Training for the Life of the Spirit

Required reading for those walking the spiritual path, Gerald Heard's Training for the Life of the Spirit methodically outlines the entire course of the aspirant's journey. Heard provides a time-tested roadmap for the wayfarer: "There is a purpose in evolution-to evolve consciously, to evolve consciousness. That evolution is achieved only by the skilled, conscious training of our spirits." The aspirant works to subdue their ego: "For in so far as we are emptied of self, so far are we freed from accident. Our habit patterns, our moods...our natures can be reconditioned, re-freed. We will be inwardly reunited, our fissured selves re-fused." Training for the Life of the Spirit contains Gerald Heard's essential observation: "Our whole life must become intentional and purposive, instead of a series of irrelevant events, adventures, and accidents, happy or unhappy."Here one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century presents in simple terms the idea that man has a way out of the present chaos through a further evolution of his consciousness.Gerald Heard provides the basic concepts, the points of attack, the regimen, and the vision for undertaking training for continued growth in awareness, understanding, and grasp of Reality. It is these goals that comprise the Life of the Spirit. This is above everything a practical book. Heard's comments on the theory of spiritual life are incisive and profound, but theory is not his main emphasis; he intends to lead his readers to actual experience of higher consciousness. First, he says, conduct must be corrected; then character must be set right. But these first two steps on the Way serve only to make possible the third: the opening of consciousness onto the uplands where contact with the Supreme Reality disperses all doubt. This book is an exploration at great depth by a man who spent a long lifetime in dedicated and brilliantly successful practice of this science of the spirit.