A new edition of the spiritual classic was published in Autumn 2008
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The Heart of the Eastern Mystical Teaching

For those who feel a pressing need to solve the riddle of life, The Heart of the Eastern Mystical Teaching - arguably Hari Prasad Shastri's greatest contribution to the spiritual literature of mankind - shows the way to peace, happiness and final illumination.

For a deeper spiritual understanding, theory is not enough. We need to see spirituality in action. This is why the Christian Gospels are so compelling. They give us, not just the words of a supreme illumined Master, but show him acting, responding, suffering and, not least, subtly evolving relationships with his close disciples.

It is this all-round view of a spiritually enlightened life that makes The Heart of the Eastern Mystical Teaching so pregnant a spiritual document. In this case, the sage, though born an Indian Brahmin, is not of a particular religion. When asked by a Sufi: 'O Teacher, what is your religion? You talk like a Moslem and yet you wear no beard,' he explained:,

Friend, my religion is to love. I was born a Hindu and a Brahmin, but Allah has accepted me as one of His servants. All religions point to the same goal. People adopt whichever path best suits their individual natures, but ultimately all paths merge into love. Hindus and Moslems, Christians and Jains are waves and bubbles of the same water of love.

This sage, known as Shri Dada, was a universal saint, and taught and lived the spirit of universality. Why? Anyone who has realized the ultimate spiritual Truth, by virtue of that limitless understanding, is a universalist. Once, when threatened by a miscarriage of justice, Shri Dada refused to blame anyone because: 'When there is only one Existence pervading all, blamer and blamed are fundamentally one.'

How is this great vision acquired? The book does not aim to be a biography, but covers what might be called Shri Dada's teaching ministry, beginning around 1890, when he was 36, and ending with his death in 1910. But late in the text, he himself briefly alludes to the instance when, as a young man, his own Guru, 'whispered the supreme secret of life, the wisdom triumphant, into my ears. I have, during this period, allowed no worldly interest to screen the holy light.' In the opening paragraph, we gain another clue to the divine Centre from which all Shri Dada’s actions and words emanated:

His Atman [his inmost spiritual Self] was perfectly united with the Atman of his Guru and the universe. There was no trace of egoity left in Shri Dada. To him the trees, the grass, the birds, mountains, rivers, clouds and human beings, were all beads on the same thread, his own Atman. Having cast away his individuality, he found the Lord of the universe in his Self, identified with him. Now his words were the sacred texts. He was a universal saint. Whether from East or West, Buddhist, Mohammedan, Christian or atheist, there was no sinner in his estimation.

Teachings, incidents in life, evolving relationships: this is the context through which something deeply spiritual, pure and unfathomably rich is being conveyed. The author, though present throughout the events recorded, does not appear as a character in the text. Nor is there any attempt to promote Shri Dada as the Teacher. There were several God-realized Mahatmas dwelling in the Ganges-Himalayan regions at the time, and some, like Swami Mangalnathji of Rishikesh, play a key role in these pages; all are given equal reverence, not least by Shri Dada himself; all are contributing to the good of the whole of humanity on the invisible plane of spirituality.

Part of Shri Dada's appeal and approachability is that he was a 'lay' Mahatma, an illumined sage living in the world, with a family, a livelihood to make, and all the restrictions that such a life outwardly entailed. Living in society, he served man indefatigably on all levels, and was particularly mindful to help the downtrodden. He taught himself the basics of Ayur Vedic medicine at an early age in order to help the so-called 'Untouchables', whom no orthodox doctor would treat. This dimension of The Heart of the Eastern Mystical Teaching is fundamental, for it is one of countless practical expressions of the inner vision of universal unity and identificative love which is enlightenment translated into active life.

But all social, economic and educational improvement was, for Shri Dada, a means better to fit individuals to pursue the great goal of life, spiritual illumination. Sometimes, to his disciples, he preached liberation-in-life with such simplicity and directness that the profundity of his utterance might be easily missed:

The Mahatmas say that this goal, which is your own Atman, is ever attained. Who indeed can deny his own existence? It is impossible for him to imagine that he will become something essentially different. The unchanging Witness of all experience, Paramatman, the one omnipotent Lord, is your own Atman. When you try to 'attain to' Him, you artificially create a distance between jiva [one's individuality] and Atman, but like the all-pervading ether, He neither comes nor goes in reality, nor is this eternal abode of peace ever other than your own Self.

The same clarity, magnanimity and essential joy, runs through all his short expositions, as when a local school teacher, 'who had assimilated a little Western culture and was bewitched by it, bluntly fired the following question: "Are you the man called Dada who is said to be crying his wares all over the city? What is it you teach that people have not already heard? Mind you, hearing is not believing."'

The holy man calmly and smilingly answered: 'Brother, first sit down and compose yourself. If your motive is a quest for information, then I will say that I teach the way to inner peace and joy by which people can perform their worldly duties successfully and bear cheerfully the vicissitudes of fortune. I teach what I have experienced. Most people have not heard that all great religions point to the same goal, that the purpose of life is to realise infinitude within and that goodness is a worthier aim than pleasure. I love my fellow men and I cannot see them going the wrong way towards suffering and discord in life. Something prompts me to speak, and so I do.

At the centre of our spiritual endeavours, working our weal or woe, lies a single organ of experience that is at the heart of the practical training of Yoga: the mind. 'Do not be angry with your mind, and do not condemn yourself. Your mind is what you have made it; you can unmake it and remake it.' This text provides innumerable teachings on how to deal with the mind, and this matter is covered comprehensively; a glance at the topics listed under 'mind' in the vastly expanded Index will confirm this. As the Upanishads teach, it is through our mind that the deeper spiritual Truth will reveal itself, once that mind has been purified and tranquillized. In this book, people of all temperaments will find, perhaps as soon as they flick open the pages at random, the required help and guidance. For Shri Dada teaches that the human mind is nothing to be afraid of or to despair about; on the contrary, 'it is constructive, a way to peace, a source of illumination', and this is the right approach to lead us out of our imagined bondage to the very real freedom that is ever-achieved at the substratum of our being.