Babaji: The Lightning Standing Still
A Book Review by Bill McDonald
Many great and wonderfully inspiring books have been written over the last hundred years about yogis, India, and mystical secrets. None have reached the sacredness that the book, "Babaji: The Lightning Standing Still," effortlessly does. This is not a mere spiritual book; it can only truly be called a modern-day sacred text. It reveals information that seems both millions of years old and millions of years forward in time. Yet the book is timeless.
The author, Yogiraj SatGurunath Siddhanath, is a satguru in the ancient Nath Yogi tradition. It quickly becomes evident to the reader that this yogi has information and knowledge well beyond anything put in print before. This is no rehash of mystic thoughts and lineage tracts. This is ever new, and at the same time, very ancient. It is impossible to read this book without having some insightful dialogue with your own set of beliefs. No matter where you are with your own spiritual and religious assumptions or tenets, this book and what it lays out for our world's past and future will make you wonder about everything in creation we still have to learn.
Those who have explored Paramahansa Yogananda's spiritual classic, "Autobiography of a Yogi," and were intrigued to learn who and what Babaji is will find this book to be a huge revelation, one that becomes an even bigger mystery as well. It seems as if this author/yogi knows Babaji not just in a dry, intellectual context, but personally and directly as well. The book does not labor in protracted research, stuffed with quotes from old, wizened sages. One senses its information somehow emanates directly through the prismatic mind of this yogic master out onto the printed page. It is a tome like nothing ever written or attempted before by anyone.
"Babaji" talks about the beginning of our present state of creation, the end of times, the objective of life on this planet, and Babaji's purpose as the guidance of mankind throughout the ages, from one world cycle through the next. The book is a spiritual education for those with an open mind and heart. It is not penned for the closed-minded. It asks the reader to accept certain things as celestial truths and delivers beyond most people's more natural ability to assimilate beyond an intellectual level. The best way to read this book is to receive it gently, one piece at a time. Each sentence and paragraph contains quantum layers of knowledge. All readers will be changed upon reading the book because the experience of reading it seems to alter our experience of our surrounding world as we read, making the "impossible" seem possible somehow.
Clearly, this book was a lifetime in the making and destined to become a spiritual classic in its own right. But it is written and aimed at our better natures and "higher selves" where we innately understand the deeper aspirations of the Raja Yoga path that great minds like Paramahamsa Yogananda have pioneered for the West. The author makes his love very known for Yogananda. He both honors that lineage and adds what is missing or unknown (or not spoken of before). Followers of Yogananda will find this book fully in line with their present spiritual practices. Its text reads like the next evolution in spiritual understanding.
There are a few speculative books on the market about Babaji—this is not one of those. "Babaji" reads like a history (both ancient and to come) penned by someone who has "witnessed" or somehow exists as an evolving part of the whole. The author's words are resonant with authority and charity alike. One senses that this master yogi may well be a disciple of the eternal Babaji.
The American Authors' Association is well aware that the book may never achieve best-seller status, but we also know it will somehow, by sheer existence, significantly alter mankind and society and transform it for the better. It is one of those rare sacred texts that creates as many questions as it answers, and insists the reader stop and contemplate its depths. I have found that a second or third reading gives new and different insights each time, as if the words are alive and grow with your own spiritual progress. Simply stated, I have never known a book to have a more powerful impact on me than this.Babaji: The Lightning Standing Still was awarded The American Authors' Association's "Most Influential Book of the New Millennium." It is available for purchase on Amazon.com and shop.siddhanath.org. Yogiraj Siddhanath will begin his 2012 US tour in mid-July in New York. He will host Kriya Yoga meditation workshops and satsangs in Encinitas and Los Angeles, August 11-19, followed by a New Life Awakening Meditation Retreat in Carlsbad, CA, starting September 27. For registration and more information, visit www.Siddhanath.org or e-mail events@siddhanath.org.
W.H. "Bill" McDonald Jr. is the founder and former president of The American Authors' Association, as well as the author of A Spiritual Warrior's Journey and other books.