The Inner Experience
Notes on Contemplation
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Thomas Merton’s groundbreaking last major work—a provocative and pivotal look into contemplation and the true meaning of spirituality
“True contemplation is not a psychological trick but a theological grace."—Thomas Merton
Revised directly before his untimely death and released in full for the first time ever, Merton’s book on contemplation has captivated readers for decades. In it, Merton takes us down a different spiritual journey than his previous books, one that bridges eastern and western religions in his signature brilliant insightfulness.
Thought-provoking and challenging, The Inner Experience delves into contemplation by exploring both Catholic monasticism and mysticism alongside Buddhism and the ancient traditions of meditation and spirituality.
Merton was still tinkering with this book when he died; this was profoundly the book he struggled with most during his career as a writer. But now Merton’s legacy lives on, through evergreen discussions on what a spiritual path can look like when you relinquish the need to be all-knowing, and how a lack of self-reflection and inner trust is actually the ultimate sin. Merton’s last words are for anyone seeking faith in a higher power—or simply seeking a deeper faith in themselves.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Any book that arrives in print 35 years after its author's death has an unusual history. Thomas Merton, the prolific monk whose autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain brought Christian contemplation into the 20th century, forbade his literary executors to publish The Inner Experience, an unfinished 1959 rewriting of his early book What Is Contemplation? But armed with evidence that Merton had taken up the project anew shortly before his sudden death in 1968, Merton biographer William H. Shannon has reconstructed his drafts and notes into this new volume. The result is rough, since Merton's text has not been edited so much as embalmed. Scholars will appreciate the critical apparatus of italics, footnotes and changes of typeface that indicate variants in the drafts, and they may glean hints of Merton's subtle shifts in emphasis, such as his growing openness toward Eastern mysticism. Less technically minded readers, however, will be distracted, and the writing is as uneven as one might expect of a work cobbled together over 20 years. Still, many passages offer vivid examples of Merton's ability to make monastic disciplines intelligible and plausible even to secular readers. Novices should still start with New Seeds of Contemplation, but Merton's many fans will want to add this book to their shelves.
