India has been the land of spirituality from time immemorial. The Bhagwath Gita, Upanishads and other spiritual and philosophical books have been passed down the generations. But the writings of some of the modern spiritual gurus are highly sought after and no book fair can afford to not have a place for them.
Those visiting the Vijayawada Book Festival have the choice of visiting half a dozen shops which are selling spiritual books written by just one guru or a group of gurus that share a single spiritual ideology.
The Osho Mevlana Meditation Centre stall (No. 267) has the largest collection of books written by Acharya Rajneesh who later changed his name to Osho. Osho has written as many as 600 books. Video and audio cassettes and CDs are also available with many of the books written by Osho at this stall.
The Yogada Satsanga Dhyana Mandali stall (No. 280,281) has books written mostly by Paramahansa Yogananda and a few of the other guru’s like him. The Krishnamurthi Foundation of India stall (no. 36) has public talks of Jiddu Krishnamurti complied into books. The video and audio CDs of Krishnamurthi’s talks are also available. Several of his popular books translated are also available in the stall.
Telugu translations of the teachings of S.N. Goenka a leading lay teacher of Vipassana meditation are available in the Vipassana Prachara Samithi stall (no. 160). Vipassana International Meditation Centre newsletter editor G.V. Subrahmanyam said that earlier it was compulsory to under go the 10-day meditation training, but now the teachings were available on the Internet. Seventy-minute meditation training crash courses were being conducted in schools.
Recently a course was conducted for students of NRI Academy and about 600 students took the course, he said. Other schools interested in the crash course for their students should contact him (mobile 9441780727). Isha Foundation stall (no. 25) has the books, videos and audio CDs of Sadguru Jaggi Vasudev who has followers all over the world.
The Bhaktivedanta Institute stall (213) has books written by ISKON gurus and the Ramakrishna Mission stall (no. 263, 264, 265, 266) has books written by Swami Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda and many others who subscribe to the ideology of these to great gurus of India.
