S D Pandey

The path is endless... also “beginningless". On this path, everything, from a blade of grass to the oldest soul, moves on, in one way or another, as part of a cosmic evolutionary process.' The India-China war of 1962 brought the author, commanding a paramilitary battalion at the time, to the Himalayan foothills. Here, in the secluded environs of Mirtola ashram in a remote Kumaon village, he met an extraordinary man: Sri Madhava Ashish, an aircraft engineer who came from England in 1942 and stayed on to become a sadhu. It was the beginning of a teacher-disciple relationship that would last over thirty years, and change the author’s life. Ashish Da, the 'modern seer', is the central figure in this absorbing account of a mystical journey. Other significant presences are Yashoda Ma, a devotee of Krishna, who took sanyas and established the ashram more than seventy years ago; Ashish Da’s own guru, Sri Krishna Prem, one-time fighter pilot; and the pivotal Moti Rani, Yashoda Ma’s daughter, who, like her mother, renounced the world for the spiritual life. But the book is not so much about personalities as it is about the teachings and the methods used by the guru to help his disciples in their spiritual growth: mystical ideas (of Sri Nisargadatta and Gurdjieff, among others), austerities, dedicated service, meditation, intelligent enquiry, and the use of one’s dreams as tools in the quest for self-knowledge. As he describes his own spiritual journey, and life at the ashram that he shared with like-minded seekers, including his wife Kamla, the author also analyses and attempts to explain the teachings of a truly unique, and in many ways unorthodox, spiritual guru. The result is an engaging and invigorating book that should appeal to every intelligent and sensitive reader.