Point Reyes Books

In this new book, philosopher Jacob Needleman, whose voice and ideas have done much to open the West to esoteric and Eastern religious ideas, revisits the path of his discovery of the need for the very nature of human experience to change. From own early experience as an atheistic, existential student of philosophy, he recalls an unsettling meeting with the venerated Zen teacher D. T. Suzuki, and his own early career teaching the philosophy of religion, where he discovered the deeply challenging core of esoteric and philosophical ideas embedded in Judaism, Christianity, and the religions of the East. He shares his realization that ideas and words, no matter how profound, cannot prevent hatred, arrogance, and ultimate despair, and cannot prevent our individual lives from descending into violence and illusion. In order to lead the lives we were intended for, the very structure of our perception and the very structure of our minds must change. In What Is God?, Needleman draws us closer to the meaning and nature of this needed change, and shows how our present confusion about the purpose of religion and the concept of God reflects a widespread psychological starvation for this specific quality of thought and experience.

Jacob Needleman Part 1 - Reading

Jacob Needleman Part 2 - Conversation

Jacob Needleman Part 3 - Questions