I know that every book is different in its own way, but this little gem is one of the most different different books I've ever come across. It's author was a Harvard psychology professor and a professional psychologist by the name Dr. Richard Alpert. The book starts with an autobiographical section where he describes his time as a very successful professor and a psychologist in the US. He talks about how he had 'made it' from every standpoint he'd learnt in his life - riches, status, friendships, etc, but still felt something lacking. In a way, the psychologist felt like the patient. And what really hit me in this section was his frank confession that the theories he and his co-workers were propounding upon their students and patients seemed to him rather incomplete. He writes that they were a bunch of 9-5 psychologists and outside of these hours, they would go back to their homes and would actually be as neurotic as their patients. And somehow, his co-workers seemed to realise this but were just OK with it.
Well, he wasn't, and after a whole series of events, he ends up in India and meets a spiritual Guru by the name Neem Karoli Baba. The autobiographical section concludes with a brief description of his experiences in India, which had a massive influence on his life going forward, as is evident from the fact that he ended up dropping his previous identity and took up the name Ram Dass.
The next part of the book is a very artistic description of his teachings, and that's the part which makes this book very, very different from any other I've ever read. It's full of fables, drawings, quotes, short stories and is very intriguing to say the least. In fact, I find it so marvellously written/depicted that I can never seem to put this book down whenever I reach this section and yet somehow I always find myself short of words when trying to describe it.
Few talk about IT so well, fewer still so artistically. This book is a must read, to say the least.
I'll end this by one of my favourite quotes from this book:
You can do nothing for me but work on yourself. I can do nothing for you but work on myself. In the end, we're just walking each other HOME.
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