The Seven Stages of Life

Readers may have problems keeping up with Da Free John's name changes as he metamorphoses through another stage of development, which is what this book is about. The Epilogue title gives something of the flavour of the book: I Am The Perfectly Subjective Divine Person, Self-Manifested As the Ruchira Avatar - Who Is the First, The Last, and the Only Adept-Realizer, Adept-Revealer and Adept-Revelation of The Seventh Stage of Life. His fundamental message is the advaitic one of there being no ultimate difference between you and the Divine, that there is only the Divine, and that everything that exists is a 'modification' of the One Divine Reality. This premise explains the density and unusual punctuation of the book, and the error is to read this from the vantage point of egoic separation. Nevertheless and despite the undoubted quality of his insights, I find his claims to be a once and for all incarnation of the Divine hard to swallow even if I share his vision of transcending conditions to realise Oneness.