The Nirvana Express review: How Indian spirituality found home in the West

Although Swami Vivekananda is widely considered the brightest among the earliest proponents of Hindu religion in the United States, he did not sow the seeds of Vedic thoughts in the West. That credit should go to select Americans who had come to identify India as a country of deep spiritual wellsprings. Early Britons, including those in the pay of East India Company, also contributed to a deeper understanding of pre-Mughal India and translated Hindu epics into English, earning for them an appreciative, even if limited, global audience then.

Paramhansa Yogananda: An omission

Certainly, Vivekananda’s masterly exposition of Hinduism at the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago marked a major turning point in the West’s acceptance of an ancient religion that was till then mostly misunderstood. Brown does full justice to Vivekananda, who continues — a full 130 years later — to cast a spell on millions.

The biggest omission of the book is the equally significant role played in popularising yoga and meditation in a skeptical America by Paramhansa Yogananda. Here was a man who can be rightly called the first spiritual NRI. Unlike Vivekananda, who conquered hearts in the West and returned to India, the Gorakhpur-born Yogananda sailed to the US in 1920 and remained there till he passed away in 1952. During this long innings, his legendary accomplishments were far more lasting and rigorous.

As revealed by one of his biographers, Philip Goldberg, Yogananda taught meditation and yoga to millions of whites and blacks, often in packed auditoriums, in city after city, which he toured amid great difficulties, almost like a new Adi Shankara. His lasting legacy was his 1946 publication, Autobiography of a Yogi, which was quickly dubbed one of the ten best spiritual classics of the 20th century.

It was only after Yogananda’s demise that one knew — from the biography his younger brother wrote — how self-effacing this renunciate was and how little he had unveiled about himself in his classic. The Autobiography was more about the many holy men Yogananda encountered in India and abroad. Just why Brown did not write about Yogananda is a mystery although he refers to him and his book here and there.

Transcendental Meditation: A worldwide affair

India produced innumerable spiritual giants, some better known both in the East and West than the others. They ranged from Patanjali and Mahavira to Akka Mahadevi and Adi Shankara, and from Ramanuja and Kabir to Guru Nanak and Sri Ramakrishna, across varying time periods. Most of them did not step out of India. Among those who did some planted the seeds of spiritual knowledge while some played a key role in popularizing yoga.

Yet there were some who led a lifestyle which earned them more controversy and notoriety, besides of course fame and riches, at a time when the American society was in a state of rebellion in the late 60s and early 70s. It is those falling under this category that Brown pays a lot of attention.

It was the Beatles, the first popular musical group of the era to be drawn to Indian spirituality, who helped Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and his Transcendental Meditation or TM become a worldwide affair. Brown recounts the story with great authority. TM was touted as the answer to pretty much everything except death and taxes. Yes, Mahesh Yogi opened the door of the Eastern teaching to millions but by the time he passed away in the Netherlands in 2008, after amassing a massive fortune, he proved to be a failed messiah, one who could not usher in a new age of enlightenment, a promise he made repeatedly.

The attraction for yoga and meditation

Acharya Rajneesh, later known as Osho, who Brown calls “the most brilliant and most controversial guru of the age”, also took the Western world by storm. He was the first self-styled spiritual teacher to brand himself “the rich man’s guru”. He ventured where even Mahesh Yogi did not. From early teachings, which were a blend of Jain and Buddhist philosophy, he became an exponent of free sex — and ran into serious trouble with the authorities in many countries, from India to the United States. When his empire finally crashed, one of his estranged aides would claim that a staggering $11 million had been spent over his craze for Rolls-Royces and $8 million on watches and jewellery. Brown is at his best as he details the life and times of Rajneesh.

Brown also tell us about the attraction Buddhism had in the West, about Westerners who embraced Indian spirituality, about Mehar Baba, about Jiddu Krishnamurti (who broke many hearts when he dramatically turned from a young guru to an anti-guru), about Paul Brunton, whose classic, A Search in Secret India (1934), earned the saintly Ramana Maharshi innumerable Western followers, and the disgraced ‘boy God’ Guru Maharaj Ji (Prem Pal Singh Rawat) whose claim to spiritual greatness fell apart after he secretly married an American air stewardess.

The fact is that Indian spirituality has found a welcome home in the West. Yoga and yoga mats are part of everyday life for a vast number of Westerners, and doctors increasingly recommend meditation to manage stress. Words like mantra, guru and karma have entered the common lexicon and popular culture. Self-help authors improvise on the Vedic repertoire even if they disguise their sources. A litany of spiritual teachers from India helped this evolution over a long period of time. Perhaps, the bad boys of Indian spirituality, too, contributed their bit.