Rating: 
Summary: Here's what the press have been saying:
Review: 'Through his clear and wondrous stories, Brown openly explores the multiple meanings and expressions of spirituality in various cultures...Filled with candid and witty research, this title will generate a lot of interest by word of mouth. An essential purchase for all public libraries.' Library Journal'But if Brown is not exactly a true believer, he is more than any tourist, and this text is far richer than any travelogue...' San Francisco Chronicle 'Mick Brown is a keen-eyed reporter...an adventure of the spirit. It's an important book because it raises questions about the future of religion. It makes you think...For everyone engaged, perplexed or simply amused by the search for the divine, there is no better spiritual leader than Brown.' Burlington County Times, Record, Intelligencer and Courier Times
Rating: 
Summary: Some who wander are lost.
Review: As a person who takes spirituality seriously, I found The Spiritual Tourist a fascinating romp through the occult playgrounds of the world, east and west. Some ... praise Brown for taking a proper "middle path" between faith and reason. I found, on the contrary, that he was often frivolously gullible where clarity of thought was demanded, and obtusely boneheaded where reason really might encourage faith, were he willing to dig a little deeper. (Well, a lot deeper.) Nevertheless, most of the book is a very enlightening and entertaining journey. (Those who would like to see a more thorough expose of Sai Baba, might also enjoy the somewhat sensationalist but fascinating Avatar of Night.) As one reads through Brown's accounts of eastern gurus, and also books like Philip Johnson's Intellectuals, which tell the stories of Western Humanist gurus (whom Johnson compares unfavorably to witchdoctors) like Sartre, Rousseau, Tolstoy, and Marx, it is easy to get the impression that religion is a racket. You find a few good people in it -- Confucius, the Dalai Lama, Gandhi, Francis -- but even they are driven to some pretty strange conclusions by their beliefs (an enlightened master would be someone who would drink alcohol or urine with equal equanimity?). . . and they are least likely to do miracles or make extreme claims. Except one, that is, who is the most sagely of all (the best sages call him their sage), yet makes the most remarkable claims and revealed the greatest power. Brown conflates this guru with Baba, but I cannot think of two people who are more different. Nor do his miracles at all resemble Baba's silly and sub-natural conjuring tricks. I am a very skeptical person by nature. I have been a follower of that guru for 25 years, and have been studying comparative religion for 14. I find Buddha attractive, the Bhagavad Gita, Lao Zi and Zhuang Zi clever, I see Marx' point, and admire Tolstoy, and have like Brown interviewed a few modern gurus as well. But it never entered my head that these gurus were any more than mortal; and nothing Brown said suggested that to me, either. The more I see of most of this crowd, the more startling and absolute the contrast with this other guru seems to become. There is one moment in Spiritual Pilgrims when Brown meets an old Indian scholar who is a follower of Sai Baba. He admits himself "baffled" by the records of that other guru. "If he did not exist, then it is a miracle that someone could have made up a story like this," he says. The people of his own time said the same: "No one ever spoke as this man," "No one ever did the things he did." Brown does not follow this lead, but taking a naive and simplistic approach to faith and reason, still inclined to wander, comes to a fusion conclusion somewhere between Buddha and Voltaire. Each of us must save ourselves. All right. But can we really do that? Do we love God with all our heart, soul, and strength, and our neighbor as ourselves? Is life without God a party? How does death fit into the grand tour? Can we waterski the River Styx? Hang glide from the Pearly Gates? Even Indian tradition, that teaches the gods themselves cannot change karma, encouraged bathing in the Ganges, worship of gurus, and sacrifice, because people felt inside themselves they could not cover their own karma, but needed help. Brown's problem seems to be he is a tourist, and has not yet become serious about looking for truth. author, Jesus and the Religions of Man
Rating:
Summary: Some who wander are lost.
Review: As a person who takes spirituality seriously, I found The Spiritual Tourist a fascinating romp through the occult playgrounds of the world, east and west. Some ... praise Brown for taking a proper "middle path" between faith and reason. I found, on the contrary, that he was often frivolously gullible where clarity of thought was demanded, and obtusely boneheaded where reason really might encourage faith, were he willing to dig a little deeper. (Well, a lot deeper.) Nevertheless, most of the book is a very enlightening and entertaining journey. (Those who would like to see a more thorough expose of Sai Baba, might also enjoy the somewhat sensationalist but fascinating Avatar of Night.) As one reads through Brown's accounts of eastern gurus, and also books like Philip Johnson's Intellectuals, which tell the stories of Western Humanist gurus (whom Johnson compares unfavorably to witchdoctors) like Sartre, Rousseau, Tolstoy, and Marx, it is easy to get the impression that religion is a racket. You find a few good people in it -- Confucius, the Dalai Lama, Gandhi, Francis -- but even they are driven to some pretty strange conclusions by their beliefs (an enlightened master would be someone who would drink alcohol or urine with equal equanimity?). . . and they are least likely to do miracles or make extreme claims. Except one, that is, who is the most sagely of all (the best sages call him their sage), yet makes the most remarkable claims and revealed the greatest power. Brown conflates this guru with Baba, but I cannot think of two people who are more different. Nor do his miracles at all resemble Baba's silly and sub-natural conjuring tricks. I am a very skeptical person by nature. I have been a follower of that guru for 25 years, and have been studying comparative religion for 14. I find Buddha attractive, the Bhagavad Gita, Lao Zi and Zhuang Zi clever, I see Marx' point, and admire Tolstoy, and have like Brown interviewed a few modern gurus as well. But it never entered my head that these gurus were any more than mortal; and nothing Brown said suggested that to me, either. The more I see of most of this crowd, the more startling and absolute the contrast with this other guru seems to become. There is one moment in Spiritual Pilgrims when Brown meets an old Indian scholar who is a follower of Sai Baba. He admits himself "baffled" by the records of that other guru. "If he did not exist, then it is a miracle that someone could have made up a story like this," he says. The people of his own time said the same: "No one ever spoke as this man," "No one ever did the things he did." Brown does not follow this lead, but taking a naive and simplistic approach to faith and reason, still inclined to wander, comes to a fusion conclusion somewhere between Buddha and Voltaire. Each of us must save ourselves. All right. But can we really do that? Do we love God with all our heart, soul, and strength, and our neighbor as ourselves? Is life without God a party? How does death fit into the grand tour? Can we waterski the River Styx? Hang glide from the Pearly Gates? Even Indian tradition, that teaches the gods themselves cannot change karma, encouraged bathing in the Ganges, worship of gurus, and sacrifice, because people felt inside themselves they could not cover their own karma, but needed help. Brown's problem seems to be he is a tourist, and has not yet become serious about looking for truth. author, Jesus and the Religions of Man
Rating:
Summary: Some who wander are lost.
Review: As a person who takes spirituality seriously, I found The Spiritual Tourist a fascinating romp through the occult playgrounds of the world, east and west. Some ... praise Brown for taking a proper "middle path" between faith and reason. I found, on the contrary, that he was often frivolously gullible where clarity of thought was demanded, and obtusely boneheaded where reason really might encourage faith, were he willing to dig a little deeper. (Well, a lot deeper.) Nevertheless, most of the book is a very enlightening and entertaining journey. (Those who would like to see a more thorough expose of Sai Baba, might also enjoy the somewhat sensationalist but fascinating Avatar of Night.) As one reads through Brown's accounts of eastern gurus, and also books like Philip Johnson's Intellectuals, which tell the stories of Western Humanist gurus (whom Johnson compares unfavorably to witchdoctors) like Sartre, Rousseau, Tolstoy, and Marx, it is easy to get the impression that religion is a racket. You find a few good people in it -- Confucius, the Dalai Lama, Gandhi, Francis -- but even they are driven to some pretty strange conclusions by their beliefs (an enlightened master would be someone who would drink alcohol or urine with equal equanimity?). . . and they are least likely to do miracles or make extreme claims. Except one, that is, who is the most sagely of all (the best sages call him their sage), yet makes the most remarkable claims and revealed the greatest power. Brown conflates this guru with Baba, but I cannot think of two people who are more different. Nor do his miracles at all resemble Baba's silly and sub-natural conjuring tricks. I am a very skeptical person by nature. I have been a follower of that guru for 25 years, and have been studying comparative religion for 14. I find Buddha attractive, the Bhagavad Gita, Lao Zi and Zhuang Zi clever, I see Marx' point, and admire Tolstoy, and have like Brown interviewed a few modern gurus as well. But it never entered my head that these gurus were any more than mortal; and nothing Brown said suggested that to me, either. The more I see of most of this crowd, the more startling and absolute the contrast with this other guru seems to become. There is one moment in Spiritual Pilgrims when Brown meets an old Indian scholar who is a follower of Sai Baba. He admits himself "baffled" by the records of that other guru. "If he did not exist, then it is a miracle that someone could have made up a story like this," he says. The people of his own time said the same: "No one ever spoke as this man," "No one ever did the things he did." Brown does not follow this lead, but taking a naive and simplistic approach to faith and reason, still inclined to wander, comes to a fusion conclusion somewhere between Buddha and Voltaire. Each of us must save ourselves. All right. But can we really do that? Do we love God with all our heart, soul, and strength, and our neighbor as ourselves? Is life without God a party? How does death fit into the grand tour? Can we waterski the River Styx? Hang glide from the Pearly Gates? Even Indian tradition, that teaches the gods themselves cannot change karma, encouraged bathing in the Ganges, worship of gurus, and sacrifice, because people felt inside themselves they could not cover their own karma, but needed help. Brown's problem seems to be he is a tourist, and has not yet become serious about looking for truth. author, Jesus and the Religions of Man
Rating: 
Summary: An inquirer with a singular sense of fairness
Review: Brown has achieved an extraordinary feat here. If you doubt it, ask yourself how many first-person accounts of spirituality you have read that are neither reverent nor debunking. Brown is a deeply interested inquirer who is yet disinterested, in the better sense of that word. He clearly holds no stock in the gurus, movements and mystifying phenomena he investigates on three continents, but at the same time he is entirely open to being affected and changed by them - provided they pass the laugh test and his discerning inner assay of authenticity. He is not shy about his own hunger for a spiritual bread that will sustain. In this respect, he is an eloquent surrogate for thousands of potential readers, whether they be believers or skeptics. If only he had been better served by his publisher. The book's title conveys nothing of the seriousness of the work; the garish cover art is ludicrously off the mark; the copyediting betrays a wholly misplaced devotion to the comma; and poor Buddha gets his name Gautama misspelled over and over again. Fortunately, these are no more than surface blemishes on an offering of genuine substance.
Rating:
Summary: A whirlwind tour of Eastern mysticism
Review: Brown's Spiritual Tourist is good in that it gives a broad survey of different occult, New Age and Eastern mystical belief systems/practices. Mr. Brown covers it all from Benjamin Creme and Theosophy to Sai Baba and Mother Meera! WOW! I found the most inspirational story to be his account of sitting on the beach outside the Theosophical Society's headquarters in Madras. I think you will find this story inspiring too. Overall, this is a good book.
Rating:
Summary: Everyones esential spirtual companion
Review: Ever wonderd who or what was at the centre of the universe? heard of gurus living gods and sweet mothers but never found anything compact enough or enjoyable enough to read ? Well then this is for you. A mystical, enlightening and down to earth account of one mans journey through the spiritual extasy and quagmire ,that is the east. you can almost smell the incence filled ashrams he descibes, giggle at the more excentric manifestations of the gods of the east and read in awe as the description of darhsan, with the lamas and sias he has met!
Rating:
Summary: A delicious spiritual journey.
Review: For all those who have been, are, or are going to embark on a spiritual shopping spree, Mick Browns "A Spiritual Tourist" is a delicious rendering of one journalists journey. He remains scheptical and distanced from his subject matter throughout. Though on the odd occasion he cannot help but get involved and be affected by the people he meets. From the appearence of "verbati" in London, to joining the throngs that sit at the feet of Si Baba, (though I did find this chapter long winded) to a meeting with the Dali Lama and the Theosophical society, to crosses appearing on the windows of a church in the United States and his final chapter, which I perticularly enjoyed, being a visit to a Buddist centre in England, his journey is informative, honest and inspiring. I thouroughly enjoyed every minuite and found many of his conclusions enlightening.
Rating: 
Summary: Deeply disappointing; I expected a much better book.
Review: From the cover I thought this was going to be fairly entertaining, but it was mushy, tedious, and lacking in any serious thought. I found the array of characters Brown meets more pitiful than spiritual. Not worth the money.
Rating:
Summary: fly on the wall
Review: I enjoyed reading this book although it wasn't what I had thought it to be. Mike Brown manages to maintain a balance of scepticm and respect for each guru he encounters throughout the book, which is good, as it keeps the book open to believers and sceptics alike. My only criticism was that the chapter on theosophy was far too comprehensive and long. I actually stopped reading the book for some weeks half way through this chapter. I did enjoy reading many of the short quotes and phrases spoken by some of the Gurus and it would have been nice for more of these to have been included. Overall a interesting level headed guide to eastern guru religions.
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