These conferences, given at the Abbey of Gethsemani, Thomas Merton’s monastery, mark John Main’s first public teaching on Christian meditation. In the talks, John Main expresses the themes which he would expand and develop in the remaining years of his life. Above all, simplicity. Only simplicity simplifies, only purity can purify. And so the mantra, Cassian’s ‘formula’, The Cloud of Unknowing’s ‘one little word’, is a sacrament of simplicity which leads the one who practises it into the gospel beatitudes of poverty of spirit and purity of heart.    

John Main begins by describing his own spiritual journey on this way and then shows how it is a path open to all who wish to ‘open themselves fully to the wonder of God, to the enduring present’. The clarity and depth of his teaching make this book an excellent introduction to the way of meditation in the Christian tradition.