- Hardcover: 308 pages
- Publisher: Bantam Doubleday Dell; New edition edition (Jan 2000)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0385489463
- ISBN-13: 978-0385489461
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 16 x 2.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
552,085 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #94 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Christianity > Theology > Doctrine
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Product Description
Product Description
Even though the English Benedictine monk Bede Griffiths was well known during his lifetime (1906-1993) for his efforts to harmonize the spiritual practices of East and of the West, the full range of his influence is only just becoming widely appreciated. Now, from respected journalist and biographer Shirley du Boulay, comes the first major biography of Griffiths's life, Beyond the Darkness.
Du Boulay shows the transformation of Griffiths from an idealistic, highly intelligent, serious, and sometimes irritable schoolboy into a man of profound wisdom who emanated unconditional love and who was often revered as a holy man and a living saint. During his life of intellectual and spiritual discovery, he became an associate of the Inklings, a close friend of C.S. Lewis, and eventually a leader of an ashram in India. His long and eventful journey was often filled with controversy, pain, and anguish. Yet, Griffiths attained a spiritual wholeness granted to few, enabling him to express in simple and direct terms the underlying unity of religions.
In Beyond the Darkness, readers experience a life as exciting as space travel and as passionate as a great romance. They will realize for themselves the culmination of Griffiths's knowledge: Beyond the opposites, beyond the darkness, is "that Great Person, of the brightness of the sun."
Du Boulay shows the transformation of Griffiths from an idealistic, highly intelligent, serious, and sometimes irritable schoolboy into a man of profound wisdom who emanated unconditional love and who was often revered as a holy man and a living saint. During his life of intellectual and spiritual discovery, he became an associate of the Inklings, a close friend of C.S. Lewis, and eventually a leader of an ashram in India. His long and eventful journey was often filled with controversy, pain, and anguish. Yet, Griffiths attained a spiritual wholeness granted to few, enabling him to express in simple and direct terms the underlying unity of religions.
In Beyond the Darkness, readers experience a life as exciting as space travel and as passionate as a great romance. They will realize for themselves the culmination of Griffiths's knowledge: Beyond the opposites, beyond the darkness, is "that Great Person, of the brightness of the sun."
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First Sentence
The family into which Alan Richard Griffiths was born was very English, very middle-class, very Anglican. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
The family into which Alan Richard Griffiths was born was very English, very middle-class, very Anglican. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I loved reading `Beyond the Darkness'. I always feel that I should read and know about the spiritual writers and teacher I admire and have been influential. But I must confess to hardly ever being able to finish the majority of biographies and autobiographies I have bought over the years. However, Shirley du Bouley's account of Bede Griffiths, his life, teachings, influences and ideas is an exception and made it onto a short list of those that I could not put down until I had finished.
Just by looking at Shirley du Bouley's notes, one can see that she has done her research, drawing not just from the main published works of the great man, but from many unpublished sources. Additionally, her knowledge of Christian, Hindu and Yogic spirituality shows great depth and understanding - many lesser knowledgeable writers might not have been able to tackle all these traditions together so well and in such a fluid style.
What I also loved about `Beyond the Darkness', is that it is no rose-tinted overview of Bede's life, and is not afraid to shows him as being only too human at times, with problems and difficulties just like the rest of us, which for me, made him come to life much more and be someone to personally relate to.
Bede Griffiths was for many people one of the great spiritual men of the last century. His own autobiography was a best seller. But, for me, `Beyond the Darkness' is more insightful, as it continues where he left off - his journey to, and inclusive and interfaith experiments in, India - and takes us deeper into the mature years of his spiritual growth and the final revelation he had of the Divine Mother.
Just by looking at Shirley du Bouley's notes, one can see that she has done her research, drawing not just from the main published works of the great man, but from many unpublished sources. Additionally, her knowledge of Christian, Hindu and Yogic spirituality shows great depth and understanding - many lesser knowledgeable writers might not have been able to tackle all these traditions together so well and in such a fluid style.
What I also loved about `Beyond the Darkness', is that it is no rose-tinted overview of Bede's life, and is not afraid to shows him as being only too human at times, with problems and difficulties just like the rest of us, which for me, made him come to life much more and be someone to personally relate to.
Bede Griffiths was for many people one of the great spiritual men of the last century. His own autobiography was a best seller. But, for me, `Beyond the Darkness' is more insightful, as it continues where he left off - his journey to, and inclusive and interfaith experiments in, India - and takes us deeper into the mature years of his spiritual growth and the final revelation he had of the Divine Mother.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I confess I was skeptical before I started reading this book. I expected an uncritical hagiography. But I was pleasantly surprised. While never doubting that Bede was a quite extraordinary holy man, the author succeeds in maintaining the distance needed to present the facts without spin. In fact, this is an impressively skilled piece of writing, with everything logically in its place and presented correctly to enhance the quality of the overall portrait. The level of detail is impressive too, with much more than the average investigative journalist would have extracted. Altogether, Bede is fortunate indeed to have such a fine biography.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
5 reviews
29 of 29 people found the following review helpful
A well-balanced and insightful biography
27 Nov 1998
Format:Hardcover
Father Bede Griffiths (1906-1993) was an English Benedictine monk who resided in India for nearly four decades. Ms. du Boulay's book is the first major biography written about him since his death, and I, for one, bought it as soon as I could. Her meticulous, though not overwhelming, attention to the many facets of his life provides a fascinating and incredibly balanced perspective of this man of many roles: monk, mystic, writer, lecturer, and leader in Hindu-Christian interreligious dialogue. For all that I admired his embracing warmth and sheer wisdom, it helped to know just how much he had to live through; i.e. she does not shy away from describing with excruciating clarity some of the vicious verbal and written attacks from both Hindu and Christian fundamentalists he endured. My hope is that this very well crafted biography brings the importance of Father Bede's vision and life into the consciousness of many seekers. Highly recommended (along, of course, with his own writings--most of which remain in print).
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Om and Amen
2 Mar 2004
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Shirley du Boulay has given us a beautifully crafted biography of one of the most interesting Christians of our time. In many ways, Bede anticipated and served as a center of gravity for the new winds that blew through Christianity in the last third of the twentieth century. He advocated a decentralized, collegiate authority in the Roman Catholic church, and worried about doctrinal intolerance and insularity. Most importantly, he recognized that the world's faith traditions can indeed enter into a conversation with one another in which each enriches the other. By the end of his life, after having spent 30 odd years in Christian ashrams in India, he'd become a proponent of nondualism or advaita, accepting a radical panentheism that tried to honor the both/and of intuition as opposed to the either/or of rationality.
Du Boulay's biography discusses Bede's personal life, but wonderfully summarizes the successive stages of his journey toward God. Ordinarily biographies are best read only after some familiarity with their subjects' writings. But this one is an excellent introduction to the thought of Bede.
Bede Griffiths was a luminary in the interfaith dialogue, and during his lifetime he helped many Christians to come to a new appreciation of the contemplative roots of their own faith by inviting them to explore the spiritualities of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam. Unfortunately, the interest in interfaith dialogue and exchange that he encouraged seems to have waned in recent years, and particularly after 9/11.
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Story of An Amazing Man
25 Sep 2000
Format:Hardcover
While vastly inferior to Bede's own writings about his life ("The Golden String" especially), this book gives a great account of Bede's development from his formative years at Eastington, where he engaged in a Waldenesque experiment in "simple living" (which left a lasting mark upon him) to his nearly forty years in his ashram in India. Bede shows himself to be a genuinely ecumenical man, taking a wealth of ideas and concepts from all religious traditions that he comes into conduct with (but especially the Hindoo faiths). A man years ahead of his time, he would most probably had been excommunicated if many of his ideas had received more attention in the Roman church. He was in favour of radical reform of the Catholic Church, which he had began to think was outdated and did not speak to people in the way that it once did -- and that if it did not change its approach to speak to people in this modern day, that it would eventaully cease to be of relevance altogether. He was in favour of a married clergy and denied that the pope should be the head of the whole church, but that this was a corruption of the original church which had the pope of Rome as merely the "first among equals" -- a position that he was supposed to share equally with various other bishops throughout Christendom. His theology tended to be on the mystical side, which, to me, makes much more sense than the Biblical literalism that is sweeping the world today. He was also of the opinion that Jesus' message was at odds with the Old Testament, but that it agreed in all its essentials with the teachings of the Gita. His embracing of the similarities of Christianity and Hinduism was particularly impressive, especially in this day of finger-waggling evangelistic denominationalists who assure us that only they can be right. Bede always kept an open mind and was a seeker until the very end. He never stopped growing and learning -- something that would have been impossible if he had closed his mind to any other opinions other than his own. He is an example of a very, very rare type of individual. A wonderful look at an amazing human being.
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