Book Reading of Living Mantra: Mantra, Deity and Visionary

LIVING MANTRA: MANTRA, DEITY AND VISIONARY EXPERIENCE.

By Mani Rao

Living Mantra is an anthropology of mantra-experience among Hindu-tantric practitioners. In ancient Indian doctrine and legends, mantras perceived by rishis (seers) invoke deities and have transformative powers. Adopting a methodology that combines scholarship and practice, Mani Rao discovers a continuing tradition of visionaries (rishis/seers) and revelations in south India’s Andhra-Telangana. Both deeply researched and replete with fascinating narratives, the book reformulates the poetics of mantra-practice as it probes practical questions. Can one know if a vision is real or imagined? Is vision visual? Are deity-visions mediated by culture? If mantras are effective, what is the role of devotion? Are mantras language? Living Mantra interrogates not only theoretical questions, but also those a practitioner would ask: how does one choose a deity, for example, or what might bind one to a guru? Rao breaks fresh ground in redirecting attention to the moments that precede systematization and canon-formation, showing how authoritative sources are formed. See manirao.com for more information.

About Mani Rao

Mani Rao (b.1965 India) is a poet, translator and independent scholar.

She has nine books of poetry including New & Selected Poems(Poetrywala), Echolocation (Math Paper Press) and Ghostmasters (Chameleon Press), and two books in translation from Sanskrit including Bhagavad Gita as a poem (Autumn Hill Books and Fingerprint), and Kalidasa for the 21st Century Reader(Aleph Books). Her latest book Living Mantra— Mantra, Deity and Visionary Experience Today (Palgrave Macmillan 2019) is an anthropology of mantra-experience among tantric practitioners in south India.

Her poems and essays are published or forthcoming in journals including Poetry Magazine, Wasafiri, Meanjin, Washington Square, Fulcrum, West Coast Line, Interim and Colorado Review, and in anthologies including The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem, Zoland Poetry, W.W.Norton’s Language for a New Century, Penguin’s Sixty Indian Poets, and the Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets.