In the Land of the Saints

The sequel to The Jazz Mas­ter takes us to India on a spir­i­tu­al and musi­cal quest that ush­ers us into the pres­ence of some of the fore­most saints of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, includ­ing Anan­damayi Ma, Swa­mi Sivanan­da, and Papa Ram­das, as well as the mys­te­ri­ous fig­ure who appeared in Elijah’s dreams to draw him halfway around the world.

This book occu­pies a spe­cial place in my heart, as it gave me a chance to revis­it one of the most mag­i­cal peri­ods in my life: the late sev­en­ties in India, start­ing in Pat­na and even­tu­al­ly trav­el­ing across the coun­try to vis­it some of the oth­er great spir­i­tu­al teach­ers of the day — and in the case of those who had already depart­ed, vis­it­ing their ashrams and meet­ing their most impor­tant liv­ing dis­ci­ples. A great time to be alive and a great plan­et to be liv­ing on, despite all the work we still have to do on so many lev­els to make it hab­it­able for spir­i­tu­al beings.