What Happened
Mukunda Lal Ghosh grows up in a Bengali household filled with mystical artifacts and visits from saints who can inhabit two bodies at once. Rejecting a conventional life, he searches for a guru, eventually finding the stern Sri Yukteswar. Rather than retreating to a cave, Mukunda is ordered to earn a college degree to make his future teachings palatable to the West. After years of hermitage training and initiation into the decarbonizing science of Kriya Yoga, he travels to Boston and Los Angeles. He spends decades translating Sanskrit concepts into English lectures, building ashrams, and documenting the lives of India’s modern wonder-workers for a global audience.
Key figures
- Sri Yukteswar
The author's unemotional, disciplined guru and spiritual guide.
- Lahiri Mahasaya
The master who popularized Kriya Yoga in modern India.
- Babaji
A deathless, Himalayan yogi-Christ who revived ancient sciences.
- Luther Burbank
American botanist whom the author considers an 'American Saint'.
What it's really about
- Discipline vs. Desire
- Obeying a guru’s mundane orders to achieve spiritual liberation.
- Scientific Mysticism
- Explaining miracles through physiological changes and energy transmutation.
Why it's memorable
- A 'Perfume Saint' who produces scents out of thin air for visitors.
- The author receiving a telepathic postcard warning him not to meet a specific train.
Where it lands
The author concludes his narrative in 1945 California, reflecting on the end of World War II and the need for spiritual colonies to heal the atomic age.
For your book club
- The reconciliation of ancient Hindu asceticism with modern Western university education requirements.
- The claim that advanced yogis can transmute their physical cells into pure energy.