BOOK
REVIEW BY GEORG FEUERSTEIN, PH.D
I
was both surprised and delighted when I received this book. Surprised,
because I had not expected Marshall Govindan, a teacher of Kriya
Yoga, to be a Jesus scholar.
Delighted,
because I share Govindan’s fascination with Jesus and because
the book offers an excellent overview of what are now considered
reasonably established facts about Jesus and his teachings.
Govindan’s
clear exposition of the tangled web of New Testament scholarship
in itself commends this book to a Christian or Christian-connected
readership.
But
The Wisdom of Jesus and the Yoga Siddhas does more than rehearse
the scholarly evidence. As the title suggests, it uniquely relates
the teachings of Jesus to those of the Siddhas of South India.
This may seem like a rather large intellectual leap, but Govindan
has substantially succeeded in making this comparison work. His
book is systematic and answers all the key questions one might
have. Readers will not only acquire a much richer understanding
of the figure of the God-man Jesus but will also gain a valuable
glimpse into the extraordinary spiritual realizations and thoughts
of the great Siddhas of Tamil Nadu.
This
book will be of particular interest to Yoga-practicing Christians,
who will discover a Jesus (based on New Testament scholarship)
who is far more plausible and appealing than the re-modeled Jesus
of conventional Christianity.
This
is possibly Govindan’s most engaged and engaging work yet.
Copyright
© 2007 by Georg Feuerstein, Ph.D. All rights reserved.