Prayers and Meditations

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A Monthly Cycle Arranged for Daily Use

Selections by Gerald Heard, Aldous Huxley and Others, With a New Foreword by Marvin Barrett

Edited by Gerald Heard

A Wipf & Stock Publishers reissue is now available.

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"These prayers and meditations are traces of an experiment," writes Gerald Heard in his Introduction to Prayers and Mediations. "Seven were written by one of our ablest authors." The experiment Heard references was Trabuco College, which Heard founded in California in 1941. The ablest author was Aldous Huxley, Heard's sometime co-adventurer in mystical voyages.

Huxley's contributions consist of the Meditation section of the chapters Being, Beauty (I), Love, Grace (I), Holiness, Peace, and Joy. Along with Huxley's seven contributions are selections by St. Albert, St. Anselm, Dionysius the Areopagite, William H. Forthman, and Margaret Gage. Heard penned all the others. 

Altogether these powerful reflections "are present-day renderings of those thoughts and feelings which have been rising in men since they began to reach out to Him who is beyond the senses." Prayers and Mediations equips the contemporary spiritual aspirant with a wellspring of inspirational devotions, ever invoking, "the desire to remember constantly the all-pervading, transcendent Presence of God."

Original typescript copy of cover and page one of Aldous Huxley's "Seven Meditations," which circulated at Trabuco College in 1943. (reprinted by kind permission of Laura A. Huxley)

Original typescript copy of cover and page one of Aldous Huxley's "Seven Meditations," which circulated at Trabuco College in 1943. (reprinted by kind permission of Laura A. Huxley)

Reviews

Marvin Barrett from his Foreword to the 2008 edition  

Upon my rediscovery of this lode of spiritual aspirations forty years later they seemed as potent and apt as they had when I first made their acquaintance.

Thomas Sugrue

This quiet book is an event in publishing — prayers for intelligent laymen written by intelligent laymen. The spiritual person will find it as useful as a third hand. Some of the meditations are magnificent.

Christian Advocate

Here is a book of almost white-hot spiritual intensity. The meditations are splendid — always suggestive and often breath-taking in their spiritual insight.

Glenn Clark

Prayers and Meditations belongs to the perfect classics of the spirit, along with Practicing the Presence of God, Testament of Devotion, and The Greatest Thing in the World. It will carry the sincere seeker right into the Secret Place of the Most High.

John Oliver Nelson

The exquisite line, the luminous theological thinking behind it all, the evident intensity of spirit — all place us again in the editor’s debt. It can freshen prayer life for almost anyone.

Dr. (Hon.) Rhea A. White

This slim but highly meaningful book consists of a number of prayers and meditations by Gerald Heard and others on key topics involving the human spirit. By immersing oneself in the readings contained in Prayers and Meditations, one will be tangibly moved in the deepest recesses of their being.

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Endorsements for the 2008 Wipf and Stock Series of Reissues

Professor Huston Smith, Noted Authority on the World’s Religions

There was a period in my early thirties when these four small books by Gerald Heard served almost as my bible. I read and reread them, and invariably found them to be uplifting and inspiring.

William H. Forthman, Ph.D., Retired Professor of Philosophy

Gerald Heard was an inspiring voice for the life of the spirit. Wipf and Stock is to be commended that Heard's remarkable work is being made available to a new generation of spiritual seekers.

Dr. (Hon.) Rhea A. White, Founder & Director of The Exceptional Human Experience Network

Gerald Heard has been a continuous inspiration in my life since the 1950s. His books are modern spiritual classics that will encourage many aspirants on the spiritual path.