Rennie's work is technical and hard-going in places, but he is passionate and insightful not just on bringing out the ideas of Prof. Eliade, but also on describing the character and role of religion in the modern world. The book deserves careful and thoughtful reading and study. His defense of Eliade's early political involvements seems reasonable and fair. His defense and explanation of an inclusive definition of religion are compelling and helpful. We still have much to learn from Eliade.

Mircea's first love in India (Amrita/Amruta, penname "maitrayi devi"--who died on January 4, 1990) had published her own memoir in Bengali (her mothertongue and one of the principal language of India). The title of her book is "Na Hanyate" which means "It does not die". It is a fairly intense memoir showing her impression and the spiritual implication. I am not sure if the book is translated in English or not. I was impressed by her candor and honesty. In 1976, her book received an award from the "sahitya academy" (academy for litrature) in India. I have tried to supply some information that was missing from Mircea'a autobiography. I hope the readers will find this information useful.

Mircea Eliade is a maniac: He read about a book each night. He trained himself to sleep less and less, so that he could learn in the night. That paid well in terms of producing a knowledge which has seldomly been reached by a historian of religion. He especially knew about similar things in very different religions, so that he saw parallels, where nobody thought about it before. He wrote novels as well as religios history books, including the well known "Yoga, Immortality and Freedom".

This autobiography covers the most interesting part of his life, but does not make it to the end, which has the effect, that no one knows, what happend, when the woman, he loved in India visited him later in life in Chicago. That's quite a story, because of who the woman was and because of the shaking novel about the affair. The biography covers his Romanian time and the time in India. He writes very openly not hiding unpleasant things. He tried both, to understand indian religions and to live it. The science he did, but trying to live it with Dasgupta and within the Shivananda ashram, both ended in stories with women. With Dasgupta he was to study, but also he wanted to live like a hindu and in the ashram he wanted to practice yoga. Later he became a professor of history of religion at the university of Chicago. It's now some time, since I read this biography and my comments are not propperly weighted, but I can still say, that Eliade was a fascinating person and did good writing and he knew nearly everything. (Just to say: English is a foreign language to me, so please forgive mistakes)