Women Who Wear Only Themselves: A Brilliant Tale Of Carving A Spiritual Path

The mystical experience defies rationality and women going through it usually invite dismissal. Arundhathi Subramaniam바카라�s latest book, Women Who Wear Only Themselves: Conversations with Four Travellers on Sacred Journeys, has in it four unique women who carved a spiritual path for themselves in the wake of a cataclysmic experience. There have been blazingly memorable women mystics in India, but the four profiled here walk their own paths, independent and unnoticed, without aco­l­ytes or steady funding.

바카라�Women turn out to be more oriented to spirituality than men, for reasons unknown, and of course they are more likely to be disbelieved,바카라� says Tanya M. Luhrmann, a renowned scholar of religion, whose work focuses on voices, visions, the world of the supernatural and the world of psychosis. In her book How God Becomes Real: Kindling the Presence of Invisible Others, she says that mystical experience is important because it makes God real to people, it is 바카라�this-world evidence that the world of the faith frame is real바카라�.

Subramaniam recounts how for Sri Annapurani Amma, her late guru, Sadashiva Brahmendra is a grandfather figure whose 바카라�presence바카라� sees her through times of need. Balarishi Vis­was­hirasini uses nada (sound) to commune with the Divine, her vocal outpourings akin to glossolalia. Lata Mani, a Marxist and fem­inist, experienced a rebirth into clarity after a traumatic accid­ent. Maa Karpoori found herself crying unstoppable tears in the pre­sence of a yoga teacher through whom crucial people entered her life.

Describing spiritual transformation can be like pinning thin air to paper. But the author is a master at conversation as her biography, Sadhguru: More Than a Life will testify. Here, too, her gentle, yet probing questions elicit self-sufficient answers like this one from Sri Annapurani Amma: 바카라�바카라�he (her guru) works only if you hold him as your very life breath바카라�. Or take this precise answer from Lata Mani, analysing the author바카라�s question about the Marxist-mystic link: 바카라�Spiritual teachings are unitive philosophies. When they are practised at their deepest level what you experience is your intimacy with the whole of the universe. So it바카라�s an individual journey, but it바카라�s not an individualist journey.바카라�

As interpolator in these conversations, Subramaniam바카라�s prose hits the mark when it is more show and less tell, as in this summing up of the charming child-turned-guru, Balarishi: 바카라�바카라�I am fortunate to have met her at this point in her life when she is not merely accessible, but capable of both reflection and vulnerability. She is a woman who still speaks of herself as process, not product; who hasn바카라�t yet allowed image to obscure her reality as a mystic.바카라� Interpolation gets in the way where the writing veers into excess and over-explanation, as in the preface, afterword and the profile of Maa Karp­o­ori. Also, to elide lines of verse by red­­ou­b­­table mystics and saints into a part of a para to corroborate a point is to rob them of their power.

The layout of the book바카라�a poem by the aut­hor prefacing and closing each profile바카라�works beautifully, award-winning poet that Subramaniam is. Poetry works through compression and can often illumine inner expansion, which is the subject of this book.

The mystical experience is a headstart in preparing the mind and heart for the long haul바카라�the path to self-knowledge and an und­erstanding of the truth. It is a headstart unavailable to the average seeker바카라�and therefore Subramaniam바카라�s stories of these women help us see them in a vast continuum, calling to mind also Barbara Newman바카라�s study of women mystics in medieval Christianity, From Virile Woman to Woman Christ: Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature.

Traditional teachers of the scriptures point pragmatically to the flip side: The public, if primarily looking at mystics for siddhis (accomplishments of a miraculous nature) or quick-fix solutions, may fall prey to delusion. This book reminds us to keep the questioning mind alive; and not be dismissive of someone for whom Shiva is not a deity, but a guru at arm바카라�s reach whose sleeve she can tug.

(This appeared in the print edition as "Visions Of Clarity")