Biography

"I will tell you how I grew up and how I was trained, about the great sages with whom I lived and what they taught me, not through lectures and books but through experiences," writes Sri Swami Rama in the opening pages of this timeless saga.  These stories record his personal quest for truth and enlightenment.  Inspiring, lluminating, entertaining, mystifying, and frequently droll and humorous, they bring you face-to-face with some great Himalayan Masters including Mataji of Assam, a ninety-six year old lady sage who never slept; Gudari Baba, who taught Swami Rama the value of direct experience; Yogi Sri Aurobindo, who integrated meditation with action; Uria Baba, who teaches that every human being has the potential for healing; Mahatma Gandhi, the Father of the Nation.

Every year since 1968 when she made her first pilgrimage to the city Ann Madsen has returned to Jerusalem. In the course of her many visits and of the five years she spent there as a resident Madsen became intimately familiar with the city she had loved at first sight. Yet as she came to know the women of Jerusalem - Muslims Jews and Christians - she wondered at their courage and persistence. Why do they stay here through war after war? she asked herself. How were these women able to maintain their vision their hope in the midst of perpetual conflict and danger? The result of her questioning is this primer for peace illustrated by the lives of twelve women who have made their homes and lives in this troubled and beloved city. The twelve women profiled in this book represent thousands of women who live and work every day in Jerusalem where without waiting for political negotiations to succeed they have found their own ways to make peace.

At 27, Bill Hatcher was at a crossroads. Brought up in an evangelical household in the American Bible Belt, his religion had provided no answers to his parents' broken marriage or, indeed, his own divorce. The key to his salvation would come from a most unlikely source: a flyer calling for Peace Corps volunteers. A year later, Hatcher finds himself in Tanzania, East Africa. As a geography teacher at an all-girls' boarding school, he's expected to broaden his students' horizons, but, instead, it is his own worldview that is challenged - by encounters with local shamans, dangerous ascents on Mounts Kenya, Kilimanjaro and Meru and especially a friendship with a Muslim student. Through tragedy and triumph, by questioning the very core of his being, he manages to escape the confines of his "marble room" and gain a new understanding of himself and God. Filled with breathtaking accounts of death-defying mountain climbs and the spectacular beauty of the African countryside, this memoir is both a tale of adventure and self-discovery - and proof that even the most naive and insular American can achieve a spiritual awakening.

Anyone suffering from the Global Warming Blues will cherish this uplifting account of the most ambitious environmental experiment of our time: Biosphere 2, a miniature Earth under glass and the world's largest laboratory for global ecology. John Allen's memoir, ME AND THE BIOSPHERES is a rich and complex narrative, filled with rollicking adventure, exceptional camaraderie and mind-bending science.

Covering three acres of Arizona desert, Biosphere 2 contained five biomes: a 900,000-gallon ocean with coral reef, a rainforest, a savannah, a desert, a farm and a micro-city, all housed within an air-tight, sealed glass and steel frame structure. Eight people lived inside for two years (1991-1993) setting world records in human life-support, monitoring their impact on the environment, while providing crucial data for future manned missions into outer space.

Me and the Biospheres is an account of the singular life John Allen has led: his travels to Egypt, Vietnam, Nepal, Tibet and India, his meetings with people like Buckminster Fuller, William Burroughs, Charles Mingus and Ornette Coleman. From building developments in Iran to adobe houses in New Mexico, from Harvard Business School to cafés in Tangiers, from board meetings in Fort Worth to mystical moments with Sufi sages, John Allen has impacted millions of people with manifest integrity. His humorous memoir is a tribute to the ingenuity and dauntlessness of the human mind.

An intimate account of the early years of Paramahansa Yogananda, written from the author's unique perspective of his younger brother. This fascinating biography relates many heretofore unpublished stories, and presents a fresh view of numerous incidents recounted by Yogananda in his Autobiography. From this engrossing narrative emerges a new portrait of this great world teacher.

This is a memoir of how an ordinary man from Brooklyn New York came to terms with his psychic gifts. Rev. Edward's ability to detect the presence of those who have died was awakened after the death of his beloved grandmother when he was only seven years old. His gifts grew stronger as he matured bringing him to accept the ever-present love that connects us all no matter which side of the great divide we are on. Edward Tabbitas is a gifted psychic and grief counsellor. He assists in bringing messages from loved ones who have passed over to their survivors here on earth. His mission is to dispel the fear that lies between the boundaries of life and death. Through his teachings Rev. Tabbitas empowers people to transcend those fears and gain an understanding of the spiritual journey we all must take and to embrace the understanding that dying is simply a natural transition to another dimension of being.

Boys Town's founder, Father Edward Flanagan, had a dream of expanding his home to care for boys in new directions. His untimely death in 1948 could have marked the end of his remarkable mission, but chosen to be his successor was Monsignor Nicholas H. Wegner, a priest who gladly carried on Flanagan's passionate concern for homeless and disadvantaged children. Under Wegner's watchful care, Boys Town doubled in population, expanded educational, vocational, athletic and arts opportunities for its residents, found a solid financial footing and spread its ideas on youth care around the globe. Soon, he had earned the respect and love of the boys, staff and alumni. Young citizens told a local newspaper that Monsignor Wegner was an all-around good fellow and that he talked to us just the way a father would. In the words of Wegner and others, this book chronicles his stewardship of Boys Town from 1948 to 1973, the international travels he undertook to help the orphans of war, the goals he set and achieved for the home and the loyalty he gave to and inspired in Boys Town alumni.

MY LIFE IN A PEA SOUP follows one mother's journey to reach her profoundly autistic daughter.

Set against the backdrop of three countries – Sri Lanka, Bahrain and Australia – this book will appeal to anyone who has experienced heartbreak and then found a way to not only help themselves, but to help those dearest to them.

The memoir chronicles Lisa's journey across many countries with her husband Michael and her daughter Sally. Lisa struggles to understand why her beautiful daughter does not act like other toddlers. Lisa and Michael experience cultural clashes and comical moments, all told through the lens of caring for a daughter who is different to the rest. Fighting for years to receive an official diagnosis for something they do not even have a name for, they are thrown headlong into a medicalised world they never knew existed.
Baffled and bewildered, Lisa eventually embarks on a home-program for Sally that touches everyone in the family. Sally becomes much easier to manage while Lisa and her husband learn to navigate their way through the misty madness of the profoundly autistic world. By reaching Sally, they find the will and strength to help themselves. Their fogs lift and they discover the contentment and happiness that for so long had eluded them.

This posthumous autobiography tells the story of Barry Long's life from his early years in Australia to a career as a successful newspaper editor and then how successive spiritual crises and realisations made him into a spiritual master who changed the lives of thousands of people around the world. It is a candid and sometimes searingly honest account of transformation by love and the transcendental.

"Liberation or spiritual freedom is not gained by trying to be like everyone else. Liberation is to have the will, the power, the simplicity to be what you are from moment to moment, without pretence and without considering what you or others think you should be or should not be. Naked of being anything you must stand, and stand alone."

This newly revised and expanded edition of this life-changing book commemorates Swami Kriyananda's 60th year of discipleship to Yogananda. It includes a new cover and introduction and special sections not published in the original.
Seventy years ago, a young American of thirteen dedicated himself to a search for truth. He at once rejected the values to which he'd been raised: prosperity, security, social acceptance and worldly ambition. But where lay the answers? He began with science; proceeded to social reform and then sought self-transformation through the arts. Each path he tried led to a dead end. At last he realised that the only force in history that has done any lasting good is religion.

In a moving chapter of this book he describes how he agonised over the question, 'What is God?' The answer he received led him at last to Autobiography of a Yogi, and, thence, to its author, Paramhansa Yogananda, whom he accepted as his guru. The rest of the book is the only extant, complete account of what it was like to live in close proximity to that great man of God - one who, our author deeply believes, was destined to bring major changes to the world.

"Here, the teaching, the message, and the life of Paramhansa Yogananda are illuminated in a way that makes it possible for us to not only easily access his timeless wisdom, but - through the living example of one of Master's most devoted disciples - actually apply Eternal Truth to our present-day life. It is impossible for me to think of a greater gift that humanity could receive at this critical time. . . ." - Neale Donald Walsch, author of Conversations with God

"The New Path is a beautiful account of the experience of working with a great master. It's a book to be treasured for the breadth and depth of its portrayal of one of the great saints of our time as well as the devotion of its author."—Swami Chetanananda, Director, Nityananda Institute, author of The Breath of God