Walking Home With Baba

This is an authoritative, uncompromising, altogether real guide to spiritual practice. Rohini Ralby spent eight years as head of security, appointments secretary, and personal assistant to the great Swami Muktananda, and in their many hours alone together, this world-renowned guru taught her, one on one, the essence of spiritual practice. In Walking Home with Baba, an expert guide to spiritual practice, Rohini draws on that experience and her subsequent study and work as a spiritual director to convey, in clear and concise terms, what spiritual practice truly is: walking home, and retracing our way back to God -- to Absolute Truth, Absolute Consciousness, and Absolute Bliss. Walking Home with Baba combines intimate stories about Ms Ralbys own experiences with Muktananda and others with chapters explaining the actual work of spiritual practice. She provides tools that she has developed for freeing ourselves from misery. One chapter is perhaps the most masterfully clear and concise companion to the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali available today. Readers will learn not only about Ms Ralbys experience of travelling the path and being the close disciple of a great Guru; they will gain practical guidance in walking that path themselves.

A year before Ram Dass's passing, he engaged in an intimate dialogue with his dear friend, Mirabai Bush. Walking Each Other Home presents their extraordinary discussion about loving and dying, sharing their stories, favorite practices, and deep wisdom about the most important, final step on our spiritual journey through this lifetime.

T he material in this volume is culled from over two thousand stories about Maharajji gathered during five years from more than one hundred devotees. To these devotees who shared their treasured memo ries, I wish to express my deep love and appreciation. Some of them felt that no book could or should be written about a being with qualities as vast, formless, and subtle as Maharajji’s, and yet they contributed their stories nevertheless. I honor them for this kindness and I hope that in my zeal to share experiences of Maharajji with others who were not fortu nate enough to have met him, I have not misused their trust. Some devotees tell me that stories told by other devotees are not fac tually accurate. I have no way of ascertaining the authenticity of any single story. All I can report is that those o f us who gathered the stories were impressed by the credibility of those of us who told the stories. Though the responsibility for this manuscript lies solely with me, I am delighted to acknowledge a lot o f loving help from my friends:

When Tai Shan and his father, Baba, fly kites from their roof and look down at the crowded city streets below, they feel free, like the kites. Baba loves telling Tai Shan stories while the kites--one red, and one blue--rise, dip, and soar together. Then, a bad time comes. People wearing red armbands shut down the schools, smash store signs, and search houses. Baba is sent away, and Tai Shan goes to live with Granny Wang. Though father and son are far apart, they have a secret way of staying close. Every day they greet each other by flying their kites???one red, and one blue???until Baba can be free again, like the kites. Inspired by the dark time of the Cultural Revolution in China, this is a soaring tale of hope that will resonate with anyone who has ever had to love from a distance.

Featuring an eye-catching new cover, this classic guide is for those ready to commit time and energy to relieving suffering in the world. No two people are better qualified to help us along this path than Ram Dass, who has spent more than 25 years teaching and writing on the subject of living consciously, and Mirabi Bush, who succeeded him as chairperson of the Seva Foundation.

Finding Baba Yaga is a mythic yet timely novel-in-verse by the beloved and prolific New York Times bestselling author and poet Jane Yolen, “the Hans Christian Andersen of America” (Newsweek). A young woman discovers the power to speak up and take control of her fate—a theme that has never been more timely than it is now... You think you know this story. You do not. A harsh, controlling father. A quiescent mother. A house that feels like anything but a home. Natasha gathers the strength to leave, and comes upon a little house in the wood: A house that walks about on chicken feet and is inhabited by a fairy tale witch. In finding Baba Yaga, Natasha finds her voice, her power, herself.... "Jane Yolen is a phenomenon: a poet and a mythmaker, who understands how old stories can tell us new things. We are lucky to have her."—Neil Gaiman At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Daughters Who Walk This Path depicts the dramatic coming of age of Morayo, a spirited and intelligent girl growing up in 1980s Ibadan who is thrust into a web of oppressive silence woven by the adults around her. It's a legacy of silence many women in Morayo's family share. Only Aunty Morenike-once protected by her own mother-provides Morayo with a safe home, and a sense of female community which sustains Morayo as she grows into a young woman in bustling, politically charged, often violent Nigeria.

Beloved guru Ram Dass tells the story of his spiritual awakening and gives you the tools to take control of your life in this “counterculture bible” (The New York Times) featuring powerful guidance on yoga, meditation, and finding your true self. When Be Here Now was first published in 1971, it filled a deep spiritual emptiness, launched the ongoing mindfulness revolution, and established Ram Dass as perhaps the preeminent seeker of the twentieth century. Just ten years earlier, he was known as Professor Richard Alpert. He held appointments in four departments at Harvard University. He published books, drove a Mercedes and regularly vacationed in the Caribbean. By most societal standards, he had achieved great success. . . . And yet he couldn’t escape the feeling that something was missing. Psilocybin and LSD changed that. During a period of experimentation, Alpert peeled away each layer of his identity, disassociating from himself as a professor, a social cosmopolite, and lastly, as a physical being. Fear turned into exaltation upon the realization that at his truest, he was just his inner-self: a luminous being that he could trust indefinitely and love infinitely. And thus, a spiritual journey commenced. Alpert headed to India where his guru renamed him Baba Ram Dass—“servant of God.” He was introduced to mindful breathing exercises, hatha yoga, and Eastern philosophy. If he found himself reminiscing or planning, he was reminded to “Be Here Now.” He started upon the path of enlightenment, and has been journeying along it ever since. Be Here Now is a vehicle for sharing the true message, and a guide to self-determination.