Rating: 
Summary: The positive energy in this book is delightful to the heart.
Review: Several months ago a friend from California came to visit me in Baltimore,MD. He changed my life because he gave me as a gift this book you the reader are considering reading. As I opened the first page I could not stop reading this magical book. The energy is truly breathtaking. It makes you want to meditate, chant, forward into Yoga postures, and most importantly believe in yourself. You are the universe therefore there is no seperation between you and your next door neighbor across the street or thousands of miles away. Since the Summer I have read this book three times. Each time getting better and better. Please, if you decide to read this book don't be afraid of it. Replace ignorance with enlightment. NAMASTE....................................
Rating:
Summary: A Toxic Personality, "spiritual" or not
Review: This book is the equivalent of a spiritual Stephen King novel. I recommend that you read it so that you can see what kind of 'spiritual persons' to STAY AWAY from. The narrator's only agenda is getting himself high. He always walks out on anyone to whom he makes any commitments, much to their pain and despair. He simply cares for no one but himself. Always a 'taker', never a giver.Who you choose to hang out with in your life has a lot to do with where you go and how you get there and how you come out when the trip is over.
Rating:
Summary: A Toxic Personality, "spiritual" or not
Review: This book is the equivalent of a spiritual Stephen King novel. I recommend that you read it so that you can see what kind of 'spiritual persons' to STAY AWAY from. The narrator's only agenda is getting himself high. He always walks out on anyone to whom he makes any commitments, much to their pain and despair. He simply cares for no one but himself. Always a 'taker', never a giver. Who you choose to hang out with in your life has a lot to do with where you go and how you get there and how you come out when the trip is over.
Rating:
Summary: A book of great historical value.
Review: This is a "spiritual memior" which describes Michael Riggs' (Bhagavan Das) spiritual search. His journey reads like a who's who of eastern religion. His Indian Guru was Neem Karoli Baba and his Buddhist guru was Kalu Rinpoche. In his travels he also has met "The Mother" from Sri Aurobindo's lineage, Dilgo Khyentse, Tarthang Tulku, Anandamayi Ma, Suzuki Roshi, Muktananda, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Sai Baba, Swami Prabhupada, Chogyam Trungpa, Alan Watts, Richard Alpert, Alan Ginsberg and many others. It may not be the best writing but it is a great tale. How wonderful to find such an open and honest work. For the seeker it is a tell-all from someone who has followed an extremely devoted path. The book also functions as a glossary of terms. Every time Das uses a new hindu or buddhist term he explains it instead of assuming the reader knows them all. Das also gives a good contrast between the Hindu and the Buddhist practices since he bounced back and forth between the two.
Rating:
Summary: A book of great historical value.
Review: This is a "spiritual memior" which describes Michael Riggs' (Bhagavan Das) spiritual search. His journey reads like a who's who of eastern religion. His Indian Guru was Neem Karoli Baba and his Buddhist guru was Kalu Rinpoche. In his travels he also has met "The Mother" from Sri Aurobindo's lineage, Dilgo Khyentse, Tarthang Tulku, Anandamayi Ma, Suzuki Roshi, Muktananda, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Sai Baba, Swami Prabhupada, Chogyam Trungpa, Alan Watts, Richard Alpert, Alan Ginsberg and many others. It may not be the best writing but it is a great tale. How wonderful to find such an open and honest work. For the seeker it is a tell-all from someone who has followed an extremely devoted path. The book also functions as a glossary of terms. Every time Das uses a new hindu or buddhist term he explains it instead of assuming the reader knows them all. Das also gives a good contrast between the Hindu and the Buddhist practices since he bounced back and forth between the two.
Rating: 
Summary: A great read that becomes muddled in the end.
Review: This is a highly entertaining book. I find the personal journey of Bhagavan Das pretty amazing, others may find him a nut. Reading the book will lead you to your own conclusions. I thought it was a lot of fun and I ate the book up in a day or two. But I really found the denouement muddled. However in defense of an otherwise great read, I must admit that anyone's personal spiritual revelations and experiences would be hard to put into words. Nevertheless, pick up the book and give it a read. The experience will be well worthwhile.
Rating:
Summary: Some amazing stories of life on the spiritual trek.
Review: This is a surprisingly charming, engaging and articulate book. I was surprised because I always thought of Bhagavan Das as a "spaced-out" hippie/yogi who probably could not punctuate a sentence or remember his zip code. I was taken in by his wild Rastafarian-gone-to-seed looks. He is out-there, make no mistake about it. But he is also thoughtful, insightful, and mostly guileless. The few follies in the book are self-deceptions, as when he acts out his sexual obsessiveness in ways that are profoundly harmful to the people in his life, while seeing it all as just so much spiritual melodrama. No doubt it is that, but some of it is also boorish sexual misbehavior, and no amount of "up-leveling" the conversation makes any of that go away. But even his foolishness is instructive. He has some amazing stories to tell of life on the spiritual trek. He lived the life of a serious Hindu sadhu in India, and some other, in some ways even more exotic, forms of life in America. This book is mostly story-telling--the most fascinating stories imaginable. These are challenging stories, stories that inspire and that remind us that authentic spirituality has nothing to do with conventional belief systems or other similar mundane matters. Real spirituality is about transcendence, and Bhagavan Das' book gives us a first-person account of what transcendence really looks like. Such books are rare and precious. Even his preachments are few, far between, and usually descriptive of some important truth. This passage captures the spirit of both the story-telling and the sermonizing: "I have done it all. I have done the deepest, most intense spiritual practices. When I was doing my one hundred thousand prostrations at Bodh Gaya, I had my board and I was out there at four in the morning for three hours, one hundred thousand prostrations. . . sixty to seventy thousand prostrations into doing this, I did a prostration, and I completely slide off the board into infinity. I went into this complete realm of golden light and bliss, I saw nothing but golden Buddhas shining a light upon me. And I opened into a whole realm. And then I got up and did the next prostration. . . In a way, that's what life is. Life is like doing prostrations. . .The point I'm getting to is that it takes one hundred thousand prostrations to get one good one." If you need some fuel to start you on your next thousand prostrations, this is a good place to start.
Rating:
Summary: Some amazing stories of life on the spiritual trek.
Review: This is a surprisingly charming, engaging and articulate book. I was surprised because I always thought of Bhagavan Das as a "spaced-out" hippie/yogi who probably could not punctuate a sentence or remember his zip code. I was taken in by his wild Rastafarian-gone-to-seed looks. He is out-there, make no mistake about it. But he is also thoughtful, insightful, and mostly guileless. The few follies in the book are self-deceptions, as when he acts out his sexual obsessiveness in ways that are profoundly harmful to the people in his life, while seeing it all as just so much spiritual melodrama. No doubt it is that, but some of it is also boorish sexual misbehavior, and no amount of "up-leveling" the conversation makes any of that go away. But even his foolishness is instructive. He has some amazing stories to tell of life on the spiritual trek. He lived the life of a serious Hindu sadhu in India, and some other, in some ways even more exotic, forms of life in America. This book is mostly story-telling--the most fascinating stories imaginable. These are challenging stories, stories that inspire and that remind us that authentic spirituality has nothing to do with conventional belief systems or other similar mundane matters. Real spirituality is about transcendence, and Bhagavan Das' book gives us a first-person account of what transcendence really looks like. Such books are rare and precious. Even his preachments are few, far between, and usually descriptive of some important truth. This passage captures the spirit of both the story-telling and the sermonizing: "I have done it all. I have done the deepest, most intense spiritual practices. When I was doing my one hundred thousand prostrations at Bodh Gaya, I had my board and I was out there at four in the morning for three hours, one hundred thousand prostrations. . . sixty to seventy thousand prostrations into doing this, I did a prostration, and I completely slide off the board into infinity. I went into this complete realm of golden light and bliss, I saw nothing but golden Buddhas shining a light upon me. And I opened into a whole realm. And then I got up and did the next prostration. . . In a way, that's what life is. Life is like doing prostrations. . .The point I'm getting to is that it takes one hundred thousand prostrations to get one good one." If you need some fuel to start you on your next thousand prostrations, this is a good place to start.
Rating:
Summary: Let him who is without sin...
Review: This is probably not a book that will make much sense to hard-headed "thinking types". But for anyone with a nuanced understanding of religious devotion and yogic experience, it is a great story. It is, in a way, a myth in the un-making. Bhagavan Das, for all his obvious faults, has a most sincere, humorous and profound sense of life. The "holy man" he was once imagined to be (and perhaps, imagined himself to be) is laid to rest in this reminiscence of a life lived intensely, unconventionally and sometimes, in some ways, badly. The subtext of this strange hagiography -- or perhaps, anti-hagiography -- is that sometimes, in order to know God, we have to err extensively in ways that are most human. Such was the case with many great saints-- such as Augustine, or even the Buddha, who was once a hedonistic prince with a harem. This is not to imply that Bhagavan Das is necessarily a saint. However the book contains an implicit message, one that I take to be a very positive: in the midst of life's complications, uncertainties and moral ambiguities, enlightenment sometimes shines through. As Leonard Cohen sang, "There is a crack in everything...that's how the light gets in."
Rating:
Summary: An Inspiring Tale of a Spiritual Journey
Review: This is really a great book and one that I would recommend to anyone interested in devotional spirituality, especially Hindu and Buddhist. This is a very honest book and he has clearly made it a point to not glamorize it or gloss over the sordid parts. Highly recommended!
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