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Ecstasy | 
 enlarge | Author: Sudhir Kakar
Publisher: Overlook Hardcover
Category: Book
List Price: $26.95
Buy New: $1.00
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Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 2190339
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 251
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.6 x 1
ISBN: 1585672106
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9781585672103
ASIN: 1585672106
Publication Date: May 22, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: A brand new book, 24 hr shipping ,satisfaction guaranteed, remainder mark
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
The number-one bestseller in India, Sudhir Kakars second novel Ecstasy is a richly layered novel laying bare the conflict between flesh and spirit. Kakar, a renowned psychoanalyst and the author of the acclaimed novel The Ascetic of Desire, brings a penetrating understanding of philosophy, religion, and the human psyche to this evocative second novel. Ram Das Baba, as his devotees call him, is the son of a devout Brahmin family. He spends a lifetime seeking spiritual knowledge and his journey is filled with illuminating visions, severe tribulations, and an unwavering faith. His destiny as a highly evolved Sadhu is fulfilled through ordeals of monastic bliss, tantric awakening, madness, and transexuality. But as his life nears its end he meets a young man who belongs to a very different India and a profound relationship develops.
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| Customer Reviews:
 What the BLEEP was that? March 29, 2007
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Sudhir Kakar is obviously a well-repected and accomplished thinker and writer. His non-fiction books include The Inner World: A Psychoanalytic Study of Childhood and Society in India, and The Analyst and the Mystic, among many other "essential writings." His understanding of children and mysticism apparenty runs pretty deep.
So how is it possible that in this novel the rape of a child (the young, semi-hermaphrodidic Gopal--who goes on to become the revered spiritual leader Ram Das Baba) is accounted for in the narrative as no more than the method by which "his Kundalini" was awakened from "where she slept at her seat above the anus"? The child's subsequent painful contraction of his anal muscles to withstand the torture, his weeks of listlessness, dullness, bursts of screaming, incoherent babbling, and glazed eyes, "as if there were no one at home in the body" are never related back to his molestation by the adult tantrik. By this I mean that Gopal never speaks or thinks about what happened to him, and neither, in any sense I can find, does the author.
I'm baffled. These are the possibilities I can think of:
1) Because the novel is based on real historic events, the author may have been following the facts without feeling at liberty to question them further than the real historical personages did. If Ram Das's real life counterpart claimed his Kundalini was awakened with the aid of a helpful tantrik who ordered him out of his clothes and "crushed his will" to refuse, who's a novelist to doubt it?
2) The author may not have realized that the events he relates WERE the rape of a young child. I know this sounds silly, but there is something elliptical and detached in the langugage and imagery, and in how quickly the scene cuts off. Is it possible the writer is implying something else, spiritual and edifying, took place after Gopal lost consciousness?
3) Maybe the book really does mean to allow that on the road to spiritual enlightenment the sexual abuse of a child by an adult is helpful. Certainly, Ram Das Baba's worldview is never questioned as being in any way bogus or over-compensating. He's meant to be read, I think, as the real thing, at least in the eyes of the disciples who interact with him. But his genuineness is never given the chance to stand up to integration with his abuse. Is Ram Das Baba running from something? Sudhir Kakar doesn't seem to want to know.
I've focused on one very brief episode in a complex novel, but I can't help it. I'm drawn back to the question of the child and the tantric in a way that overrides all the interest and pleasure the book might otherwise have provided me.
 Ecstasy, A Review September 20, 2003
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
Sudhir Kakar's novel is a fascinating weave of fiction and history. Beautifully written, ordinary life in India and its ordinary and extraordinary places are memorably captured. Though not a mystic himself, Kakar does a splendid job also of capturing the weird, profound, mind-shattering, and inexplicable path of mysticism. Based on real life stories of real life mystics, the grace, blissful transcendence, horror, and confusion that mystics experience is described in radiant detail. Once began, this engaging book is hard to put down. Excellent reading as both fiction and mystical studies.
~heidimo
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