What Is God? - by Jacob Needleman (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

In his most intimate and revealing work, religious scholar Needleman cuts a clear path through today's clamorous debates over the existence of God, bringing an entirely new way of approaching the question of how to understand a higher power.

In this new book, Jacob Needleman-whose voice and ideas have done so much to open the West to esoteric and Eastern religious ideas in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries-intimately considers humanity's most vital question: What is God?

With rich, vivid examples from his experiences in the classroom and other walks of life, Needleman draws us closer to the meaning andnature of this question-and shows how our present confusion about the purpose of religion and the concept of God reflects a widespread psychological starvation for a specific quality of thought and experience. In varied detail, the book describes this inner experience, and how almost all of us-atheists and believers alike-actually have been visited by it, but without understanding what it means and why its intentional cultivation is necessary for the fullness of our existence.

Review Quotes

"Needleman has put out a powerful and deeply personal book about his lifelong effort to connect with God using both his head and his heart...a rare book that manages to be both skeptical and inspiring."
--San Francisco Chronicle

"A thought provoking amalgam of philosophy, interpersonal psychology, and religious thought."
--Library Journal

"Although the subject matter may at times seem challenging to the casual reader, the author's informal, chatty style makes it appealing to anyone interested in exploring spiritual matters and following one distinguished writer's quest to develop some understanding of at least a trace of the essential nature of the Divine."
--Retailing Insight

"An erudite, challenging text full of difficult questions"
--Kirkus Reviews

About the Author

The acclaimed author of The New Religions, What is God?, The American Soul, Why Can't We Be Good? and Money and the Meaning of Life, Jacob Needleman is Professor of Philosophy at San Francisco State University, and former Director of the Center for the Study of New Religions at the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley. He lives in Oakland, CA.