What a question. I’ve been asking it all my life. Publicly, I am known for writing and workshops about the spiritual search, intuition, the still, small voice of God, angels, and miraculous time-warped synchronicities that seem directed to our benefit. I have written about my own mystical illuminations in A Book of Angels, The Ecstatic Journey, The Path of Prayer, in novels, plays, stories, and poetry. My work is translated into some 25 languages (most recently Chinese). But underneath I’m an ordinary flawed, failed human being, stumbling, searching for meaning, struggling toward God, and trying to be of some small service before I go back home.
How do you find hope in the midst of horror? From what aquifer springs blinding faith even when faced with being burnt alive? For two centuries the medieval Church worked to exterminate the vegetarian, pacifist “heretic” followers of Christ, known as Cathars or pure ones. Women were priests. Holy script was translated so everyone could read. Finally, 230 perfecti, trapped in the fortress of Montsegur in the south of France, lowered 2 perfecti and a guide on ropes down the sheer cliff face to escape and continue the Church of Love —before they were all burnt at the stake.
My novel begins when Jeanne, their guide, having lost the two, is looking for them. The Inquisition is looking for her. Everyone is looking for the immense Cathar treasure. What was the treasure of Montségur?
Named one of the 100 best spiritual books of the 20th century, this autobiography of a guru’s spiritual search for enlightenment reads like a page-turner thriller. Here’s one story: when he was a young boy, his atheist brother dared him (if he believed so firmly in God) to go without money to a far-off city, live well for a day, and return without having spent a cent. That story alone changed my life.
Autobiography of a Yogi is at once a beautifully written account of an exceptional life and a profound introduction to the ancient science of Yoga and its time-honored tradition of meditation. Profoundly inspiring, it is at the same time vastly entertaining, warmly humorous and filled with extraordinary personages.
Self-Realization Fellowship's editions, and none others, include extensive material added by the author after the first edition was published, including a final chapter on the closing years of his life.
Selected as "One of the 100 Best Spiritual Books of the Twentieth Century", Autobiography of a Yogi has been translated into more…
Taken from his 1901-01 lectures at the University of Edinburgh, this book offers the quintessential psychological study of mysticism and spiritual experiences, identifying commonalities and taking seriously the Reality of the Unseen. A true spiritual illumination, says James, is authoritative, temporary, optimistic, and always verifies union with something larger than the conscious self.
Standing at the crossroads of psychology and religion, this catalyzing work applied the scientific method to a field abounding in abstract theory. William James believed that individual religious experiences, rather than the precepts of organized religions, were the backbone of the world's religious life. His discussions of conversion, repentance, mysticism and saintliness, and his observations on actual, personal religious experiences - all support this thesis. In his introduction, Martin E. Marty discusses how James's pluralistic view of religion led to his remarkable tolerance of extreme forms of religious behaviour, his challenging, highly original theories, and his welcome lack of pretension…
I am not suggesting any particular book of the poems of this famous Persian poet and Sufi mystic. There are dozens of translations. Read any. His ecstatic poetry, as well as reflective musings all, lead to deepening love, the center and meaning of a spiritual experience.
The poetry of the medieval Persian sage Rumi combines lyrical beauty with spiritual profundity, a sense of rapture, and acute awareness of human suffering in ways that speak directly to contemporary audiences.
Trained in Sufism—a mystic tradition within Islam—Rumi founded the Sufi order known to us as the Whirling Dervishes, who use dance and music as part of their spiritual devotion. Many of Rumi’s poems speak of a yearning for ecstatic union with the divine Beloved. But his images bring the sacred and the earthy together in startling ways, describing divine love in vividly human terms.
This is sometimes heavy slogging, and irritating for the absence of her personal spiritual stories, but it remains a seminal work. Her lifelong quest was a source of private angst, provoking her to research and write novels, poems, and this psychological exploration of how the mystic fits into both worlds with joy. It includes a valuable appendix of mystics over centuries.
Underhill maps out her own view of the mystic's journey into five parts: "Awakening of Self," "Purgation of Self," "Illumination," "the Dark Night of the Soul," and "the Unitative life." Underhill is focussed on mysticism in Christianity but she also mentions Sufism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and other belief systems. This has long been considered a crucial work on the subject of Mysticism, and continues to guide seekers a century later.--J.B. Hare
Reared from sheltered babyhood as a fully enlightened being, the abbot decided at the age of 36 to leave the monastery and wander begging like the Buddha for food. I was amazed. He openly recounts the emotions of grappling for the first time with physical needs – including his descent into dying, his recovery, and his joy of this difficult world.
A rare, intimate account of a world-renowned Buddhist monk’s near-death experience and the life-changing wisdom he gained from it
“One of the most inspiring books I have ever read.”—Pema Chödrön, author of When Things Fall Apart
“This book has the potential to change the reader’s life forever.”—George Saunders, author of Lincoln in the Bardo
At thirty-six years old, Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche was a rising star within his generation of Tibetan masters and the respected abbot of three monasteries. Then one night, telling no one, he slipped out of his monastery in India with the intention of spending the next four…
Gabrielle found her grandfather’s diaries after her mother’s death, only to discover that he had been a Nazi. Born in Berlin in 1942, she and her mother fled the city in 1945, but Api, the one surviving male member of her family, stayed behind to work as a doctor in a city 90% destroyed.
Gabrielle retraces Api’s steps in the Berlin of the 21st century, torn between her love for the man who gave her the happiest years of her childhood and trying to come to terms with his Nazi membership, German guilt, and political responsibility.
Api's Berlin Diaries: My Quest to Understand My Grandfather's Nazi Past
"This is not a book I will forget any time soon."
Story Circle Book Reviews
Moving and provocative, Api's Berlin Diaries offers a personal perspective on the fall of Berlin 1945 and the far-reaching aftershocks of the Third Reich.
After her mother's death, Robinson was thrilled to find her beloved grandfather's war diaries-only to discover that he had been a Nazi.
The award-winning memoir shows Api, a doctor in Berlin, desperately trying to help the wounded in cellars without water or light. He himself was reduced to anxiety and despair, the daily diary his main refuge. As Robinson retraces Api's…
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