Synopsis
The Power of Love is an inspiring chronicle of life-changing encounters, personal transformation and a vision of love that transcends the everyday definition. Silver Winner, 'Best Inspirational Books', IBPA's Benjamin Franklin Awards, 2019.
The book is groundbreaking in its affirmation of love as a pathway for people of widely differing viewpoints.
Unexpectedly changed by love, Fran Grace went on a journey to learn more about its power to transform and heal. She interviewed renowned spiritual teachers, scientists, activists and artists, all chosen with the help of her spiritual teacher. Each encounter helped her overcome obstacles on her path.
The book gives readers a direct encounter with teachers of love in the world today. From diverse faiths and fields of work, they reveal the power of love to be the next frontier of global consciousness, suggesting many ways to uncover it and live it.
Includes photographs and unique contributions from: Dr. David R. and Susan Hawkins - H. H. the 17th Karmapa - Father Pavlos of Sinai - Llewellyn and Anat Vaughan-Lee - Mona Polacca and The International Council of the 13 Indigenous Grandmothers - Betty J. Eadie - Belvie Rooks & Dedan Gills - Dr. William and Jean Tiller - Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo - Huston Smith - Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity - Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev - Dr. Viktor Frankl (with grandson Alexander Vesely and Frankl family representative Mary Cimiluca) - Swami Chidatmananda.
Fran Grace's personal narrative is pulsed by her encounters with the pioneering teachers of love listed above, each of whom has a chapter that includes a brief biography, excerpts from their dialogue with the author, and her sense of how the encounter helped her to overcome the many obstacles to love.
The book takes readers on a journey into Buddhist and Hindu monasteries in India, an Indigenous Grandmothers' fire circle in the Black Hills, Mother Teresa's Homes for the Poor in Rome, Calcutta, and Tijuana, laboratory of a Stanford physicist, home of a Sufi sheikh, largest meditation hall in N. America, and a college classroom in California. She interviews those familiar with the stark Sinai desert, slave dungeons in Ghana, and near-death experiences. In the end, love is found to animate every moment of ordinary life.
Inspiring story of personal transformation. Compelling account of how the world is transformed through everyday acts of kindness. A rich resource of teachings on love, healing and compassion from a wide range of spiritual traditions, with a rare inside view of some of the world's most respected teachers. Includes index, biographical profiles, bibliography, endnotes.
About the Authors
Fran Grace serves as Professor of Religious Studies and founding Steward of the Meditation Program at the University of Redlands in California, where she has helped to pioneer a contemplative and intergenerational approach to university education. She has received numerous recognitions for her teaching and research into spiritual life, including appearances on CSPAN and NPR. Her academic awards include a Pew Fellowship from Yale University, Luce Fellowship in Comparative Religion and Theology, Lily-Luce Teaching Fellowship, and many teaching awards. After receiving her Ph.D. in 1997 from Princeton Theological Seminary, she wrote the biography of iconic moral reformer, Carry A. Nation: Retelling the Life (2001), called a landmark biography by Publisher's Weekly. In 2004, a life crisis opened up a deeper interest in the existential and spiritual sides of life, and thus she spent many years investigating the inner arts and sciences, expressed in publications such as Meditation and the Classroom (2011, co-edited with Judith Simmer-Brown) and the 50-minute documentary film she directed, A Semester Within (2008). Her quest was unexpectedly enriched by an encounter with a spiritual teacher who introduced her to a path of inner freedom that respects the foundational teachings of all spiritual traditions. Before her teacher's death in 2012, she edited and wrote the Forewords to his widely popular books Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender (2012) and the revised edition of Power vs. Force (2012), both by Dr. David R. Hawkins, who taught her: Love is both the means and the end. In 2008, she founded The Institute for Contemplative Life, a 501c3 nonprofit organization dedicated to the inner pathway common to all religions: compassion, forgiveness, love, beauty, humor, and joy. Her new book, The Power of Love: A Transformed Heart Changes the World, integrates her academic training with her own personal quest as she shares her encounters with fourteen renowned spiritual leaders from diverse traditions, scientists, activists, and artists, including Dr. David R. Hawkins, The 17th Karmapa, Mother Teresa, Viktor Frankl, Sadhguru Vasudev, Tenzin Palmo, International Council of the 13 Indigenous Grandmothers, Betty Eadie, and Huston Smith. A pre-release celebration of the book occurred at the 125th Parliament of World Religions, with its global theme for 2018 of "The Power of Love."
Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Ph.D., is a Sufi teacher in the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya Sufi Order. Born in London in 1953, he has followed the Naqshbandi Sufi path since he was nineteen. In 1991, he became the successor of Irina Tweedie who brought this particular Indian branch of Sufism to the West and is the author of Daughter of Fire: A Diary of a Spiritual Training with a Sufi Master. Vaughan-Lee then moved to northern California and founded The Golden Sufi Center. Author of more than twenty books and several articles, his intial series of writings provided a detailed exploration of the stages of spiritual and psychological transformation experienced on the Sufi path, with a particular focus on the use of dreamwork as inner guidance on the journey. In 2000 his writing and teaching centered on spiritual responsibility in our present time of transition, the awakening global consciousness of oneness, and spiritual ecology (see workingwithoneness.org). He was featured in the TV series Global Spirit, interviewed by Oprah Winfrey for her SuperSoul Sunday series, and has been interviewed on radio shows relating to Sufism, global consciousness, spiritual ecology, and subtle activism. His recently published book, For Love of the Real (foreword by the 14th Dalai Lama) is regarded as a completion of over twenty-five years of his writing and teaching, as it draws together many of the threads of his work, which began with his 1993 book The Bond with the Beloved. As a mystic and sheikh, Llewellyn has made a vital contribution to Sufism by articulating the ancient principles of the path for the modern psyche, presented in his books on Sufism as well as in twenty-five years' worth of teachings and interviews, as available in the audio archive https: //goldensufi.org.
David R. "Doc" Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D. (1927-2012) grew up in Wisconsin and served in the United States Navy before he became a physician, author, lecturer, researcher of consciousness, and spiritual teacher. As Medical Director of the North Nassau Mental Health Center (1956-1980) and Director of Research at Brunswick Hospital on Long Island (1968-1979), he had the largest practice in New York State. In 1973, he coauthored Orthomolecular Psychiatry with double Nobel Laureate chemist Linus Pauling, and interviewed on numerous national TV broadcasts. In midlife, an unexpected and shattering realization of the Oneness of All Existence transformed Dr. Hawkins's life. It took thirty years for him to articulate the experience in a way that would be meaningful to others. In 1995, at age sixty-eight, he published Power vs. Force, introducing his now well-known Map of Consciousness.(R) The book has been translated into twenty-five languages, with over a million copies sold, and has evoked praise from such notables as Mother Teresa. Twelve other books followed, as did lectures at the Oxford Forum and Westminster Abbey, as well as at many universities. Documentary films, magazines, and radio interviews (e.g., Oprah Radio) have featured "Doc" and his work. His numerous awards include: the Huxley Award for the "Inestimable Contribution to the Alleviation of Human Suffering," the Physicians Recognition Award by the American Medical Association, 50-Year Distinguished Life Fellow by the American Psychiatric Association, the Orthomolecular Medicine Hall of Fame, and a nomination for the Templeton Prize. For recognition of his contributions to humanity, Dr. Hawkins was knighted in 1996, and in 2000, a large community of Buddhists in Seoul, South Korea, bestowed upon him the designation "Tae Ryoung Sun Kak Tosa" (Teacher of Enlightenment). At age eighty-four, Dr. Hawkins gave his final public lecture, on the topic of "Love," to an audience of 1,700 people spanning many nationalities and religious backgrounds.
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