A Master Surgeon of the Heart

A memoir of a half-century search for the meaning of life through meditation, visions and study with three spiritual teachers of India

"I was no longer aware of my room or my desk. I was standing atop a cliff, facing a body of water, a fjord, a small bay surrounded by stony cliffs. The water was sparkling in golden sunlight. On the water was a tall ship with square sails curved out with wind behind them. It was coming to take me aboard with other people, to carry us to that mysterious thing that I had lost-that we all had lost. I still heard the music of the French horns, but now it came from the ship, echoing off the cliffs: I was being called."

David Edmondston's memoir opens with that visionary experience at the age of seventeen. Now, at the age of eighty, while a coordinator at a meditation center in Bowling Green, Virginia, David shares an unusual perspective on reality-one that's informed by an ancient wisdom. After an eight-year search for truth, David found the first of three spiritual teachers from India who opened to him a world of understanding. In prose and verse, David speaks frankly, as both a dedicated student of mysticism and as a rational thinker. It's a story of his first-hand experiences, longings, fears, and visions-a story of how he was taught and what he learned.