perhaps the greatest piece of truly inspired spiritual literature ever written. considered by many to be the epitome of the vast collection of writings that is Vedanta. its the story of lord krishna's holy teachings and advice to a warrior whose heart is in great distress on the eve of battle. and aren't we all warriors on the eve of the battle of daily life? lord krishna lays out the various ways a person can seek and find and know God. i love the book very much indeed and have read it many times over during the past few decades. this particular translation is a thing of sheer beauty and power. this is by far my favorite translation of the several i've read. this book belongs on the reading table of every sincere spiritual seeker. its simply sublime.

This is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read. If you're at all curious about Hinduism - this book has it all. Now I don't personally believe that a blue-skinned guy named Krishna ever really existed. But I do believe he is an excellent allegory, or character, used to convey the beliefs of Hinduism and the experience (and non-experience) of Brahman(God). My favorite thing about this book is that Krishna is active in everyday life. The story is actually an excerpt from the epic "Mahabarata". It takes place in the middle of a battlefield. Arjuna, a warrior, does not want to fight because he sees that all the guys on the other side are his relatives - his brothers so to speak. Krishna tells Arjuna to fight and then goes on to explain why it's ok - all the while expounding the ideals and beliefs of the Hindus. What's cool is that even though they express that God is in everyone and everything - it's ok to participate in ordinary life according to your nature. Arjuna has the nature of a warrior so he is supposed to fight when there is a battle. Not everybody needs to sit around meditating and smoking hemp.
The book is a masterpiece and it is beautifully done. Check it out.

This is not a translation of the Gita as much as an intepretation. Scholars will find much to irritate them here as direct translation was not Isherwood's aim, but rather an interpretation of the text in such a way that was best suited to Isherwood's own aim's of self-enlightenment. This volume is easy to read, and many sections have been put into a semi-poetical form to recall the feel of the original (a big plus, as few modern translations have attempted to do the same). Also, quite interesting is the introduction by Aldous Huxley, in which he relates his "Perennial Philosophy" to the Gita and speaks in detail about Hinduism as well as it's relation to other faiths. An appendix on various Hindoo ideas is included that makes some potentially foreign concepts a little bit easier to assimilate. For anyone who loves the Gita as I do, this book is a treasure trove.

"The Isherwood Century". What a great choice of title for this invaluable (and well edited) collections of essays, interviews, ruminations on the life and influence of Christopher Isherwood. While his is a household name, primarily beacuse of the worldwide success and endurance of "Cabaret" the musical based on his Berlin Stories (I am a Camera, Goodbye to Berlin, etc), this informed and endlessly interesting survey provides a fine documentation for Isherwood's position of importance on 20th Century literature, his positive role model for gay writers and all gay people who care about significant relationships, his courage as an early pacifist, his impact on those students fortunate enough to have studied in his unique classes. Reading first hand encounters from such a broad spectrum of friends and reporters always give a more fine tuned view than a straight out biography. And for a man whose literary skills polished the concept of autobigraphy that is matched by few others, this is quite an achievement.

Reading "The Isherwood Century" is discovering an involved panorama of life in the past century - politically, artistically, internationally, psychologically, and spiritually. More than a memoir, this book remains intimate despite its scope. At last we have a reference (outside of his own wondrous diaries) that validates the greatness of this significant human being.

The Isherwood Century is an impressive collection of essays and interviews on the life and work of Christopher Isherwood, including a fresh, in-depth view of his literary legacy and continuing influence. Included are Katherine Bucknell (Who is Christopher Isherwood?); Dan Luckenbill (Isherwood in Los Angeles); Stathis Orphanos (In the Blink of an Eye: Evolving with Christopher Isherwood); Michael S. Harper (Ish circa 1959-1963); Michael S. Harper (Reading from Isherwood's Letter circa 1959-1963); Robert Peters (Gay Isherwood Visits Straight Riverside); Carolyn G. Heilbrun (My Isherwood, My Bachardy); James P. White (Write It Down or It's Lost: Isherwood as Mentor), and sixteen other informative and insightful contributors. The Isherwood Century is a "must" for all students and fans of Isherwood's accomplishments and thoughts.

As a long-time reader of Isherwood's novels, autobiographies and diaries, I thought I knew everything there was to know about him. I was wrong, and I'm happy to say that I learned a great deal about the intimate Isherwood (as opposed to the person he chose to reveal in his work) from this collection. The informal Isherwood is here in memoirs and reminiscences, first and foremost by his partner Don Bachardy. As you would expect, Bachardy's portrait of Isherwood is precise, detailed, affectionate and harrowing (his series of drawings of Isherwood's last days are included), but the memories of former students of Isherwood as teacher, mentor and friend are equally revealing. The professional Isherwood appears in previously unpublished interviews and memoirs by such colleagues as Carolyn Heilbrun, whose piece about her few intersections with Isherwood as a literary subject takes an interesting turn into recalling his profound kindness to her in a time of spiritual crisis. And the lively and accessible essays by literary scholars served first to remind me of what an original and vivid writer Isherwood was and second to send me back to the novels that so inspired me when I first encountered them. Isherwood achieved thrilling literary effects by combining witheringly accurate observation of his characters with a sensual evocation of time and place as if by magic. It seems only fitting that when the many writers here take very different beads on this complex man and artist what emerges from the collage of viewpoints is a surprisingly emotional and coherent portrait of the man himself.

I'm a sucker for plays, and this play is no exception. I was fascinated by the title and read it without having any idea as to what the content was. It is wonderfully written and stark for the time it was written. It tells the story of Christopher Isherwood and the time he spends in Germany during the Second World War. You confront frank subjects and controversial topics in this book, and you realize that during World War II, people worried about some of the same things today, such as unwanted pregnancy and racism, to name a couple. Everything you once viewed in an idealized way during this time period unravels, and you don't really mind.

In all its forms (plays, movies, and books) the legacy of the radical Sally Bowles will live on forever. It is the lidicracy of the times that makes this spectackle a spectacle. A starving artist in Berlin that on New Years Eve met a wild and (quote-on-quote) "Perfectly Marvelous Girl" in a drab nightclub in the mist of the third reich. The spirit of the girl in this grim country is one of the reasons that her story will live forever. And also, seeing a performance in Davis, California starring Matt Dunn as the Emcee, and Rebecca Tosca Grey as the ever so taslented Sally Bowles releived me of all my stress, as well as "mind matter."

Surely one of Isherwoods finest works. This memoir tells of his time in Hollywood during World War II and of his meeting and subsiquent association with Swami Prabhavananada. Isherwood approaches the subject with candid reflection and in his usual minimal style takes the reader on a a spiritual quest for the truth behind god and the trail of the pacifists dilemma during a crippling war. Auden, Huxley and a host of others walk through the work. An absolute must for Isherwood fans. I cried at the end...one of the best books I've ever read.

One of the most intelligently written books on the subject. Here, Isherwood recounts the events that lead him to meet a man who was to seriously effect the way christopher approached life as a pacifistin a war torn world. A remarkable relationship between a very modern man and a direct desciple from the lineage of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. I think that this is one of the best books I have ever read. Christerpher Isherwood is economical with words and yet is evocative,candid and funny. Auden, Huxley and meany more characters of the time walk through this memoir. I cried at the end. Written by a master. If you are a cynic on the subject of swamis read this... it was written by one..

Books of fiction and nonfiction, films, paintings, and museums abound in the ongoing ceaseless inspection of the atrocity and madness wrought by Hitler in Nazi Germany. It is an unfortunate fact that such turmoil gives rise to some of the best art in the years after the strife. Norman Page, in his brilliantly researched and written AUDEN AND ISHERWOOD: THE BERLIN YEARS, has selected two men of great significance in literature and poetry as his points of entry into studying the Berlin that seduced the world before it jolted nearly to an end. These portraits of Auden and Isherwood are really an examination of an historical time that altered the art world as inevitably as it altered our sense of the dangers of dictaorship.

Initally drawn to Berlin from the hallowed halls of English academe because of the rowdy free sex/hedonisitc atmosphere that had become Berlin, "Berlin meant Boys" and both our artists fled the England that sacrificed Oscar Wilde to find the open sexual freedom of the City of Sodom. Author Page gives us such a rich, fascinating ride through the places and faces of pre-war Berlin that we are finally allowed to see why Modernism started, why cinema became important, how artists such as Grosz and Dix and composers such as Weill and Stravinsky, scientists (Hirschfeld) and writers (Brecht) found such acrid colors for their creativity. Page is not confined to his title characters, though we learn more personal characteristics than any writer has dared to date: we are informed about Marlene Dietrich, Stephen Spender, Benjamin Britten, as well as a constellation of other characters encountered by them. This volume reads like a novel (not without some kinship to Isherwood's famed GOODBYE TO BERLIN), but its importance as a publication is its uncommonly thorough view of why Hitler rose, why the Berlin Wall was destined to be (and to fall), and why the center of the artistic universe was for a few short years the glossy, naughty Berlin.

This book is a must for those who want to understand the beginnings of sexual freedom, those fascinated by the inception of WW II, and for those who happen to love the poetry of W.H. Auden and the stories of Christopher Isherwood. Keep this book on your literary Reference Shelf.

"The enlightened, the Brahman-abiding,
Calm-hearted, unbewildered,
Is neither elated by the pleasant
Nor saddened by the unpleasant"

Every few years I read this extraordinary book...I've read other translations, but seem mostly to be drawn back to this one. Partly prose and partly verse, more interpretive than literal, it's in a flowing style, easy to understand, and with great clarity in its spiritual instruction.
"Shutting off sense
From what is outward,
Fixing the gaze
At the root of the eyebrows,
Checking the breath-stream
In and outgoing
Within the nostrils,
Holding the senses,
Holding the intellect,
Holding the mind fast,
He who seeks freedom,
Thrusts fear aside,
Thrusts aside anger
And puts off desire:
Truly that man
Is made free forever".

Written between the 5th and 2nd centuries B.C., this dialogue between Sri Krishna and Arjuna is an inspiring sacred text, and a must read for anyone interested in the great religions of the world.
This edition comes with an introduction by Aldous Huxley, a background history of the Gita and Mahabharata, 2 appendices, and the text has footnotes to aid in the meaning of certain words and personages.

"He who is free from delusion, and knows the supreme Reality, knows all that can be known. Therefore he adores me with his whole heart.
This is the most sacred of all the truths I have taught you. He who has realized it becomes truly wise. The purpose of his life is fulfilled".

Before I give you the back cover of this book, I have to tell you that this book is not necessarily an "easy read" despite its alliterated and enticing chapter titles. Having been a student of Laurence Rickels', I feel obligated to tell you that if you haven't read this book or any of his others (Aberrations of Mourning:Writing on German Crypts, Der unbetrauerbare Tod) you are absolutely missing out on some of the most interesting contemporary literary theory you can find!

"In 'cultural clips' that fast-forward and rewind through a variety of images, disciplines,and time zones, Laurence Rickels explores 'California' as both an empirical place and a symbolic configuration. Focusing on the changing image of the West Coast to study politics, sexuality, and the effects of mass media in modern culture, The Case of California is Rickels' dizzying psychohistory of postmodernity.

In California, Rickels locates 'the intersection between technology and the unconscious' and thus reconstructs the political front of pshoanalysis which arose to combat National Socialism. California and Germany, he contends, are two coasts of an era that 'lets roll' in the Enlightenment and continues to this day. Kafka is the 'ultimate Kalifornian'. The fall of the Berlin wall and the San Francisco Earthquake appear 'symptomatically in sync'. And the invention of the California teenager - the archetypical adolescent - begins with 'a certain central European refusal of death'.

As he addresses an array of popcultural phenomena, Rickels situates the Frankfurt School of Adorno Benjamin, Horkheimer, and Marcuse within the Freudian system - and within the critical boundaries of deconstruction. Along the way he explores music and sound, mourning and the charge of sexual abuse, group and adolescent psychology, female sexuality, the convergence of religious and hysterical conversion, and the shifting status of writing and literature brought about through the rise of 'reproductive' media such as photography, film, and television."

"The Case of California is one of the most powerful attempts we have so far to establish connections between contemporary culture and certain German texts that are inseparable from modernity." - Samuel Weber, University of California, Los Angeles

After A Single Man, this is my favorite Isherwood book. The four stories interconnect in several fascinating ways. They say a lot about the passage of time, about European history and Isherwood's personal history. They also say plenty about various forms of detachment. In fact, "Variations on Detachment" could be the book's sub-title. Isherwood has a way of gently underscoring the precariousness of being gay during a more repressive time in Western culture. "Mr. Lancaster" and "Paul" were the most moving sections in this regard. Throughout, Isherwood writes in clear, clean prose. It may sound like I'm reaching for a simile but as I was reading this book, I felt like I was drinking fresh spring water.

I was never one for audio books, I thought they were for people too lazy to read the real thing, and that many of them were read without feeling or emotion and sounded a bit like my 9th grade English teacher reading the death of Mercutio scene from Romeo and Juliet. But the combination of one of my favorite books and my favorite actor (Alan Cumming) led me to even buy used to hear what it sounded like. The search was well worth it! Alan puts so much into this brilliant recording. He intimately entwines you in the world of pre-war Berlin before the deluge. He is utterly witty handling the character of Fraulein Schroeder, uproariously funny with the famous Sally Bowles, and when he is Chris the narrator of the book, he takes you on a rollercoaster of emotions, from joy to sorrow to everything in between. Alan knows the book so well as if he came from that world. He captures your attention for the 3 hours that the running time is, and for 3 hours does NOT disappoint! If you're fortunate enough to be able and get a copy of this, I know you'll agree with me, and in the meantime they have to start reprinting this gem among literary and performance gems!

Prabhavananda used to be an indian monk of the Ramakrishna order directing the hollywood branch of that organisation in the first half of the last century. Isherwood was a famous writer who worked together with Prabhavananda. They translated indian scriptures and wrote several books, either together or independently. This particular book is a translation of the Vivekachudamani, a compact presentation of advaita vedanta, attributed to Shankara. It's pleasant to read and contains deep wisdom. The Ramakrishna Vivekananda Organisation has also another version of the Vivekachudamani on sale, which contains the Sanskrit text as well.

Shankara was a 7th century hindu mystic/saint. he founded a number of monastic orders in his short life,[32 yrs], and showed remarkable spiritual talents and insights from a very early age. this book is a true classic in the field of the jnani yoga tradition. his directives are clear, succint, and leave no doubt in the readers mind he knew where of he spoke. i wouldn't say this should be your entry level book into the advaita philosophy but if the idea of your oneness with brahman, the impersonal ground of being, appeals to you and you're ready for the genuine article, then this little book is for you and will reward your careful study. i'll be quiet now and let the master have the last word with a few quotes from the book: "when the vision of Reality comes, the veil of ignorance is completely removed. when our false perception is corrected, misery ends." and "the self controlled man is illumined when he enjoys eternal bliss. he is entirely merged in Brahman. he knows himself to be the unchangeable reality". and, "teachers and scriptures can stimulate spiritual awareness. but the wise disciple overcomes ignorance by direct illumination, through the grace of God". and, "the treasure i have found cannot be described in words, i am one with Brahman".

Traditional Hindu philsophy asserts that the true nature of ourselves, other people, and everything around us is Brahman. But that truth is often covered in superficial illusion, or maya (in pop culture terms, 'the Matrix'). Shankara expounds upon the traditional Hindu philosophy and posits that the key to enlightenment is the ability to discriminate between what is True (i.e. Brahman) and what is merely illusion (maya), to look past the appearance of things and seek the Truth that lies beneath the surface. We do not have to go far to apply this centuries old insight to our own lives. With the light of Shankara's simple philosophy to cut through the swirling mists of illusion that surround us, it is soon apparent that very few of the things we have taken seriously matter at all. They are mostly superficial maya and we must not allow ourselves to lose sight of the core Truths that they would obscure. It may sound abstract, but once you start recognizing that very few of the things people say, do, or believe have any foundation in Truth (in the Brahman sense), you will adjust your perspective accordingly and will be surprised to find how unperturbed you are by the concerns that stir others into an emotional frenzy. If you understand what does and doesn't matter, you can devote your energies to the former and shield yourself from concern for the latter.

For an explanation of these principles in prose by my favorite author, I strongly recommend "Maya", a short story that appears in the back of Hermann Hesse's Nobel prize winning novel, "The Glass Bead Game."