Back in the mid-to-late 1970s, when many people in the counterculture took themselves down spiritual paths, I was giving a good deal of agitated thought to issues of human susceptibility and how gurus establish their authority. Our whole generation was being influenced by psychedelic drugs; by the Beatles’ involvement with Transcendental Meditation; by the books of Carlos Castanedas, Ram Dass, Alan Watts, Starhawk and others; by the splintering and suppression of progressive political movements following the end of the Vietnam War; and by the arrival on these shores of numerous Hindu and Vedic gurus. I had been raised as a scientific skeptic, however, and resisted the trend — but not without feeling my worldview deeply challenged by it.
Got the book yesterday. Look forward to reading it over Passover. Looks like the novel a bunch of us have been waiting for.