Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Berra, Yogi (Lawrence Peter Berra) bĕrˈə [key], 1925–2014, American baseball player and manager, b. St. Louis. An outstanding catcher with the New York Yankees (1946–63), Berra was the American...

(Encyclopedia) Transcendental Meditation, service mark for a meditation technique and program founded by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and based on Vedic philosophy. Stressing natural meditation and the mental and physical ...

(Encyclopedia) Shiva or Siva shēˈvə [key], one of the greatest gods of Hinduism, also called Mahadeva. The “horned god” and phallic worship of the Indus valley civilization may have been a prototype of Shiva ...

(Encyclopedia) Yogananda (Paramahansa Yogananda) pärämhäNˈsä yōgänänˈdä [key], 1893–1952, Indian mystic. He was born Mukunda Lal Ghosh in Gorakhpur, India, of a Kshatriya (warrior caste) family. Before a...

(Encyclopedia) meditation, religious discipline in which the mind is focused on a single point of reference. It may be a means of invoking divine grace, as in the contemplation by Christian mystics of a spiritual th...

(Encyclopedia) Koestler, Arthur kĕstˈlər [key], 1905–83, English writer, b. Budapest of Hungarian parents. Koestler spent his early years in Vienna and Palestine. He was an influential Communist journalist in B...