Diane K. Osbon was a student at a month-long seminar by Joseph Campbell at the Esalen Institute. Campbell has written more than 12 books by 2002 about myths and religion. A former Roman Catholic, he became a hermit for 5 years to only read. He later taught at Sarah Lawrence before focusing on writing and giving seminars.

This book is about “the challenge of living in this world, the process of spiritual awakening, the struggle to come into awareness, and the art of living in the sacred.” The Introduction begins with an Einstein quote: “There is no place in this new kind of physics both for the field and matter, for the field is the only reality.” I think neither Osbon nor Campbell have any idea what Einstein meant by field! The word field in this book has a very loose meaning - he uses field in so many ways that I have no idea what he means by it. He also equates consciousness with energy, which doesn’t clarify anything for me. His insights make use of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity. He quotes extensively from his books, but often quotes from Joyce, Jung, Nietzsche, and Heinrich Zimmer (his Hindu guru). He says “Myth makes a connection between our waking consciousness and the mystery of the universe.” He discusses love, mediation, spirituality, God and related topics. He really got my attention with: “Now, monotheism is a concretization of God, a mystery that actually transcends concretization” and “Concretization is alright for teaching little children, who don’t understand metaphor.” He says he took Christianity (I assume his Roman Catholicism) concretely until he was 25, then he “gave up” concretization and gained spiritually by going “beyond it” (to achieve deeper insights that lie beyond “concretized” doctrine). Joseph Campbell says “I see Buddhism and Christianity as two vocabularies for speaking about the same thing.” This is a new concept for me to explore. He discusses more than once the well-known Buddha quote “Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world.” He correctly interprets this: “We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy.” How? Discover and cultivate the best that lies within us (our inner god or spirit). He says we need to each create our own sacred spiritual space and there, within our sacred inner spirit, synthesize the spiritual truths that our searching can make us aware of.