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I Know How To Live, I Know How To Die: The Teachings of Dadi Janki - A Warm, Radical, and Life-Affirming View of Who We Are, Where We Come From, and What Time is Calling Us to Do
Frontier science meets deep soul awareness in this unique exploration of the teachings of Dadi Janki, head of the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University, by Neville Hodgkinson, former Sunday Times science and medical correspondent. I Know How To Live, I Know How To Die conveys the love and strength that emerge within us, and the huge benefits brought to our work and relationships, when we restore our connection with the divine through spiritual understanding and practice.
143 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 15, 2025
Update, Sep 2025: it really is worth reading books like this multiple times. The self changes and the words become new.
Original review, Jun 2015: I really gotta get out of the habit of reviewing books by authors that I know personally - it's so difficult to do. It's like there's this really thin line between saying what I honestly feel and yet at the same time trying not offend the person who wrote it.
Actually - story of my life.
Then there's all this other stuff in my mind about not ever trusting anyone to tell me honestly about what they think about my books (when I finally get around to publishing them). I think, on reflection, that the best plan is to only ever anonymously ask completely strangers what they think about them.
But, as usual, I digress.
Neville is a Dadi Janki bhagat. Even my wife agrees with me on this, so it must be true - right? So for him to write a book about/with her is completely appropriate.
What I mean when I say he wrote the book 'with' Dadi is that the book contains a lot of material that came from Dadi. I would imagine though that rather than this being a conversation or co-authorship between Neville and Dadi, it is more a question of Neville culling various relevant and appropriate texts from transcriptions of talks that Dadi has given and inserting them between his own filler text.
Dadi does a lot of talking. You could almost say that this is the main service she does - aside from spreading the vibrations of love, peace, purity and power (not so much of joy IMHO) that she constantly receives from God.
Is it cruel of me to say that Neville's contribution to this book is the 'filler text' between Dadi's words? Hmm. Yes. Neville has obviously spent a lot of time writing this book and I would imagine that it is a major labour of love. His words are actually the perfect bridge between Dadi's words and if it were not for the fact that Dadi's words are indented, and his are not, it is at times almost impossible to tell Neville's and Dadi's words apart. Love shines out from both.
On the other hand - I found it very difficult to experience Neville's words in the same way that I could experience B.K. Jayanti's words in her excellent God's Healing Power.
Neville's style of writing here is actually very similar to that used in Jayanti's book, but there is one subtle difference. Whereas Jayanti's use of words seems to invite the reader into participating in the experience that she herself is having, Neville's words seem to be almost describing the experience from the outside - at an intellectual remove.
If I tried really hard, I could translate Neville's words into experience, but it was difficult and it didn't always work, whereas with Jayanti's words, it was an effortless effort to merge into and float away on the words.
On the third hand - it may well be that I'm just not yet at Neville's level of subtle innerstanding of the deep mechanisms and workings of the soul, cultivated from his decades of meditation; and it was this growing realisation, towards the end of the book, that earned it a five star rating from me.
Actually, that wasn't so difficult to write so that either means my conscience fell asleep whilst reviewing, or I successfully traversed the thin line between honesty and ahimsa.
Or something else.
Original review, Jun 2015: I really gotta get out of the habit of reviewing books by authors that I know personally - it's so difficult to do. It's like there's this really thin line between saying what I honestly feel and yet at the same time trying not offend the person who wrote it.
Actually - story of my life.
Then there's all this other stuff in my mind about not ever trusting anyone to tell me honestly about what they think about my books (when I finally get around to publishing them). I think, on reflection, that the best plan is to only ever anonymously ask completely strangers what they think about them.
But, as usual, I digress.
Neville is a Dadi Janki bhagat. Even my wife agrees with me on this, so it must be true - right? So for him to write a book about/with her is completely appropriate.
What I mean when I say he wrote the book 'with' Dadi is that the book contains a lot of material that came from Dadi. I would imagine though that rather than this being a conversation or co-authorship between Neville and Dadi, it is more a question of Neville culling various relevant and appropriate texts from transcriptions of talks that Dadi has given and inserting them between his own filler text.
Dadi does a lot of talking. You could almost say that this is the main service she does - aside from spreading the vibrations of love, peace, purity and power (not so much of joy IMHO) that she constantly receives from God.
Is it cruel of me to say that Neville's contribution to this book is the 'filler text' between Dadi's words? Hmm. Yes. Neville has obviously spent a lot of time writing this book and I would imagine that it is a major labour of love. His words are actually the perfect bridge between Dadi's words and if it were not for the fact that Dadi's words are indented, and his are not, it is at times almost impossible to tell Neville's and Dadi's words apart. Love shines out from both.
On the other hand - I found it very difficult to experience Neville's words in the same way that I could experience B.K. Jayanti's words in her excellent God's Healing Power.
Neville's style of writing here is actually very similar to that used in Jayanti's book, but there is one subtle difference. Whereas Jayanti's use of words seems to invite the reader into participating in the experience that she herself is having, Neville's words seem to be almost describing the experience from the outside - at an intellectual remove.
If I tried really hard, I could translate Neville's words into experience, but it was difficult and it didn't always work, whereas with Jayanti's words, it was an effortless effort to merge into and float away on the words.
On the third hand - it may well be that I'm just not yet at Neville's level of subtle innerstanding of the deep mechanisms and workings of the soul, cultivated from his decades of meditation; and it was this growing realisation, towards the end of the book, that earned it a five star rating from me.
Actually, that wasn't so difficult to write so that either means my conscience fell asleep whilst reviewing, or I successfully traversed the thin line between honesty and ahimsa.
Or something else.
August 4, 2021
Excellent
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