The Seven Gateways of Spiritual Experience

Coming from a background of comparative religion, healing and as an interfaith minister, the author uses vivid first-hand accounts – including his own - of spiritual encounters to explore non-ordinary modes of perception, enabling us to ‘have direct awareness of the fullness of life and higher consciousness.’ Such experiences widen and deepen our understanding of life, and demand an expansion of our worldview. The seven experiential gateways of the title are truth and beauty, ordinary magic, the spirit world, the cosmic self, divine energy, the formless spirit, and pure consciousness. His most powerful experience is that of pure consciousness (p. 149), ‘a vastness that embraces all that is and all that is waiting to be… there was only an Awareness so clear that there was no awareness at all… the absolute insubstantial presence-awareness of all being… pure silence, pure stillness… more incredible than divine love and connection.’ He ultimately sees spiritual experience as pointing to the Oneness of our world in a Living Energy Universe that invites us to become fully alive and fully human. The book is a transformative encounter.