A Total Change of Heart
Dialogues with an Evolutionary Mystic
Andrew Harvey & Mark Matousek
Paperback
ISBN 9781966608769
$24.95 US
eBook available
February 23, 2027
Calling all enlightened souls to address the problems of the world.
As the Dalai Lama, Pope Leo, and many other contemporary spiritual leaders have emphasized, ours is not an era when seekers after God can afford to withdraw from the world. As darkness and danger increase around us, enlightenment becomes less and less a private affair. We’re being called upon today to act as enlightened revolutionaries, bodhisattvas of compassionate action to preserve the creation and to help usher in the next millennium. In this riveting series of conversations, modeled on the Sufi tradition of sohbet (literally the spiritual talk of friends), Mark Matousek and Andrew Harvey touch on a wide range of issues critical to our times, from the loss of sacredness in contemporary life, to the importance of the divine feminine, and what Harvey calls the “mystic dilemma” faced by spiritual seekers in a secular, materialist culture. How is it possible to live with an ongoing awareness of divinity, transcendence, and grace in our daunting, terror-filled age? What lessons can we draw from history’s great mystics, to strengthen our faith and wisdom in course of everyday life? These and many other challenging questions are addressed in this unique book.
World-renowned religious scholar and teacher Andrew Harvey is the author of many books, including the critically acclaimed Son of Man and The Direct Path. Born in South India in 1952, he studied at Oxford University and became the youngest Fellow ever elected to the prestigious All Soul’s College. In 1990, Andrew collaborated with Sogyal Rinpoche and Patrick Gaffney in the writing of the international bestseller The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. In 1992, he met Father Bede Griffiths in his ashram in India and it was this meeting that helped Andrew synthesize the whole of his mystical explorations and reconcile eastern with western mysticism.
Mark Matousek is an award-winning author of several books including Sex Death Enlightenment: A True Story, The Boy He Left Behind, and Lessons from an American Stoic: How Emerson Can Change Your Life. His work has appeared in numerous anthologies and publications, including The New Yorker, O: The Oprah Magazine, Tricycle, and Harper’s Bazaar. He blogs regularly for Psychology Today and offers courses in creativity and spiritual growth around the world using the Writing To Awaken method. He lives in East Hampton, NY.
“In this fearless and evocative exchange, living mystics Andrew Harvey and Mark Matousek uncover the most pressing themes for those of us wishing to be of some use in this burning world: the limitations of reason and the primacy of the heart, sacred darkness, environmental collapse, silence and nonduality. At the core of it all is a passionate devotion to the sacred feminine as the source of all healing and our greatest hope for transformation.” —Mirabai Starr, author of God of Love and Wild Mercy
For the first edition:
“Dialogues with a Modern Mystic is both a unique passionate document and a brilliant manifesto of the mystical revival we are witnessing today. This splendid volume stirs the intellect and uplifts the heart and, if the reader will let it, infuses his or her whole being with the beauty of the spirit. The work is destined to become a classic.” —George Feuerstein, PhD, author of Sacred Paths and Voices on the Threshold of Tomorrow
“Anglo-Indian mystical writer Andrew Harvey, a child of India and an Oxford genius, searched for God and found a goddess. [His] most telling trait is a sympathy for exceptional people, a sympathy that extends to criminals and victims, artists and the lost.” —The New York Times Magazine
