Book Reviewed by BP Khanal
In his book, Death of a Guru, Rabindranath Maharaj puts his own story of how he was born and raised in a Baraman home of Pandits (a most learned Teacher), the highest caste in Hinduism. His father was a Yogi (devoted Hindu to a strict path of spirituality), and he too eagerly tried imitating his father’s footsteps. He describes clearly about the Hindu perspective of living a holy and reverend life, putting the customs and rituals into practice, and yet unfulfilled was he so started a deep search the meaning what he was doing. The worships performed every morning and evening at his home, worshiping dogs and cows, snakes and trees, rivers and stars gradually led his towards a sincere search for the real region were the part of his search for true redemption from karma as he believed. From his childhood to the grown up youth, he only does not tries to please his father and mother, but with a pure striving heart, meditated, worshipped, and studied as hard as he could. His karma (all striving attempts in this sense) seemed to be good. However, his meditation, experiences and visions did not bring him the peace he sought for from so long. As a youth he found he could not control his temper, his self-centeredness, or the chain-smoking. He ultimately grew with illness. As predicted, he himself began to receive the rich living of a pundit and guru; he even started offering blessings to his worshippers as he himself developed into the level of god. But he found out that he still had many bad experiences, and many serious questions to answer and nowhere to hide his face that remain unfulfilled and failing. Eventually, he concluded that he had nothing gained as good to take in his life! Thus in the course of all these experiences, he struggled to choose between the Hindu gods and the Christ who died in accomplishment of all human efforts to attain the Salvation. He then, at the feet of the crucified Guru he confesses that he would commit his life and declares that he is a Christian! And his surprise comes right there when he finds others of his family members too had given their lives to the Lord Jesus Christ!
Right after his conversion experience, he even left his studies and accepted the call of God to become a missionary. That was period, when the Indian (Hindu) mysticism and philosophy was powerfully and fascinatedly spreading in the West, Rabindranath Maharaj offered a fresh and important insights from the perspective of his own experience.
Book: Maharaj, Rabindranath R. Death of a Guru. Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 1977.
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