This is a book about me and Paul Brunton, my father’s guru, a man with human failings. It is also about my father and mother and sister and uncle, but primarily it is about my own relationship to P.B. and to Indian spirituality while I was growing up.Who was P.B.? Paul Brunton was an English author of books about mysticism. He was born in London on October 21, 1898, and died in Vevey, Switzerland, on July 27, 1981, at the age of eighty-two. His first book, published in 1934, was entitled A Search in Secret India and tells the story of his travels in India looking for mystics, yogis, and seers. It was one of the first and perhaps the most popular book introducing Indian mysticism to the West. During his life he published eleven books, the last of which, in 1952, was The Spiritual Crisis of Man.Paul Brunton was my father’s guru. He lived for many years with our family We called him, as did most of his other friends, P.B. He was inordinately short, just over five feet tall, and very frail, weighing only slightly more than a hundred pounds. He spoke in low, measured tones with a pronounced English accent. His face seemed always in repose, and he had a far-off look. He cultivated the calm, inward-looking gaze of the sage. Much of my childhood was spent in his presence.In none of his books did he reveal anything at all about his personal life. Evidently he was born with the name Raphael Hurst, and took, first Brunton Paul, then Paul Brunton as a pen name. Although little is known of his early life, in fact little is known of his later life either. This was by his choice. He insisted on secrecy and mystery. Indeed, if I can think of a single word that is most appropriate to Paul Brunton, his life, his writings, his interests, it would be secret. He liked the word and everything it stood for.