Nath Siddha: The Guru Who Would Not Die (The Nath Siddha Series)

He sat by a burning ground and did not blink. I sat down near him anyway, and did not leave for eighteen months.

I did not go looking for a guru. I went to Tarapith for reasons that had nothing to do with any of this, and I stayed because an old man's stillness would not let me walk away. Nath Sampradaya does not hand itself to seekers.

It tests whether you will still be sitting there after it gives you nothing at all. He gave me nothing for six weeks. Then he gave me a breath count, and a slow walk, and a closing practice I still do every single day.

He never once explained why. He was not being cruel. He was dying, and he knew it before I did, and he had already decided how he was going to spend what was left.

This is not a manual. It will not teach you khecari mudra or the mercury alchemy this tradition is half-famous for. Those doors are named honestly in these pages and then, just as honestly, left shut. What actually happened between an old Nath yogi and one stubborn disciple in the cremation grounds of Bengal is harder to hand over than any technique, and more useful.

What you will find inside: The real texture of Nath discipleship: the silences, the tests, the ordinary years between the teachings Foundational breath and body practices, given plainly, exactly as they were given to me What eighteen months with a dying teacher actually taught him about grief, presence, and the end of a life Khecari mudra and rasayana alchemy named honestly, their real dangers stated without either romance or apology A woman who came to say her dead son's name to somebody who had time, and what he gave her instead of an answer He told me once that a book can describe fire.

It cannot burn your hand. I have written this one anyway, because some of what he gave me will not survive me if I keep it to myself, and because I think you are allowed to know what it actually looks like when a man who has spent fifty years working on the question of death finally meets it without flinching.

Book One of the Nath Siddha Series.