A must read for anyone seeking spirituality. It changed my view on life and took my meditation to a new level. Startling secrets, which I have not seen anywhere else, were revealed.

I first read this book in the '70's. It knocked my socks off. I recently recommended it to someone and thought, "Hmm. Maybe I should read it again." It blew my socks off again. Play of Consciousness is the spiritual autobiography of Sw. Muktananda, an Indian meditation master who died in 1982. In POC, he breaks Hindu tradition by talking about his experiences. He does this for one reason: To serve and guide his students. This is a handbook for meditators, in many ways a survival manual. Muktananda had many of the experiences recounted here -- some of which were terrifying-- without knowing what they were. Here, he lets his students know what to expect in advanced meditation. The book is written in sections. The book opens with a tightly written and comprehensive guide to Hinduism and kundalini yoga. Muktananda lays out the turf-- quoting many major Indian saints and scriptures. This alone is worth buying. The second part describes his spiritual experiences, his sadhana. If you ever thought that meditation was a passive, dopey thing popularized in California, this will change your mind. Muktananda's experiences were big. Explosive. Gorgeous. They read like sci-fi, but you have the sense of their utter authenticity. The final section explains what Muktananda wants from his students. How he sees the universe, and how a good yogi/yogini should live. This is a masterpiece in mystical writing. POC is not an easy read. First, it may induce culture shock. This is not a Western book. It was translated from Hindi or one of the Indian languages and written by an older man, a Hindu monk. The language sounds it-- flowery, exquisite, complex, and somewhat antiquated. Muktananda talks about gurus and disciples. The word "guru" has been maligned in the West. For thousands of years, Indian people have had gurus the way that we have accountants. "Guru" means "teacher", with the root meaning, "bringer of light, taker of darkness." The guru's function. POC is a hard read for another reason: Muktananda's experience roars through it. If you do not know what devotion and love are by the end of this book, there's no hope. His energy permeates POC. You may find yourself nodding off or falling into meditation. You may only be able to read a page to two at a time. That's fine. Just keep reading.

A must read for all interested in Spirituality

I enjoyed this book immensely. The author, a great yogic master, explains in simple terms and with clarity the many mysteries of the mind, the soul, God, and the state of spiritual liberation. He reveals the secrets of meditation, the mantra and the Kundalini energy. In doing so, he provides the tools and lays out a path towards full spiritual liberation. I have been on the spiritual path for a very long time, and his teachings has given my search a much needed boost. I am deeply indebted to him.

Portraying Marie Antoinette as an "average woman," as the title of Zweig's work provocatively suggests, is a debatable proposition. On the one hand, as Zweig shows throughout this study, Marie Antoinette was no prodigy: she was flawed, egotistic, intellectually limited and ... indiscreet. Her greatest passions were for clothes, vast flowery gardens, [fancy] jewelry and good looking Swedish men; she was a compulsive spendthrift; her political self-awareness was zero and her policy meddling was uniformly disastrous. Her indiscipline at court was flagrantly exploited by her political enemies - notably her jealous and ambitious brothers-in-law Louis and Charles (the later Bourbon Restoration kings) - who portrayed her as a modern day Jezebel. In all of these respects, her life was far from "average". But the "ordinariness" within, argues Zweig, left her ill-equipped to deal with the challenges of an extraordinary life.

Once the Revolution happens, however, Zweig's "averageness" argument makes a dog-leg turn. Under the extreme pressures of her imprisonment, her husband's guillotining, her separation from her beloved children and her state trial for treason, she rose above the "average," drawing on her Habsburg dignity and treating her Committee inquisitors with the contempt they deserved. In death, if not in life, she proved herself to be a true daughter of Maria Theresa. Even ordinary people can be martyrs, Zweig seems to be saying.

Zweig is a natural storyteller, and the fact that he, like Marie Antoinette, was Viennese gives him insights into her sensibilities and predilections. Another Viennese voice can be heard in this narrative: the psychological narrative owes much to Dr. Freud - particularly when we come to her early womanhood. Can it be, as Zweig dares to suggest, that Louis XVI's early impotence, and young Marie Antoinette's consequent frustration, fueled her shallow materialism? Was her scandalously profligate lifestyle an outlet for ... frustration? Did one man's "shortcomings" thus cause the revolution? And what of the bizarre Strasbourg ceremony whereby the newlywed Marie Antoinette was forced to [unclothe] at the frontier, lest the new Dauphine of France cross the border wearing foreign clothes? Surely an emotionally scarring experience? Her tale is a gift for the Freudian, and Zweig milks it for all it's worth.

Marie Antoinette... many things go through one's mind when thinking of that name. Many say she was cruel, pampered, and spoiled, and that she was the main couse of the French Revolution, yet, she was just a woman, a woman born a princess in the Austrian court, married to a French boy whom she had never met by the age of 15, crowned by 19, and beheaded by 35.

Life went by so fast by Marie Antoinette!!, and never gave her a chance to choose what she wanted out of it.

Stefan Zweig is a marvelous writer, and manages to gives us an intimate portrait of at times very hated, at others very loved and admired woman, an ordinary person who only wished for a normal life with her family, a little place of her own, where she didn't have to adjust and adapt to the many different rules impossed on her.

He describes the life of the French court as only he could, and you feel like you are part of the story, hearing about Versailles, Louvre, the revolution and the people involved, which makes this an excellent book to learn about history, about life in the French court, and about France's last great queen.

So, was she cruel, spoiled, and ignorant? read and decide for yourself....

Zweig's biography is so fascinating, I can't believe it's been allowed to go out of print. He does a remarkable job of delineating a light-headed, pleasureseeking woman who was thrust into circumstances she couldn't have anticipated or coped with. Marie Antoinette becomes a real woman, not a figurehead or a scapegoat. No one could ask for anything less.

The existence of this slim volume baffles me. Alright, it is certainly true that Zweig's stories, many of which are absolutely marvelous, are in dire need of a re-release that would hopefully do something to alleviate their obscurity. Very well; perhaps the editors were operating out of this noble idea. Why, then, did they release only two Zweig stories, out of about twenty? And why did they make those two "Invisible Collection" and "Buchmendel"? Granted, both of them are good; the first is even great, certainly one of the man's best. But why only them? And furthermore, why charge the price of a full-length book for such an obviously sparse selection? I don't get it at all.

Bad judgment, certainly. However, it must be noted that neither of these two stories is included in the _other_ incomplete compilation, The Royal Game And Other Stories. Thus, if you liked those (and I don't see how you couldn't have), this book will make a good complement. However, even so, there are _still_ others that are in need of reprint but are included neither here nor there. Argh!

During his lifetime (1881-1942) Stefan Zweig was one of the most celebrated authors in Europe, and anyone who ventures into his writings will understand why. Zweig's insights into and compassion for his fellow human beings is both astonishing and deeply moving. These two tales are among his most beautiful. "The Invisible Collection" is told by an art dealer, who sets out to purchase a print collection from an old man, only to find himself coerced by the man's family into complicity in a heart-breaking game of deception. (The story is more poignant if you know that Zweig himself was an avid collector of autographs and manuscripts.) "Buchmandel" is an equally wrenching tale of a old Jewish man who has a faultless memory for books, who's life falls apart with the advent of World War I. (Imagine a kind of East-European version of Borges' "Funes the Memorious.") These two tales take the art of story-telling to its most refined state, and you'll understand why Zweig's work was considered some of the greatest writing of its time.