Customer Reviews

Searching For Vedic India

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Devamrita Swami gives a complete overview of the many current ideas and vast ocean of information about ancient Vedic India. Search for Vedic India gives lots of mind-boggling information.

For example: The top blocks of the Egyptian pyramids weigh more than the ones on the bottom. For some reason the Egyptians used the heavier blocks on the top, where they would have been more difficult to place. The best theory to explain this is that that ancient culture could somehow levitate huge ton-sized stone blocks. Indeed, the 5000 year old Vedic India texts give similar accounts.

The book is very well written. It kept my interest like only a few rare other books do. I would recommend this book to anyone with even the slightest interest in history, anthropology, or ancient civilizations. Highly recommended.

Bolder minds are keen to discover the hidden achievements of the ancients. This curiosity will transform the way we
see ourselves and the universe. Were some ancient civilizations much more advanced than what we allow?

Particularly, India's Vedic texts challenge our pride and conceptions. The sages of India's lost past delighted in knowledge of the nonmaterial. But they testify that they also knew how to produce material benefits without industry. Dare
we consider that the subcontinent of India, thousands of years ago, was the center of the greatest spiritual wisdom and mystical technology that the Earth has seen?

The India of remote antiquity may surface as the greatest find in the new millennium. Searching for Vedic India reviews
the latest research from both mainstream and independent sources. Most importantly, it unfolds the ancient answers to the
modern riddles of consciousness, reincarnation, extraterrestrial contact, and spiritual dimensions beyond the laws of time and space.

Devamrita Swami is an author and researcher specializing in the history and knowledge of ancient India. Born in New York City, he began his immersion in India upon graduating from Yale University in 1972. Visiting India annually for almost three decades, he is an ordained sannyasi, or monk, of India's Vaishnava spiritual tradition. He is now based in Australia, from where he travels to every continent. His previous
book, Perfect Escape, is a contemporary commentary on a section of the spiritual text Srimad-Bhagavatam.

I highly recommend this book to anyone; especially to those who have misgivings about the current state of western so-called 'civilization'. SFVI provides illuminating insights into the very fragile foundations that form many of our conceptions regarding the development of human culture. It also challenges the premises of what we accept as 'knowledge' these days and even implores us to question the process of how we obtain such knowledge.

I've read it once but to get a good grasp on the information presented here would deserve a thorough study.

There's plenty of material here to keep even the most stodgy intellectual type of person entertained and amazed - what to speak of its potential for people who have a taste for engaging others in stimulating discussion.

Get this book while you can. You won't regret it.

Regards,
Edward Pattillo

Really superb overview of many astounding ancient facts. Unlike many more popular writers, author avoids the pitfall of speculation and interpretation. The Egypt section could be considered a definitive answer to the question how the pyramids and other giant structures were built.

This is a fantastic book for anyone who wants to get an accurate overview of all things Vedic. The author has an engaging writing style that is very accessible and he has expertly researched each facet of the book's step by step analysis of the ancient Vedic culture.

He has done an especially fine job of showing how all the knowledge of the Vedas was conveniently squashed and swept under the rug by the British rulers, who wanted to assert western European ideas and religion as being superior, which is one reason why many people have never even heard of the Vedas or Vedic culture/knowledge.

He also address current academic issues and documents the developments leading to the current status quo, showing how utterly weak and unfounded its theories and premises are.

Lastly, the author is uniquely qualified to expound on the actual spiritual content of the Vedas, being a practicioner of the Vedic school of Bhakti himself. Interested readers will find a wealth of valuable information in that alone.

This is the Vedic no spin zone! Highly recommended.

Ron...

Devamrita Swami has immersed himself in this search for the lost history of ancient civilization after he graduated from Yale in 1972.

This work must be counted as one of the greatest I have ever come across. Even a cynic would find this book highly entertaining.

This book cites so many interesting and unexplainable phenomena that one wonders how much we really know about our ancient civilizations. Even if you have narrow-minded views about our ancient history and life in general as of today this book is an eye-opener.

And there is a ocean full of bibliography attached to each chapter which makes it more the interesting to justify each and every claim of the author.

As the name suggests the book is not biased to Vedic Studies but takes the Vedic Perspective to explain some of the concepts which we are still grappling with.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone.

Devamrita Swami has done an invaluable service to the community at large. He has written (with eloquent wit and panache)a thoroughly researched and well thought out thesis. I want to read more from this author.
Patrick B.

From the back cover:

Deep in lost history, did high civilizations and advanced knowledge thrive? The ancient Vedic literatures of India describe a worldwide civilization that flourished at a time when modern historians insist that humans like us existed simply as hunter-gatherers. This Vedic civilization, centered in India, employed technologies based on a scientific understanding of the physical elements and forces we know today, as well as more subtle conscious elements.

Devamrita Swami, who has spent a lifetime in his own search for Vedic India, takes us on a journey of intellectual discovery through the history of the remarkable Vedic civilization and its knowledge, locked in the ancient literatures of India. His wit and wisdom combine to make our search for Vedic India not only illuminating but entertaining. He tells us not only the truths of Vedic India, but how they are again coming to be. Searching for Vedic India thus takes us not only into the past, but into the future.

It is a very well researched book, which highlights the Vedic thoughts without the Macaulian filter.

It was interesting to see the concepts, which I took for granted, being explained this way. Frankly there was nothing new for me. But I had learned these through stories that tell you "what" but not "why".

After reading this book, I realised the power of story telling and the effect that "Mahabharata" has on our pschyche.

This scholarly book is now part of my reference library, even though all the writing that I do relate to technology.

What erudition!! I would not hesitate a second to buy such a book.

I haven't read the whole book, but some of the translations of the vedic texts given are just plain made up and ridiculous!

For example, on p. 156, the author attempts to prove that the Vedas talked explicitly about atomic energy, etc., and grossly mistranslates Atharva-veda 20.41.1-3 as follows:

"The atomic energy fissions the ninety-nine elements, covering its path by the bombardments of neutrons without let or hindrance. Desirous of stalking the head, ie. The chief part of the swift power, hidden in the mass of molecular adjustments of the elements, this atomic energy approaches it in the very act of fissioning it by the above-noted bombardment. Herein, verily the scientists know the similar hidden striking force of the rays of the sun working in the orbit of the moon."

This sounds very impressive (wow! they're talking about neutrons and fission in the Vedas!), and the ancients might well have known of atomic energy, fission, etc., and I respect these texts immensely, but if you look in the Atharva-Veda, 20.41.1-3, what it really says is this:

'With bones of Dadhyach for his arms, Indra, resistless in attack,
Struck nine-and-ninety Vritras dead,
He, searching for the horse's head, removed among the moun-
tains, found
At Saryanâvân what he sought.
Then verily they recognized the essential form of Tvashtar's Bull.
Here in the mansion of the Moon.'

Quite a big difference! It seems obvious that the author interpreted and translated the Vedic passage so incredibly differently that the original meaning was completely lost, all in order to prove his theory that the Vedas talk about fission, atoms, etc., and to show the superiority of said civilization.