Author | Modern Mystic | Soul Tinkerer | Fix-It DaD | Shaman Disguised in Business Clothes |
Vish Chatterji
After a successful career as an engineer, executive, and entrepreneur, VISH CHATTERJI is honoring his soul purpose as an East-meets-West executive coach and Vedic wisdom teacher. He helps people find light in their work through the wisdom of his ancestors, leveraging the traditions of Yoga, Meditation, Ayurveda, Vedic Philosophy, and Jyotish (Vedic Astrology). Vish has studied in traditional Himalayan ashrams and at the Chopra Center for Wellbeing, and his coaching practice, Head & Heart Insights, counsels clients across the globe, and he serves as a Faculty Coach and Educator for the Berkeley Executive Coaching Institute at UC Berkeley.
Vish holds a BS in mechanical engineering from Northwestern University, an MBA from the University of Michigan, and an executive coaching certificate from UC Berkeley, and has held public office as a Board Director for the Beach Cities Health District in Los Angeles. His books include: The Business Casual Yogi: Take Charge of Your Body, Mind, and Career, and Astrology Decoded: The Secret Science of India’s Sages.
Vish was born in the bustling city of Hong Kong to Indian parents, has traveled to over fifty countries, and can get by in seven languages. He currently resides in Redondo Beach, California, within a bike ride to the Pacific Ocean. He is a married father of three and is often found cooking with the family, working in the garden, and tinkering in the garage!
https://www.vishchatterji.com/
My 10 Best
(In no particular order)
Chants of a Lifetime
This is a book written by my favorite musician, Krishna Das, and is filled with stories of his travels in India and time with his guru Neem Karoli Baba. His stories are full of profound spiritual teachings. There is humor that will make you smile, and you will get lost in the magical tales of spiritual India. This book also opens up the portal to deep devotional connection to the divine. There was a moment in my life, where my mother was in the hospital, and things looked very bleak for her survival. As I sat by her bedside, I was reading this book, and somehow through one of the stories, I had a moment of awakening, minutes after which she came back to consciousness. I have never been able to explain what happened, but it seems there is some magic in this book!
Autobiography of a Yogi
For many, this is the book that opens up the portal to their spiritual journey. I have read it multiple times, and each time it seems to open a new portal in my own spiritual journey. Though this is an autobiography of a spiritual master long gone, he and his teachers seem to come alive through the pages of this volume, and seem to provide guidance from the “other side.” A must for anyone on the yoga and spiritual path, it helps you realize that there is more to the world around you than meets the eye. There are two versions of this book, a blue cover version that is the original writings of Yogananda, and an orange cover version that is edited for clarity and readability. I recommend the edited orange version, as it is very accessible and an enjoyable read in our modern English prose. I would save the blue cover version to read after the orange one, when one is ready for the direct words of the master, and for the lofty and flowery prose of British Indian English, which was the original writing.
Astrology Decoded
I had to put my own book into this list because its teachings, around the wisdom of the stars, flowed through me, as if the planets themselves used me as an instrument to tell their story. Even though I wrote it, different meanings and interpretations come to me each time I re-read it. Beyond the meanings of the planets and their mythology, the book shifts your consciousness into a deeper awareness of your symbiotic connection to the universe. It is also the only Vedic Astrology book that is approachable and accessible for the non-astrologer. My publisher outdid themselves in its design; the pages are luxuriant, the gold and silver foil inlays on the cover, and the design and feeling of the book in your hands are magical. It is one of the most beautiful volumes in my library. I am also proud of the distillation of the vast Indian mythology tradition into the simple terms contained in this book.
The Journey Home: Autobiography of an American Swami
This is the autobiographical story of an American seeker traveling in the 1970s from Chicago to Europe and then overland to India. It is the ultimate adventure pilgrimage story, filled with magical and exciting coincidences and connections to the divine. As he reaches India, he lives the life of an ascetic, and gives us an inside look into a spiritual mystic living in caves and forests. His journey profoundly changes him, and today we know him as one of the most profound and beloved spiritual leaders of our time. I had the honor of spending some time with him, at our common publisher’s booth at an event. As I told him how moved I was by his book, I asked him about this mysterious character Gary, who kept popping up throughout his travels in random spots across the globe. He replied, with a mischievous smile—”there is Gary”—and sure enough there was Gary sitting across from us, in the booth, with a big grin on his face!
Encounter the Enlightened
I had the blessings to meet Sadhguru when he was not yet the global phenomenon he is today. Back in the early 2000’s he used to come to the Detroit automotive companies, teaching a course called “Inner Engineering.” As a spiritually-inclined engineer, I went to his talks at Ford Motor Company, and in those days, he did not draw the thousands that he does today. Instead we had small circle discussions on spirituality. I even had the chance to talk and interact with him one on one, and as with spiritually enlightened people, I could feel this vibrational calm in my energy when I was around him. I bought this early book of his, and when I read it, I feel that same vibrational resonance I felt in his presence. It is a book that explains Indian spirituality in a profound but entertaining and direct way, as is his style. Reading it is like sitting at the feet of a spiritual master.
Free to Love Free to Heal
This book was written by Dr. David Simon, a cofounder of the Chopra Center, who was a medical doctor who understood the profound connection between body and mind. It helped me process through and digest many traumas of my childhood. As the book title suggests, it give you a process to work through things in your psychology that have been holding you back, and leads to profound emotional healing. For anyone who has faced trauma in their life, this book helps you understand it from an Ayurveda and Yoga perspective, and gives you practical tools and methods to work through it and come out the other side, stronger, more healed, and with a deeper connection to the universal love of the universe.
The Business Casual Yogi
I consulted a living Himalyan yogi to write this book. I felt that many of the powerful teachings of yoga, and I mean yoga beyond the twisting on the mat, seem to have been long forgotten in modern yoga teaching. By going to the source, to a yogi who had trained under a mystic master in the Himalayan caves, I was able to understand the fullness of the powerful spiritual tool that yoga is. I then took those learnings and put them into written form so that the rest of us in the modern world can learn the power of the full system and begin to apply it to our lives. . It is a single volume that contains an introduction to yoga, to meditation, to Ayurveda (the mind-body medicine system of India), and the Indian philosophy system—it is a one-stop-shop to understanding the rich Indian Wisdom tradition—iand make it practical and relatable to better manage the challenges of our modern life.
A Thousand Suns
This is my favorite book on Astrology, and particularly on Vedic astrology. Linda Johnson seems to be a mystic in disguise. She explains the power of the Vedic system of astrology, and how it differs to the relatively simplistic Western pop-culture astrology. Sadly, this book is out of print, but used copies are out there! This was the book that really unlocked Vedic astrology for me, early in my studies. She relates the understanding and interpretation of the planets, along with the devotional practices to really connect to their energies. As a trained yogi, she also connects the powerful dots between yoga and astrology.
Getting Things Done
This may not seem a spiritual book at first; it is a book on productivity. However, implementing the productivity system described in it, opened up so much energy, time, and space for my deeper spiritual practice, that it turned out to be a profound life-shifter for me on my spiritual journey. Allen describes that when you have your mundane tasks of life managed, you have more time to indulge in your higher order calling. He also makes you really think about your deeper life purpose. My hunch that this is a spiritual book was confirmed when I learned that David Allen is indeed a spiritual teacher. His next book was Making It All Work, which decidedly took a more spiritual approach and confirmed that managing productively improves your ability to drop into deeper spiritual communion, which is what “makes it all work.”
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up
Again, this does not seem a spiritual book, but it takes the yogic concept of “saucha” or cleanliness to a next level. It turns out our physical space and our relationship with our possessions can be a major impediment to spiritual development. As I followed the teachings in this book, my life did indeed change profoundly. Folks coming to visit our home had thought we remodeled, though I just followed the steps in the book (and got rid of over 20 large garbage bags of “spiritual deadweight”!). It also woke me up to having a sensitivity of “feeling” my various objects in my heart, to make more soul-level decisions of what to surround myself with. Today I am surrounded with only possessions that bring me immense joy—which is just what you need to be supported on your spiritual path.