Swami: Encounters with Modern Mystics

by Doug Boyd

Boyd explores the teachings, amazing mental powers, and very human personalities of modern mystics.

Genres: Hinduism

Paperback

First published April 28, 1990

About the author

Douglas Wright Boyd was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. When he was 9 years old, he moved with his parents, Elmer and Alyce Green, and his three sisters, Pat, Sandra, and Judy, to Canada. They later moved to California, where he attended school, high school,and a couple of years of college. One of his first jobs was using his wonderful voice as a radio announcer. He left California as an army enlistee stationed in Korea. He reenlisted in order to attend the Monterrey language school, more thoroughly learn Korean, and then served in Intelligence in Korea, where he was discharged. While making many friends, Doug remained in Korea for eight more years, founded a language school, taught English, and mentored several students, helping them through college.

Doug was a dedicated humanitarian, researcher, lecturer, teacher, activist, internationally known author, and founding director of the Cross-Cultural Studies Program, a long-range investigation of traditional and esoteric ideologies. He traveled all over the world and was a student and friend of adepts and healers of many traditions and cultures. Possessed of incisive wit, he was a master storyteller who shared personal tales of telepathic experiences and communication, rainmaking, and psychic healing from his many years of experience working with and learning from culturally diverse yogis, monks, psychic healers, and medicine people. He was a student of some, a mentor to many, and a friend to more.

Reviews

[Adam Grossi]

This book is rich and fascinating, and I can't recommend it enough for anyone involved in some kind of spiritual practice that involves following paths laid before you by advanced teachers. Boyd's relative ambivalence toward Swami Rama is a really useful ground from which to actually observe the spectrum contained within Swami Rama's personality.

On one level, the book is simply an inspiring testament to the reality of the extraordinary abilities developed by some advanced yogis. The whole melodrama of Swami Rama displaying his mind/body talents within the contexts of a midwestern science research lab is informative and probably prophetic in its suggestions about the difficulties and tensions in store for the greater integration of deep yoga practices into the cultural fabric of the U.S.

The second half of the book is equally worthwhile as we follow Boyd through India on his search for enlightened swamis. It's worth reading for Swami Kaivalyananda's insights alone; but the instances when Boyd is troubled by the culture of renunciation are also insightful.

[Bharat Bindal]

The first part of SWAMI is interesting to some extent where time spent with swami rama is described but the second part is slow and not really insightful.Also,the author has not been able to really portray swami rama as a person , his thinking, his mind etc which would have made the book a much more interesting read.