Life and Spirituality

My last blog post was about motivations for writing the novel, Nude besides the Lake. Much before that, I had tried my hand at a smaller work of fiction that was published as – Mystic and the Blossoms. I began writing, Mystic and the Blossoms, in 1984 while still a very busy professional teaching engineering at IIT Delhi and busy with scientific publications. As a result, the book did not get beyond the first draft then. It remained buried in my files for years. It was in summer of 1991, I suddenly found time on my hands, free from professional work so I pulled it out and got it printed from a small printer in the city of Jaipur as a hardcover under imprint QUESST Publications. It is a small work and better described as a novella rather than a novel. The idea then was not to make any profit from it but share thoughts expressed through medium of fiction with those interested and those who matter. The book had thoughts on how to improve lives of some of the most backward par

The Babaji Affair by Ashok A fter receiving a doctoral degree in engineering from the University of British Columbia in Canada, that has been ranked in the top fifty universities of the world for many decades, I took up an academic career that involved teaching, research and administration of education successively in three of the finest universities in three different parts of the world, all made possible by the grace of the Almighty. While towards the latter part of my professional career the administrative role increased, in the earliest part teaching was a major component. I taught the subjects in which I had majored in graduate school, stuff called heat transfer, thermodynamics, fluid turbulence etc.   A significant realization at the time was that most of my learning took place when I began to teach. Truly a teacher learns most when he teaches because at this time he is compelled to contemplate on his subject matter more deeply and repetitively as well as deal

My new book ' The Babaji Affair' is full of stories of Himalayan Hermit Mystics, based on my experience with them over the last thirty years or so. These are real sincere mystics not those pretending to be one as a business venture. The cover ( front, spine and back is shown here from the designing stage) It is shown on the global best seller list at the rather long link below it: The Babaji Affair by Dr. Ashok Malhotra http://www.amazon.de/philosophy-eastern-Fremdsprachige-B%C3%BCcher-AmazonGlobal-bestellbar/s?ie=UTF8&keywords=Philosophy%20%2F%20Eastern&page=1&rh=n%3A52044011%2Ck%3APhilosophy%20%2F%20Eastern%2Cp_n_publication_date%3A183072031%2Cp_n_shipping_option-bin%3A2019341031 Hope you read the book. It is available only in the paperback format and that perhaps is the only reasonable way to read a book of this size and type of content. The book contains stories composed by the author and real life experiences of the author with one of the most well