John's Song of Life

Framed as a philosophical dialogue between teacher and student centered on a question of supreme interest to all thinking persons - whether man's soul or essence is immortal - the work is an attempt to reach a conclusion by integrating into a coherent whole various diverse influences in the life of the author. Inspired by various sources, Eastern and Western, and many years or personal soul searching, the dialogue reflects an optimism in the face of pain or loss that is the result of the author's lifelong passion for philosophy. When it was first suggested to the author that a brief introduction to John's Song of Life might be helpful to the reader, his initial reaction was that the dialogue should speak for itself. After some reflection, however, he came to the conclusion that a few words about his background and how this work came to be written might be of interest to at least some of his readers. The effort to philosophically bridge the gap between East and West made herein is the result of the author's attempt, after many years of study and reflection, to assimilate and integrate into a coherent whole, if possible, differing influences in his life and, specifically, to summarize a personal faith which is both religious and philosophic. Born and raised a Catholic in New York, the author readily acknowledges his debt of gratitude for the invaluable education, religious and secular, he received at the parochial schools he attended over the course of twelve years. Then, after starting college over forty-five years ago, he was introduced one fateful day by a friend to Samuel Weiser's bookstore at 845 Broadway in New York. There he discovered a veritable treasure-house of countless gems of Eastern wisdom. One of the staff was especially helpful and introduced him to the works of Paul Brunton, an Englishman who became an authority on Yoga and India's higher philosophy. In a short while, the author, who had theretofore read only Western philosophy in school, became a se