5 Books That Changed My Life

 

Books have changed the course of my life several times.

 

1. Autobiography of a Yogi, by Paramahansa Yogananda—This book, which I first read in 1968 when I was twenty years old, had such an impact that three years after reading it I became a monk in Self-Realization Fellowship, the spiritual organization founded by Yogananda. I still have my original copy of the book—dog-eared, falling apart, and filled with highlighting and underlining. Yogananda frames his narrative as a spiritual journey. This book packed an intense spiritual wallop upside my impressionable young head.

2. War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy—This book was responsible for my leaving the SRF ashram—sort of. I picked it out of a Great Books set in the monks’ library and read it during a desert retreat. Could not put it down. I was 25 years old and Pierre, Tolstoy’s protagonist, was me—a young man with an identity crisis. Who was I? I did not know, but Tolstoy helped me to know that I was not alone. A few months after reading this book, I was out of the ashram and in college—an English major.

3. Astrology, Karma, and Transformation: The Inner Dimensions of the Birth Chart, by Stephen Arroyo—There has to be an astrology book in the top three. This was the first serious astrology book I ever read. I have no idea why I chose to read it, except that it was during a painful period of my life. I wanted transformation and I wanted to know more about astrology, which I intuitively felt held a key to the gate of a healing journey. I walked into a New Age bookstore. Astrology, Karma, and Transformation—something about the title spoke to me and I bought it. I soaked in every word. It propelled me forward into a cosmic world I am still exploring. The “cookbook” sections of Arroyo’s book astonished me and made me believe in the power of astrology. How could Arroyo, whom I’d never met, know me so intimately just because I have a Sun-Pluto conjunction?

4. King Lear, by William Shakespeare—Okay, so it’s a play and not a book. It’s still the greatest work of literature in the English language. I first saw this performed when I was about twenty years old and thought I had been lifted to another level of consciousness. It was a spiritual experience. Lear’s great mad scene in the storm contains lines that should be engraved in the halls of Congress and the White House. Reduced from King to homeless and derelict madman, Lear exclaims,

Poor naked wretches, whereso'er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides
                                                   …defend you
From seasons such as these? O, I have ta'en
Too little care of this!

 

5. Girls’ books—Being a boy, I never got to experience all the wonderful “girls” books when I grew up—that is, until I had a daughter of my own that I could read to every night. These rank high among the happiest memories of my life. Books like Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess, Maud Hart Lovelace’s Betsy-Tacy series, and all the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder enriched my life in countless ways. It was so wonderful to read narratives which were not action-driven but rather experiential. Mainly, though, my reading of these books was shaped by my own experience—of my daughters’ tiny hand reaching out to turn the pages and the smell of her freshly shampooed hair and seeing the awakening of her imagination to worlds beyond our own.