Most Popular Books by Kenneth Rose

The Bhagavad Gita or the Bible? Krishna or Jesus? One way or many ways? These questions led Kenneth Rose on a journey of spiritual discovery to the Hare Krishna movement, a fundamentalist Bible college, a Trappist monastery, Harvard''s Center for the Study of World Religions, and India, where he had an audience with the Dalai Lama, a personal encounter with Papaji, and encountered the living presence of Sri Ramana Maharshi in his ashram in the shadow of the sacred mountain known as Arunachala. At each stop on this journey, he gained new insights into the spiritual life, but the radical differences between these spiritual traditions raised the question of which--if any--of these paths is ultimate.This question has never been more relevant than now because yogis and meditators often encounter evangelical and nondenominational Christians who claim to have the only true spirituality. Because some Christians feel uneasy or disloyal to Jesus and God when they practice yoga and meditation, they may stop practicing while others try to Christianize these practices. Still others blend traditions but feel uncertain about whether they really fit together.As a spiritual practitioner who has moved between the usually separate worlds of evangelical Christianity and Hindu and Buddhist spiritualities, Kenneth Rose tells in The Light of the Self: A Memoir of a Spiritual Awakening how the wisdom of teachers as diverse as Thomas Merton, Alan Watts, the Buddha, Joseph Campbell, Meister Eckhart, Dionysius the Areopagite, John of the Cross, Sri Ramana Maharshi, Patanjali, D. T. Suzuki, Osho, and Gopi Krishna pointed out the steps that led him from exclusivistic religion to the practice of nondual teachings in Hinduism, Buddhism, and mystical Christianity.In a book that is both a compelling spiritual memoir playing out on three continents and a skillful guide to mind-altering mystical teachings in Hinduism, Buddhism, and mystical Christianity, Kenneth Rose traces his personal spiritual pilgrimage and shares the teachings that transformed his life--and that can transform yours as well.Kenneth Rose, Ph.D., has been a professor of philosophy and religion for nearly three decades. His degrees include an M.Div. from Harvard Divinity School and an M.A. and Ph.D. in the Study of Religion from Harvard University. His books include Yoga, Meditation, and Mysticism: Contemplative Universals (Bloomsbury Academic) and Meditative Landmarks and Pluralism: The Future of Religion (Bloomsbury Academic).https://anahatarose.com/[email protected]/author/kennethrose

This book is not linear, yet it has a goal-awakening to the mystical depth of life. My path to that depth has not been direct, since it has been marked by detours, backslidings, awakenings, disappointments, dark nights of the soul, and golden mountaintop mornings. I have responded to all of this with words: poems, journal entries, manifestos, aphorisms, and the first pages of numerous started but not finished articles and books (as well as published articles and books). This book is a gathering of many of these unpublished attempts to describe countless moments of elation, surprise, despair, or joy on the spiritual path.This book reflects my own journey, and it is not as straight and as methodical as some may desire. Although I sometimes imagine that I would have liked nothing more than to have been an ascetic in a Himalayan hermitage meditating calmly for a dozen hours a day for fifty years, this has not been the path that has unfolded karmically and dharmically before my feet. So I have taken my spiritual life as I could get it while I was on the run.These fragments of contemplation are news reports or dispatches from the ancient and unbroken spiritual heritage of humanity, which has come to me mostly through the study and practice of Hindu schools of yoga, Vedānta, and bhakti, Mahāyāna and Theravāda Buddhist meditation, and Christian mystical theology, east and west. My personal practice has long cycled through these traditions, ever and again, like the change of the seasons. If you would like to share this journey with me, you need not start at the beginning or at the end of this book. Just open the book on impulse or with a random intention and read a bit here and there until the wisdom that might help you on your own journey emerges. Then, you can put the book aside-until perhaps the next time you need a fragment of contemplation as you run through a hectic week.

Kenneth Rose was one of the most astute observers of the establishment for over seventy years. His impeccable social placement located him within the beating heart of the national elite for decades. Equipped as Rose was to witness, detail and report, these journals vividly portray some of the most important events and people of the last century.