First off, the so called "ethical scandal" the author was involved in (he purchased the service of an escort), bears no influence on my rating of this book, nor do I believe that such an affair itself would undermine someone's capability of instructing people on the practice of meditation
Still, I found this book to be too extensive for its own good. Less than 200 pages would have sufficed for the author to adequately present his model of meditation to a layman audience. As is often the case with the genre of self-help and meditation books, one gets the impression Yates bulked up his work with useless esoteric fluff in order to give it an air of thoroughness. For anyone interested in an approach to meditation that is detatched from faux-spirituality, look into Autogenics as laid out by J.H. Schultz, Wolfgang Luthe, Luis de Rivera or Micah Sadigh. ( )

Probably one of the best books on meditation I've read and I have meditated for about a decade and a half now, also have taught it for a number of years in the past. This is one of those books I wish I had when I first started out, but also one that I wish I had as my practice went along. It talks about everything from the very basics and into deeper levels of the practice, and things that you may have to overcome, techniques, tips, etc. ( )

Long, a slog at times, but there's some interesting insights. The first meditation book I've seen that's (somewhat) grounded in science, cognitive and neuro. ( )

Loved this book so much, I went and bought the hard copy. For me this is the perfect blend of science and psychology explaining about meditation. How to do it, and how practice develops over time.

Groundbreaking stuff. Culadasa is a meditation master who describes step-by-step the journey to becoming truly awakened. I have currently plateaued at (what he calls) stage five, but I'll revisit this book once I start making progress again.

( )