r [< OU_1 60433 >m OUP 68 1 1-1-68 2,(lio. OSMANIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Call No./l^* ST)* 2rGj Accession No. / Z 1 / , /) / * Author Title (J This book should be returned on or before the date f last marked below. GOD IS MY ADVENTURE books by the same author Minos the Incorruptible Pilsudski Pademwski Seven Thy Kingdom Come Search for Tomorrow Arm the Apostles Love for a Country Of No Importance We have seen Evil Hitler's Paradise The Fool's Progress Letter to Andrew GOD IS MY ADVENTURE a book on modern mystics masters and teachers by ROM LANDAU FABER AND FABER 24 Russell Square London Gratefully to B who taught me some of the best yet most painful lessons Fifst\/)ublished by Ivor Nicholson and Watson September Mcmxxxv Reprinted October Mcmxxxv November Mcmxxxv November Mcmxxxv February Mcmxxxvi September Mcmxxxvi December Mcmxxxvi June Mcmxxxix Transferred to Faber and Faber Mcmxli Reprinted Mcmxliii, Mcmxliv, Mcmxlv and Mcmliii Printed in Great Britain by Purnell and Sons Ltd., Paulton (Somerset) and London All Rights Reserved PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION is something sacrilegious in your intention of writing Theresuch a book,' said a friend and yet I went on with it. Since I was a boy I have always been attracted by those regions of truth that the official religions and sciences are shy of exploring. The men who claim to have penetrated them have always had for me the same fascination that famous artists, explorers or states- men have for others and such men are the subject of this book. Some of them come from the East, some from Europe and America; some give us a glimpse of truth by the mere flicker of an eyelid, while others speak of heaven and hell with the precision of mathe- maticians. I have met them all, and some I have watched in their daily lives. For years now I have sought their company, questioned them and watched them closely at work. I have tried to dissociate the per- sonality from the teaching and then to reconcile the two. I have included some of those whom now I cannot view without mistrust. Since thousands of other people believe in them, they are at any rate most interesting figures in contemporary spiritual life, however little of ultimate value their teaching may possess. There are people who know the heroes of this book more inti- mately than I, but my aim has never been to identify myself with any one teacher. On the contrary, I have always been anxious to discover for myself through what powers they have influenced so many people. This attitude will warn the reader not to expect an impersonal survey of contemporary spiritual doctrines. I have limited myself to writing of those men with whom I have been in personal contact. I approach them not as the scholar but as the ordinary man who tries to find God in daily life. This book is the confession of an adventure and the story of my friendships with those men whom a future generation may possibly call the true prophets of our time. The core of the adventure is a search for God. I leave it to the reader to decide whether such a search can be sacrilegious. R. L. MOCKBRIDGE HOUSE HENFIELD, SUSSEX Summer, 1935 PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION (Ninth Impression) is an agreeable duty for an a*uthor to express his pleasure when Itone of his books has enjoyed public favour sufficiently to call for yet another edition seven years after its first publication. In the present case, to the author's pleasure must be added his gratitude to his readers. For I have greatly profited from the thousands of letters received from people previously unknown to me, and even more so from the many valuable personal contacts which have often resulted from such correspondence. I should be false to my real feelings if I refrained from giving utterance to my gratitude for the enlightenment which I have thus derived. When the manuscript of God Is My Adventure was first submitted to its original publishers, four of the five readers to whom the book was sent for a professional opinion, turned it down. The fifth pointed out that, whatever merits the book might possibly possess, it hardly justified publication since not more than a handful of people were ever likely to be interested in it. The five readers were unanimous in thinking that for a 'philosophical' book God Is My Adventure was not sufficiently orthodox, and for one purporting to explore the by-ways of modem esotericism, not pronounced enough in its allegiance to any individual one of the teachers and systems which it described. Nevertheless the book has had to be repeatedly reprinted during the last seven years, and I assume this has mainly been due to two facts: people are always eager to learn from the spiritual experiences of a fellow seeker: many others, disillusioned by the Churches, were only too willing to delve into the ways and methods of unorthodox schools of thought, yet without at the same time feeling compelled to accept this or that method as the only valid one. In spiritual research the utmost personal freedom is a sine qua non. The seeker may, and indeed does, demand that those of whose findings he reads, should have a definite viewpoint of their own. But he will draw back as soon as he suspects that he is being pontifi- cally forced by the author into accepting a certain point of view. If in God Is My Adventure no effort was made to impose dogmatic Hftwmoft nf undue opinions upon the reader,%this was no* 7 PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION on the part of the author, but rather because of his belief that none of the doctrines expounded by him had the monopoly of the 'whole' truth. In his opinion both the knowledge and the methods of the men under review were complementary to, rather than exclusive of, one another. And is it not a truism to say that a system which to-day perfectly fulfils our spiritual needs,' may easily prove inadequate at some future stage of our search? Living truth cannot possibly be static. Though truth is one, its facets differ, as do our means of com- prehending it. Unless I completely misread the signs, I believe that there are reasons far beyond the possible merits of the present book which make its re-issue necessary in war time. I am only one among those who are convinced that the present war is mainly the expression of a spiritual conflict. The armed struggle is merely the visible reflection of something far more fundamental. Most of our spiritual conflicts can manifest themselves only by means of struggles on the material plane. But surely no-one imagines that the establishment of conditions propitious for victory and the right Peace afterwards is a purely material task, concerning economists and politicians alone. Is it not in reality a task incumbent upon every individual, however far he or she may be removed from the actual prosecution of the war? And does it not therefore follow that it is the spiritual effort of the individual which ultimately counts? But such efforts are doomed to frustration unless they are inspired by an intense inner urge. Routine and habit will not take us very far. Equally, this inner urge will lead us into blind alleys if we remain ignorant of the means by which it can be translated into practical action. Books obviously cannot create a sense of spiritual urgency. But by demonstrating the reality and the power of what is spiritual in man, they can certainly intensify it. The response to God Is My Adventure leads me to believe that something of the burning urge responsible for the writing of the book, may possibly have been reflected in its pages. Moreover, many of the men described in it were concerned with methods of transforming spiritual ardour into practical action. Thus, though God Is My Adventure hardly touches upon subjects directly related to war, it does deal with some of the * permanent verities of life which cannot be separated from the problems confronting us to-day. No-one can solve the problems of his neighbour: how much less 8 PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION can books achieve this. Yet what they can do, is to indicate the way in which others have tried to meet their own problems. All faith and all search for truth share a common denominator. If our own vision of God finds confirmation in the visions of our fellow seekers, we cannot but help feeling strengthened. I believe more than ever to-day that every book or work of art which helps us to realize that the great events in the outside world are not independent of ourselves, but magnified projections of some- thing within ourselves, has a useful function to perform. Whether our individual awareness grows through study, suffering, religion or personal relationships, is immaterial. What matters, is that we should become more acutely conscious of our responsibility in regard to those bigger events which appear to be beyond our own control. Division, like space, is a relative entity whose existence is limited to the material world alone. In the spiritual world neither of these have any existence. And since in the spiritual world it is the individual who counts, his motives and the workings of his mind are the forces that ultimately may have the power to tip the scales of historic events. If this war-time edition of God Is My Adventure can succeed, in however imperfect a way, to help a few individuals to become more aware of their spiritual responsibility, then this new reprint would seem to be fully justified.