The guru is our inner wisdom, our fundamental clarity of mind, as the Dalai Lama puts it. In The Mind of the Guru Rajiv Mehrotra brings together twenty contemporary sages and masters who have illumined this reality in their interaction with millions of followers. He elicits from them their deepest concerns and beliefs and the different ways in which they have helped people find a way to happiness.

Ranged here are gurus as diverse as Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, who attempts to bridge the experience of contemplatives and the findings of physicists, biologists and psychologists, and B.K.S. Iyengar, who brought yoga from the world of the esoteric to the drawing room of whoever wanted to practise it. There is also Mata Amritanandamayi, whose mere presence invokes an overwhelming awareness of love, and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, reaffirming each person's right and access to happiness.

While the Dalai Lama sees compassion as an essential prerequisite to happiness in an increasingly selfish world, Swami Parthasarathy emphasizes that the individual needs to be restored to his place of honour in the scheme of things, rather than the current fixation with grand concepts of science and development. And there is also the unique and contrary voice of U.G. Krishnamurti stating that all talk of transformation is poppycock. There are no grand truths or gurus. Salvation lies within you.

As Vipassana guru S.N. Goenka says, 'The teacher shows the way. One must walk in the path and experience it step by step.' This book is, perhaps, the first tentative step on that path for the curious reader.