Books
by Robert Jacobs
Journey to the Awakened Heart
Robert Jacobs has written a deep and interesting series of books about his spiritual path. His first book, Journey to the Awakened Heart, follows him as a young man in the 1970s, determined to discover more to life than the materialism he found in American culture. He moves to Paris and then begins to explore the world, traveling to West Africa, Morocco, Central Asia and finally to India, where he slowly finds answers to his spiritual search.
Ultimately, he meets an illumined spiritual teacher from India and spends most of the next 18 years living in yoga and meditation ashrams in India and the United States, engaging himself fully in cultivating what he comes to understand is an awakened consciousness. His memoir provides an intimate picture of what it was like to live a traditional monastic life in an Indian ashram. It also reveals how living with an enlightened spiritual master transformed the author’s life.
The book follows the author in his transition to a more normal worldly life as a husband, father and immigration lawyer, applying the lessons he learned from his ashram days to the many challenges of life.
Path to the Awakened Heart: The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
The Yoga Sutras is one of the most comprehensive guidebooks written about pursuing a spiritual path. Robert Jacob’s rendering offers meditators a unique opportunity to explore the intricacies of their own spiritual practices and paths.
This comprehensive interpretation and analysis of the Yoga Sutras, one of the fundamental scriptures in the Indian yoga tradition, allows the reader to become steeped in the practices and understandings of the deep wisdom tradition of India. In his rendering, the author points to the universality of the teachings and practices in the Yoga Sutras, explaining how they form foundational elements of many spiritual paths.
Apart from his thoughtful analysis, Jacobs provides contemplations with each sutra that allow the reader to experience their subtleties and depth. From the book, readers should gain the following:
- A deep understanding of how to meditate using the breath and mantra.
- An understanding of one’s mind and its relationship to universal Consciousness.
- An understanding of karma, how it is created, balanced and finally resolved.
- An understanding and experience of what spiritual masters call “emptiness”.
- An understanding of the origins of the powers of Consciousness: will/intention, understanding, and action.
- For hatha yoga teachers, the book offers an in depth understanding of the full teachings of yoga and the part played by hatha yoga.
- For teachers of the Yoga Sutras, the book serves as an excellent text to impart the teaching of Patanjali to students of yoga.
