Gerald’s Second Conversion

As a young man, Gerald Heard studied theology and planned on becoming an Anglican minister, following in the footsteps of his paternal grandfather, father, and eldest brother. But when confronted with the discoveries of science, which collided with many of his religious beliefs, he underwent a crisis of faith and subsequently suffered a nervous breakdown at the age of 27. He emerged a secular humanist, and became involved in many social activities.

However, during the late 1920s, a significant event changed his course again. He came across the teachings of Buddhism, which exerted a profound influence and caused him to reconsider his secular-humanist bent. He subsequently fashioned his keynote theme – that history reflects the evolution of human consciousness – in his first major book, 1929’s The Ascent of Humanity.

By 1934, Heard had read books on Hinduism and Taoism, and around that same year he embraced celibacy and began practicing meditation. The once promising Anglican minister, who became a secular humanist, had been converted by the Buddha and went on to champion the Vedanta philosophy and a more liberal interpretation of Christianity. Gerald had spiritually come full circle insofar as he again embraced a religious vision, albeit from a much broader perspective.

 Audio Page

We recently added a link on our Home page to a collection of audio recordings by Gerald Heard. While, arguably, Gerald speaking extemporaneously is much different than when he read a prepared script, these audio clips nonetheless give a good sense of his delivery. We showcase excerpts from Gerald’s series of six long-playing albums produced in the late 1950s and early 1960s, as well as a segment featuring Heard from Edward R. Murrow’s “This I Believe” radio series from the early 1950s.

Wipf and Stock Titles

We will be highlighting different titles currently in print by the Oregon-based publisher Wipf and Stock. In this post, we’ll briefly review Gerald’s quintessential spiritual book from the early 1940s, Training for the Life of the Spirit.

This was Gerald’s manual on the spiritual life, and he unfolds its chapters in a systematic, hierarchical manner. Below is an expanded early draft of the back-cover synopsis of Training, which I originally penned in 2006. The final edited version of the synopsis can also be read on our Training for the Life of the Spirit webpage.

-Required reading for those walking the spiritual path, Gerald Heard’s classic Training for the Life of the Spirit methodically outlines the entire course of the aspirant’s journey. “There are three main sections … in the ladder of perfection … (1) Purgation or Catharsis, (2) Liberation and Enlightenment, and (3) Union or Completion. … The three stages have as their particular characteristics, the life of virtue, the life of prayer and the life of direct and purposed action.”

   Heard provides a time-tested roadmap for the wayfarer: “There is a purpose, however obscure, in evolution … to evolve further, to evolve consciously, to evolve consciousness. … That evolution is now achieved and achieved only by the skilled, conscious training of our spirits. … We must ourselves deliberately develop ourselves. That evolution which follows will show itself in a threefold development: in growth of conduct, of character and of consciousness itself.”

   The aspirant works to subdue their ego: “Purgation is then simply the reduction of the ego. Once that swelling is reduced, the individual consciousness becomes free to develop. For in so far and just in so far as we are emptied of the self … so far are we freed from accident. … Our habit-patterns, our moods, our conditioned reflexes, our natures can be reconditioned, re-freed. … We will be inwardly re-united, our fissured selves re-fused.”

   Training for the Life of the Spirit contains Gerald Heard’s essential observation: “Our whole life must become intentional and purposive, instead of a series of irrelevant events, adventures, and accidents, happy or unhappy.”

Please visit our Training for the Life of the Spirit webpage for links where this book may be purchased.

John Roger Barrie