The Nirvana Express

In 1897 an Indian yogi called Bava Lachman Dass put himself on show at the Westminster Aquarium in London, demonstrating forty-eight yoga positions to a puzzled audience. Four years earlier, the Hindu philosopher Swami Vivekananda had addressed the first World Parliament of Religions in Chicago, where the theosophist Annie Besant praised his inborn sense of worth and the exquisite beauty of his message. Victorian opinion of Indian religion mixed fascination with suspicion.

Within two generations, crowds of young Westerners were following the hippie trail to India, and the Beatles were meditating at the feet of the guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Journalist Mick Brown traces how the West's attraction to Indian spirituality developed, through a colourful cast of scholars, seekers, charlatans and saints.

The story runs from Edwin Arnold, whose epic poem on the life of the Buddha became a bestseller in Victorian Britain, to the occultist Aleister Crowley. It takes in teachers such as Jiddu Krishnamurti, Meher Baba and Ramana Maharshi, and the controversial guru Rajneesh. The result is a lively and at times troubling account of the Western search for enlightenment.