Talk:Path of Self-Realization

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Most of the discussion below has been to sort out two complementary anomalies that met in this book and furrowed the brows of yr editors for a good while. One was a(n apparent) discrepancy between different versions of the book regarding the number of discourses, ten or fourteen. The other was a claim in the wiki's article page that "These talks are from his first meditation camp at Ranakpur in the hills of Rajasthan, and a subsequent camp in Ajol, Gujarat, India". Since this claim does not appear anywhere in the book itself and the fourteen / ten discrepancy has been resolved, it seems prudent to regard this claim as unfounded or bogus. Discussion below has been left as a record of the exploration. . . . doofus-9 (talk) 16:03, 9 May 2015 (UTC)


The dates of the "subsequent camp" at Ajol where the discourses of Sadhana Path continued are unknown. As of this writing, the next known camp at Ajol began some eight months later, Feb 2, 1965. -- Sarlo (talk) 08:03, 26 December 2013 (PST)


The CDROM says that the 8 chapters of Antaryatra (अन्तर्यात्रा) / The Inner Journey are part of this book (The Perfect Way on the CD), being a transcript of the above mentioned Ajol camp.

Sadhana Path (साधना पथ) has 14 chapters covering the Shri Muchala Mahavira, Rankpur camp. Where in Sadhana Path is Antar Yatra?

None of this makes any sense to me.--Rudra (talk) 18:50, 27 December 2013 (PST)


Sadhana Path was updated five months later and now contains an explanation of all the Hindi versions published under the title Sadhana Path. It seems none of these shenanigans happened to the various English versions. -- doofus-9 (talk) 23:38, 27 September 2014 (PDT)


To continue with sorting out the mélange of data for Sadhana Path, some of the confusion likely arises from the apparent fact that there are two events at Ajol being referenced: The second one is the Feb 1968 camp where Antaryatra is given. Antaryatra is indeed a part of one version of Sadhana Path but that has nothing to do with The Perfect Way or Path of Self Realization, it is only about different Hindi editions. See the Sadhana Path talk page. This is all the CD-ROM says.

The first Ajol event is the one referenced by the blurb for this book, the description part of the article. It has been there since the article first appeared. It says, "These talks are from his first meditation camp at Ranakpur in the hills of Rajasthan, and a subsequent camp in Ajol". That's a subsequent camp, not necessarily the Antaryatra camp. In fact, we don't know what series was given at the next Ajol camp we know about in Feb 1965. For all we know, it never had a name other than Sadhana Path.

One other indication that it had nothing to do with Antaryatra is numbers of discourses. All the Hindi versions of Sadhana Path plain have fourteen discourses, including the audio, which must be taken as the most real. The CD-ROM has only ten in The Perfect Way, with one the evening of the first day and two each day thereafter until the final day, when there's again only one, in the morning, to give everyone time to get a good start on their trip home. (The wiki Timeline is the same except three a day in the middle four days, should maybe re-examine that.) Assuming the CD-ROM is right, and it isn't always but is fairly reliable, four more Sadhana Path discourses are needed to get to fourteen, and they would come from that other Ajol camp.

Is there someone reading this, say in Amsterdam, who has a hard-copy PoSR and can count the chapters and maybe compare them to The Perfect Way? It seems unlikely that PoSR would have fourteen and Perfect Way only ten but they might and that would tell us something. And the chapters or the intro might have more place and date info. -- doofus-9 (talk) 07:14, 13 April 2015 (UTC)


Amsterdam here. It's in that spreadsheet I sent you earlier <<Book Ch to Discourse-dates.xls>>, last tab Path of Self Realization.

(BTW I only see your msg as I have marked "Watch this page". Safer to use e-mail.) --Sugit (talk) 08:13, 19 April 2015 (UTC)


Thank you! I forgot about that spreadsheet. I wonder if it might have a place on the wiki.

It does clear up a lot of nonsense and cut through a lot of fog, while leaving a few little mysteries and one big one. The big one concerns PoSR's reference to a subsequent camp at Ajol. The spreadsheet makes it clear that only material from Ranakpur on Jun 3-8 was used for Sadhana Path, and that in PoSR this material was packaged as fourteen chapters / discourses and in Perfect Way the same was packaged as only ten. So no Ajol camp is needed to account for the discrepancy. So why does the wiki's book description say, "These talks are from his first meditation camp at Ranakpur in the hills of Rajasthan, and a subsequent camp**[linked to this talk page] in Ajol, Gujarat, India"? Much of the discussion here has been because of that.

Little mysteries remaining concern the chapter divisions, and another bigger mystery arose in connection with that. I thought, well, these chapters are so short, even Perfect Way's ten chapters make a small book in the Ranch edition, what to say about four more chapters, and how do they divide up the evening talks (which are two per night in PoSR and only one per night in Perfect Way)? I thought i might get a clue from looking at the audio data, how long are the talks? Imagine my surprise when i came to see that audio for Sadhana Path is nowhere to be found. All the sites that offer audio for Sadhana Path are really offering it for "Sadhana Path -- Antar Yatra","Sadhana Path -- Path Ki Khoj" and "Sadhana Path -- Prabhu Ki Pagdandiyan", ie the non-Ranakpur books added on to make the larger editions of Sadhana Path. Most confusing of course is Antar Yatra, talks for which were indeed given in Ajol, but eight of them and not till 1968. And those eight appear in addition to the standard fourteen of Sadhana Path in one of its larger manifestations.

No audio. And above i had said, "All the Hindi versions of Sadhana Path plain have fourteen discourses, including the audio, which must be taken as the most real." Not only had i got the firm idea that audio for all the discourses from Ranakpur was available, but i even had a count and pronounced it the most real. Huh! How about the most unreal?

Anyway, it looks like the wiki Timeline has it more or less right, with the four evenings each divided into an "Appendix", consisting of questions and answers, and something called "Random Reflections", carrying on after all the questions have been answered. The eight evening talks of PoSR are merged into four in Perfect Way, which is how the CD-ROM has it. So that all adds up.

What doesn't add up is the reference to Ajol. If it's in an actual blurb in PoSR or on the cover, we might leave it here but explain it's wrong, if not, just yank it. For this, the original hard copy will be needed. My Ranch edition Perfect Way is clear that it's only Rajasthan. And there are some references to Sadhana Path audio here and there to be removed. -- doofus-9 (talk) 04:17, 20 April 2015 (UTC)


The Spreadsheet is purely based on the contents of the books themselves. In the books I reviewed there, I see no mention of "Ajol", not in the books and not on the covers. In the history of the page, I see that ref was there in the first version of 2008, made by Rudra. I do not know where it came from. --Sugit (talk) 15:49, 22 April 2015 (UTC)


third edition?

Wouldn't the red cover, 1977 version be the third edition? But it is not labelled as such and I do not have the ability to edit it. Swamisitar (talk) 18:52, 21 February 2017 (UTC)


not necessarily. could be the 4th or the 5th. point is, we don't know for sure.--Rudra (talk) 23:16, 21 February 2017 (UTC)


The "Edition no" field is unclear and not of much use. Generally it could mean the edition of a text or the edition of a text with one publisher. At some point we have decided to use that field only if the edition number is mentioned in the colophon. (And then that text is literally quoted in the "Edition notes" field. ) --Sugit (talk) 09:27, 22 February 2017 (UTC)