Ralph campbell autobiography of a yogi
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also develop
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My Favorite Book(s)‚ And Why
Books were more important to me when I was coming up than they ever will be again. I mean, books got me through school. Boring, sterile, terrible school. I occupied my desk with the enthusiasm of a criminal in an electric chair. Ergo, children’s books occupy an unparalleled place in my heart and in my personal library.
Here’s what I did, growing up in southern California and Hawaii, festering to be out in the sun, climbing trees! Morning recess: go get guava juice and toast for a snack, go to the library and get a book. I went through them like Thoreau, simply taking the nearest. Then back to class. Read through math. Read through geography. Read through reading. The beauty of it was that by eighth grade I had done all the required reading for high school so I was free to explore important things like sex and music. In college, they still hadn’t really caught up to me, and I began to wonder how much sense these grown-ups really had. I’ve been skeptical of adult literature ever since.
The favorites: fairy tales and Laura Ingalls Wilder — her “Little House” books have been made into a ghastly T.V. show, alas. Her mysticism, intelligence and rapport with nature shine so clearly in her writing. She wrote
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Perspective: A Jewish American’s Transformation of His Perception of Jesus
December 2020
Many Jews have seen the Christ through the filter of the havoc his followers have wrecked throughout history—such as the Crusades, slavery, Colonialism, and the Holocaust. It took exposure to Hinduism, and in particular Vedantic spiritual influences, for this author to see Jesus in a different light—as a mystic and a satguru whose teachings can be a legitimate pathway to the one, ultimate, unified Consciousness—Brahman.
Growing up in the melting pot of Brooklyn, long before it was a hipster enclave, I was familiar with three kinds of Jesus. There was the one-and-only begotten son of God, Savior of all Mankind, who was worshipped by the Irish and Italian Catholics in my working-class neighborhood. The other two versions were the ones prevalent amongst the Jews. One was the laudable ethical teacher—a nice Jewish boy, essentially a good rabbi who met with a terrible fate. The other, the favorite of the more cynical Jews, was a Jesus that never really existed—a creature of mythology, like Apollo or Zeus.
In my atheistic home, where reli