Rama Pemmaraju Rao, MD, author of Be SELF-Centered! (Not Self-Centered), takes a risk to reveal glimpses of his personal spiritual journey. Make Quilts as Life Gives You Scraps! captures the essence of any spiritual path: that we must all become our own guru through life’s artful discipleship. As we sew our own unique quilt, we learn that life itself is our teacher and that it indeed provides the necessary cloth scraps for our unfoldment. We ultimately snuggle under the comfort of our beautiful quilt when we realize we must look deep within rather than only to the world for lasting happiness.

Part I introduces the essence of the spiritual journey, the need for guidance, the importance of gurus, and the great benefit of daily Yoga practice.

Part II captures salient glimpses of Dr. Pemmaraju Rao’s mystical and worldly experiences that helped him heal and grow. Through the miraculous compassion of a number of world-renowned meditation masters, other healers and modalities, and his own efforts he has made great progress in healing his wounds of the heart: the key difficulties that veil joyful enlightenment.

Part III answers questions on spirituality, enlightenment, gurus, and the idea that our true inner Self is experienced as we sew our own quilt.

Rama Pemmaraju Rao MD is a board-certified physician who specializes in internal medicine and psychiatric medicine. He is currently assistant clinical professor at University of Alabama Medical School/Children's Hospital in psychiatry/child psychiatric medicine. He also deals with primary care medical issues as well.

He continues to deepen his process in training and education in integrative and complementary medicine. His lifelong goal is to bring the best of East and West into the medical setting, to afford optimal healing. His ultimate vision is to create a broad new paradigm in health and medicine through teaching, education, and through the manifestation of new clinic models that blend the Orient and the Occident.

Dr. Pemmaraju Rao is a native Texan born in San Antonio, Texas, and whose parents and ancestry are from South India. He has blended the best of East and West in his life and has seen first-hand issues in the human condition that warrant a broader outlook and approach to health and healing.

He completed medical training at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, and continued residency in medical psychiatry, and child psychiatry at Baylor Affiliated Hospitals, Harvard Medical School (Children's Hospital), and Dallas Presbyterian Hospitals.

Dr. Pemmaraju Rao appears regularly on television and radio for all affiliates in Birmingham, Alabama, regarding health, healing, and spirituality.

He has had a lifelong background in Yoga and its practices. His deepest dream is to convey the teachings and principles of spirituality and healing inspired by the ideals of a number of meditation masters he has personally followed throughout the world.

His original Guru is Swami Satchidananda who is his most revered personal master and mentor he has known since childhood. Swami Satchidananda is the Guru and founder of Integral Yoga© who came to the United States in the sixties and whose teachings are well known throughout the West.

Dr. Pemmaraju Rao's spiritual journey has further led him to the intimate quest of the heart and the search for the Divine Mother. In this process, he has been extremely fortunate to receive the direct energy, guidance, and grace of a number of different embodiments of the Divine Mother around the world.

These women have included Mother Meera (Dornberg/Thalheim Germany), * Mata Amritananda (MaCenter/San Ramon, California), Suma Ching Hai, Gurumayi Chidvilasananda^TM (Siddha Yoga^TM lineage, South Fallsburg, New York), Karunamayi Vijayeshwari (SMVA Trust New York), and Anandi Ma (Dhyan Yoga^TM, Antioch, California).

He is also particularly grateful for the Guidance of Master Subramaniya of the Saiva Siddhanta San Marga Temple in Kaui, Hawaii.

Dr. Pemmaraju Rao's philosophy of life is that we are forever growing and learning on the path to enlightenment. He feels there is nothing that is "not spiritual" if we simply shift our focus, increase our contemplation and introspection, as well as deepen our insight. Real spirituality, he feels, is truly being one's Self and accepting everything about others and ourselves in every given moment. We must be who we are and learn and grow from wherever we are. One cannot ignore issues in Psychology 101 and claim to be spiritual. He constantly looks to the enlightened masters as examples of what we must all become. In fact, he feels we are already enlightened. Ultimately everything reveals itself to us in its own time when we approach and return to God or Source directly within our own beings.

It is a matter of uncovering layer by layer "that which we are not in order to experience the enlightened state." Ultimate perfect health is the experience of enlightenment; everything we do represents our quest for health and healing through life's journey of Self-Realization and unfolding.

Our life will give us scraps that we have to sew into the quilt of our own process and journey.

This entire world is a cosmic play. We are highly intelligent, loving beings performing endless actions and seeking many goals. We are creating lives so that we can find meaning and prosperity upon this planet. We seek education, career paths and relationships, all so that we can feel fulfilled in our life journey. Yet, with all of our intelligence, gifts, talents and abilities, do we have an answer with certainty and conviction as to why we are here and how we got here in the first place? With all of our faculties, have we answered this question that has, from time immemorial, intrigued man?

At one point or another, all of us contemplate the meaning of life. Is there a real answer amidst the din and bustle of society and civilization on this planet earth?

So many countless beings have danced upon this planet, and yet, have gone away into the unseen. Untold numbers have pledged their love for each other for eternity only to have the seemingly cruel hand of death sweep away their hopes and dreams. Man thinks he reigns and controls this planet, and yet, earth, as well as the heavenly bodies, has been around for durations that the mind cannot even grasp or comprehend.

Why are we even in these bodies? Are we even this body? Are we a soul? What is the soul? What is the Self? What is the power that even allows us to move, feel and think? What is the power by which we see, hear, feel, taste and smell? What is the miracle by which we seem to move about, unlike machines that need an electric source? What is the power behind all of nature that allows incredible life to blossom and grow? What is the guiding principle behind all that is seen and unseen? Is there a state beyond what we normally experience that provides untold bliss and wisdom that seem to elude us in the quagmire of worldly life? Can we in our ordinary life answer this puzzle?

These are the eternal questions that the ancient masters, mothers, healers, gurus and avatars pondered throughout eons. They realized that external creation, although beautiful and dynamic, is actually fleeting and temporary. They therefore sought to find out what was behind the ups and downs of life, beyond the external world of confusion, misery and pain. For them, focusing on the outer life only brought greater distraction and disillusion. The salient question for all mystics and metaphysical beings is: "What is the Source that is behind all of creation?" In essence, they were tired of traversing the waves and foam of the sea; they wanted to submerge into the depths of consciousness to understand what was behind life.

Additional questions pondered were: "What is the source of us that allows life to go on? What is the energy or power that would allow us to enjoy unending freedom, happiness, bliss, light and peace?"

Ancient soothsayers realized that through our ordinary consciousness, there is no end to the pendulum of joy and happiness as well as the experience of misery and pain. This plane of existence is created so that such extremes and everything in between may be experienced by sentient beings. As long as there is a physical world, they will experience highs and lows.

For this reason, they decided to go deep within their own consciousness for the source of life. Rather than keep the focus on externals, they focused their concentration inside.

Through regular and systematic concentration, they discovered that there is a vast, infinite state of consciousness and being that is behind and within this creation. They had to penetrate their mind to get there. Instead of allowing consciousness (through the mind) to flow outward toward the world, they allowed it to pierce the darkness behind closed eyes and the space between two thoughts. They discovered that behind these two gates lies the infinite Source, the true fountain of youth, the elixir of life. This infinite state cannot be fully described in words, but can be experienced and felt from within. This state is the power that unifies everything within the seen and unseen. Knowing this energy, we rest in a state that knows no bounds and we are no longer caught in the ups and downs of the stormy sea of life. We understand the depths of the ocean and in fact we become the ocean.

Such beings who can rest in this consciousness twenty-four hours a day are known as Siddhas, Buddhas, Christs and masters. They enjoy the experience of the world but never lose the incredible and immense wisdom and love that is self-born from inside them, the love that does not depend on anything external. We are also this kind of guru or master; however, we have temporarily forgotten our oneness in Spirit.

We suffer because we have forgotten how to tap permanently into this great Self. We have been so distracted by the world that we do not know a permanent joy. We think that life’s ups and downs are just part of what we have to go through and that such a state does not exist. Or, we question its possibilities.

We are left confused and bewildered, because as we search for the deeper meaning of existence, we come to an inner roadblock. We come to walls and ceilings that always seem to move and shake. Our intelligence cannot break through the walls and cannot give us the happiness and peace that we seek. Our emotions cannot cry or laugh their way through and repair the road, so that we can proceed on our path. Our ego cannot, by itself, understand the mysteries of life and why we are here.

This great Self has always been within us. It has never left. It is our Source. It is the only thing that is permanent. Anything and everything else within and outside us is temporary.

We have caged ourselves in this body and mind through eons upon eons of incarnations in myriad bodies and lives in worlds such as ours. Our great Self lies just behind this body and mind. It is a matter of tapping in through regular contemplation, introspection and other spiritual practices of any kind that will reveal the inner, hidden secrets and treasures of our hidden consciousness.

Through our actions, thoughts and ideas, we have set in motion the conditions of our past and present lives and will self-direct any future incarnations that we go through.

Births are endless until we dissolve our misunderstanding into the light of the great Self. The ancients note that until we tangibly do this and rest in this permanently, we will suffer the emotional ups and downs.

When we rest in the inner light, then we enjoy our original state of enlightenment and then perceive the world in a very different way.