Not since Autobiography of a Yogi by Yogananda has a book this spiritually revealing, yet at the same time humorous, been published. Written by one of the Woodstock Generation, who lived in New York in the 60s, Peter Mt. Shasta shares his spiritual awakening--from a Master appearing to him as a child and teaching him to meditate--to sitting with Ram Dass (former Harvard professor and LSD researcher Richard Alpert) at the feet of the guru, Neem Karoli Baba (also known as Maharajji). From this group later emerged Larry Brilliant as the doctor who helped eliminate smallpox in India and later became a Google executive, Kirtan singers, Jai Uttal and Krishna Das, as well as Buddhist lama, Surya Das. Steven Jobs, who would later found Apple Computers, also sought out this guru, but arrived too late--after Maharajji died in 1973. Rather than encouraging the author to be his disciple, Maharajji told Peter, much to his shock, that his guru was Jesus Christ. Peter further recounts his consciousness and heart expanding encounters with the woman saint, Anandamayi Ma.
He returns to the US and lives briefly in Berkeley's People's Park before journeying to Mount Shasta--California's mystic mountain--where he is visited by the Ascended Master Saint Germain and told the plan for his life over the coming year.
On a second trip to India, after a miraculous visitation by Sathya Sai Baba, Peter finally begins to remember who he is and why he came into embodiment. Returning to the US in 1972 he journeys across the country in his old van and encounters a number of Tibetan Buddhist Lamas (Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and Chagdud Rinpoche) as well as Joseph Sunhawk, a Native American shaman in Taos, New Mexico.
The story ends with Peter on his way to a rendez vous with Saint Germain, this time in Marin County's Muir Woods, across the bay from San Francisco. This miraculous encounter with the legendary etheric being, who this time materializes physically before him, is described breathtakingly in the second part of his autobiography, Adventures of a Western Mystic: Apprentice to the Masters. Here Peter describes his training in the I AM teachings, and his apprenticeship to the Great White Brotherhood.
Many have said that once they started reading they could not put the book down--a page-turner filled with suspense, humor and illumination.