"A modern-day sequel to a celebrated novel of self-discovery."

The focus of this modern-day sequel to Hermann Hesse’s celebrated The Journey to the East is an ancient spiritual order that has taken the form of a new age religion. As it attempts to compete in the spiritual marketplace, a single initiate puts its claim to preeminence among other spiritual groups—and his own loyalty—to the test through a determined effort of questioning and investigation.

The Lost Slipper of Soul is a far-reaching guidebook to contemporary spirituality. It illustrates the necessity of becoming detached from those ideas, viewpoints, and expectations that are all too easily formed in the process of following a spiritual path. People are oversold on the idea that spirituality is easy, that changing one’s state of awareness is just a matter of chanting a mantra, repeating an affirmation, or writing down a list of resolutions. These pages reveal that nothing could be farther from the truth. The mind will put up every conceivable obstacle to revealing its own assumptions and habitual patterns, and to turn a searchlight on oneself requires courage and persistence. Reaching for spiritual fulfillment is the highest goal a person can have, but it is also the most difficult. For one to succeed in this quest, one’s desire cannot be lukewarm. It must be a passion.

We live in an age in which spirituality is advertised as a kind of commodity—increasingly equated with self-reliance and allied with success. The Lost Slipper of Soul is an antidote to this reigning myth of our contemporary self-help culture. It asserts that spirituality is not about getting what we desire in life or even about guaranteed salvation in the next. It is only about living up to our full potential in order to become an agent for a higher cause.