Title: The Spirit of Contemplation
Author: Ron Puhek
[$5, postpaid. A huge discount off of retail to get you to see what it’s all about!] “The Spirit of Contemplation” explores the culminating phase of spiritual development and what needs to happen after the completion of the spiritual exercises associated with meditation. Meditation takes us out of the world; contemplation returns us to it. Meditation renders us unable to live in reality; contemplation realizes the redemption of reality. It is the highest peak of the mountain of spritual growth.
This is the final book in the trilogy “The Science of Life.” The entire trilogy, however, is the first of two. “The Science of Life” concentrates on the development of spiritual understanding; the second trilogy, “The Art of Living,” will focus on the transformation of daily life. (175 pages, 5.5×8.5, paper.)
This title is a Fifth Way Press imprint from OYB. It is sponsored by the MIEM, the Michigan Institute of Educational Metapsychology—a fancy somewhat tongue-in-cheek way of saying “studying and teaching a philosophy for living today, inspired by the best of the past.” The institute has been represented for 30 years by weekly meetings of quiet, polite folk, who passed around these writings in a form of samizdat prior to this publication. These are often people from the ‘helping’ professions who see that their ways need help. It also includes students who need help to stay true to what they are learning. They are all in desparate straits. Due to modernism. The ‘Fifth Way’ concept comes from ‘the Fourth Way’ of Gurdjieff. The traditional three ways to contact reality were: the emotional way of the monk, the intellectual way of the yogi, and the physical way of the fakir. These were recently joined by the fourth way of the householder, one who learns from everyday life, who does not withdraw. The Fifth Way takes the best of all ways without leaving any behind, transcending them all: count your fingers: thumbs up! If you like Simone Weil and St. Theresa of Avila, you’ll like Puhek. It’s plainly written but intense philosophy for a modern age. His reflections integrate and build on many works, especially Plato, Sartre, Jung and Freud.
