Overhyped and Intentionally Contrived
Off late I am observing that books written by westerners are extremely superficial which might have been done intentionally to appeal to western readers who are not much into spiritual depth or novices . After seeing so many good reviews I thought this book would be masterpiece. It would be so, had I been ignorant about Kashmir Shaivism, Shiv Sutr, Vigyan Bhairav Tantr, and Spand Karika by Abhinavgupt and Kahemraj, covered exceptionally outstanding by Jaidev Singh. Half or more of this book is taken from there with much poorer understanding of the subject and that reflects in its contrived explanations which appears knowingly done to conceal of poor understanding of the author over the subject. Bizarrely, the author claims this one as his PhD thesis. It is misunderstood cocktail borrowing from here there and mixing them all without valid discrimination. One can understand the level of superficiality by the fact that this book is on Vac, speech and mantra power, and nowhere in this book you find original Sanskrit mantras and shlokas. All converted into English while fact is that a wrong pronouncing of mantra make it useless…and here mantras r being written in English that too without proper explanations! And this is awarded PhD degree thesis! In new age such topics books be accompanied with dvd or weblink for sounds to understand the value of except precision while explaining sound and its shifts. Also If you want to learn mantra, learn Sanskrit and use original Sanskrit mantras, not the English crap done here. You reach nowhere with this bulky book which you can avoid completely. Better read the works by Jaidev Singh to understand the core of Tantr, or works by Bihar School of Yoga.
