us all going? That Tibet and the ET's are engineering our society? Anyway, Masson writes very well about becoming disallusioned with his parents and Paul Brunton. He describes the thrill of growing up with a demigod (because that was what Brunton hinted that he was)and the romance of being in on these secrets. And the gradual dawning of knowledge. One of the best parts of the book is Dr. Masson's ultimate acceptance of PB as a friend and companion. It is too bad that PB felt that he had to be so much more.
Rating: 
Summary: One of the Worst Books I've Ever Read
Review: I would give this book a zero if Amazon made such an option available. And I would have quit reading it after the first chapter had my book group not selected it for discussion. (What on earth possessed us to choose this book, I cannot say.) Unless one has a personal interest in Paul Brunton (the guru in question), as do some of the the other Amazon reviewers, the book is boring, superficial and pedestrian. To my mind, the interesting story here is how members of an intelligent, educated, Jewish family suspended their critical faculties and cultural assumptions to became followers of a man who claimed variously to come from another planet and a far off star. But Masson offers no insight - psychological, cultural, religious or other - into the motivations of his father, mother and uncle to reform their lives in supplication to a wacky charlatan. Instead he gives us an event-by-event account of the details of life with Brunton, told in the mind-dulling, repetitious prose of a what-I-did-on-my-summer-vacation type of essay. Self-deluded gurus are a dime a dozen. Intelligent, intimate insight into what makes others follow them is not. This book does nothing to disturb that balance. The only insight you'll get from this book is that the author thinks quite highly of himself, with no demonstrable evidence to support the conclusion. I got my copy from the library, and though it was overpriced at that.
Rating:
Summary: An Honest look at the De-volution of Spiritual Arrogance
Review: Jeffrey Masson recounts his experiences growing up with a family under the direction of self-appointed Guru and misdirected(-ing?) "Eastern Star" Paul Brunton. Masson makes no attempt to hide the illusions he and his parents and sister were held by, telling how "P.B." (Paul Brunton) was able to hold sway over his impressionable if well to do and world traveled, educated parents while himself undergoing no scrutiny. Indeed, I found this book to be a blueprint for many families that have chosen to drop everything, and seek "spiritual improvement" from an outside source. It seems so much easier sometimes to get all of the answers from the source, a teacher or minister, rather than be truely introspective and fix the very real personality problems and faults we all have. Masson unflinchingly includes excerpts from his younger years, when he was convinced he was on a higher spiritual plane than most of his fellow beings. The arrogance and naivete of his youth is humorous if somewhat worrisome, though we find that he is gifted with a humble introspection that allowed him to outgrow the worst of these. He also explains how over the years through his own education he came to find that most of Brunton's teachings were manufactured or misquoted, the man he'd once so admired didn't know the difference between Sanskrit and Hindi, and certainly was confused as to the texts he supposedly had mastered. Perhaps most interesting, Masson documents his years at Harvard when he has the opportunity to meet other "spiritual" minds in the orientalist religious movements, and discover that supposedly great spiritual men like Alan Watts and Edward Conze were hardly above treating their own families with disregard and cruelty (see page 160). Slowly Masson comes to take critical account of what the "spiritual masters" around him, including family guru Paul Brunton, lack--compassion and a base in reality is traded for the freedom of power over others. Paul Brunton is humiliatingly debunked by the newly savvy Masson upon his return from college--a lesson in developing critical thinking skills and overcoming pithy know-it-all canned "spiritualism" for all of us, written in a thoughtful and reflective manner. Why after all, do the "spiritually developed" so crave the "Maya" of worldly recognition and devotion? Masson is critical too of his old self, and closes on a gentle note.
Rating:
Summary: An Honest look at the De-volution of Spiritual Arrogance
Review: Jeffrey Masson recounts his experiences growing up with a family under the direction of self-appointed Guru and misdirected(-ing?) "Eastern Star" Paul Brunton. Masson makes no attempt to hide the illusions he and his parents and sister were held by, telling how "P.B." (Paul Brunton) was able to hold sway over his impressionable if well to do and world traveled, educated parents while himself undergoing no scrutiny. Indeed, I found this book to be a blueprint for many families that have chosen to drop everything, and seek "spiritual improvement" from an outside source. It seems so much easier sometimes to get all of the answers from the source, a teacher or minister, rather than be truely introspective and fix the very real personality problems and faults we all have. Masson unflinchingly includes excerpts from his younger years, when he was convinced he was on a higher spiritual plane than most of his fellow beings. The arrogance and naivete of his youth is humorous if somewhat worrisome, though we find that he is gifted with a humble introspection that allowed him to outgrow the worst of these. He also explains how over the years through his own education he came to find that most of Brunton's teachings were manufactured or misquoted, the man he'd once so admired didn't know the difference between Sanskrit and Hindi, and certainly was confused as to the texts he supposedly had mastered. Perhaps most interesting, Masson documents his years at Harvard when he has the opportunity to meet other "spiritual" minds in the orientalist religious movements, and discover that supposedly great spiritual men like Alan Watts and Edward Conze were hardly above treating their own families with disregard and cruelty (see page 160). Slowly Masson comes to take critical account of what the "spiritual masters" around him, including family guru Paul Brunton, lack--compassion and a base in reality is traded for the freedom of power over others. Paul Brunton is humiliatingly debunked by the newly savvy Masson upon his return from college--a lesson in developing critical thinking skills and overcoming pithy know-it-all canned "spiritualism" for all of us, written in a thoughtful and reflective manner. Why after all, do the "spiritually developed" so crave the "Maya" of worldly recognition and devotion? Masson is critical too of his old self, and closes on a gentle note.
Rating:
Summary: Long excuse for personal problems
Review: The book is a long excuse for Masson's personal problems and is interesting only to readers very concerned with Paul Brunton. Masson looks for the worst he can remember about a person, he knew in his youth, and expands on every little word. If I was held accountable for every stupid word and phrase I have myself uttered (and the book is littered with that stuff) then my sisters could have me declared insane. Paul Brunton affected many people and engaged many readers, but to require him to be absolutely right all the time would be to ask for Buddha combined with Jesus. The book makes Masson sound childish and preoccupied with himself. The destroyed childhood, he describes, to me sounds like and extremely privileged situation where several adults deeply cared and paid attention to a pretty uninteresting kid. Get a grip Masson.
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