About

Parvati Markus is the author of Love Everyone: The Transcendent Wisdom of Neem Karoli Baba Told Through the Stories of the Westerners Whose Lives He Transformed (HarperOne, 2015). She has been “midwifing” spiritually-oriented nonfiction books and memoirs as a developmental editor/writer since her first efforts with Ram Dass’s classic Be Here Now. She has also helped with spiritual organizations (as past president of the board of the Neem Karoli Baba Ashram and Hanuman Temple in Taos, NM, and events (as a development consultant for the Global Peace Initiative of Women Religious and Spiritual Leaders, held at the U.N. in Geneva). She is on the Advisory Board of the Love Serve Remember Foundation. Parvati has two sons and three granddaughters, and lives in Los Angeles.

Why I have the name of a Hindu Goddess

Let me take you back to an ancient era: the summer of 1969. I had dropped out of the world of research and development in Cambridge, MA, where I started as a secretary (typical for a woman with a degree in English back then) and was promoted to editor when I started to rewrite the papers I was typing up for the firm’s brilliant scientists. I planned to head to California to join the flower children when my girlfriend, who had the car in which we were going to drive West, moved in with my ex-boyfriend (and wound up marrying him…talk about karma). After a number of very interesting adventures in Florida, I wound up living in a hippie house in Franklin, NH, and dropping acid for the first time. Then I met a guy at a party who said, “Hey, wanna go meet a saint?” Before taking the LSD and opening up to the Oneness of the universe, I would have said no. But the timing was divinely right.

Who is Parvati?

I was delighted to be named Parvati. I knew her story from reading the Tulsidas Ramacharitamanas, in which Shiva narrates the story of Rama to his wife, Parvati. It starts with Parvati’s previous incarnation as Sati.

Shiva and Sati lived peacefully atop Mount Kailash until Sati’s father, Daksha, put together a great sacrifice, but did not invite Shiva. Even though Sati hadn’t been invited to the ceremony, she went anyway. When her father insulted Shiva in front of her, she immolated herself with the internal fire of yoga.