BOOKS
ON THE ROAD
To Freedom
I
n 1968, young Jewish American Neal Rosner made the decision to live in India at the ashram of a Hindu saint, at an age when most of us are not deciding anything more momentous than where to go to college.
What led him on this journey, and what brought him over the years on travels to India and
Nepal in the company of enlightened masters, before settling down in the south of India at
the ashram of Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi, is the subject of his two-volume book “On
the Road to Freedom”. Rosner, now known as Swami Paramatmananda, shares in an engaging and candid tone the spiritual inspiration that got him started on the path and led
him to study Eastern spirituality, as well as the intense challenges he faced both from within
and without in his quest for the ultimate spiritual goal.
The first volume tells of how Rosner took up yoga and soon thereafter found himself naturally becoming increasingly monastic, less interested in spending time with a girlfriend and
more interested in meditating. This was not something he had sought out at all, but he soon
embraced it. He shares the experience of someone born to the affluence of the West experiencing the austerities found by spiritual aspirants in the East: few possessions, sleeping on