Customer Reviews

Naked Through the Gate: A Spiritual Autobiography

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In this book, Joel chronicles his struggles, skeptisims, and emotional odysseys as he walks his path to enlightenment. His journey takes us to Viet Nam, China and Hollywood, through the emotional highs and lows of two marriages and a successful career as a movie producer.

Joel had it all, according to material seekers, but it did not satisfy. He tells us of his readings, teachers, dreams, musings, confusion and resolution to finally give up everything in surrender to the spiritual path.

Naked Through the Gate should be read by anyone seeking gnosis, or enlightenment, if only because Joel's testimony demonstrates that any one of us can reach a similar end to seeking.

This is a wonderful book, written by an ordinary man who tells the story of his spiritual journey-from the jungles of Vietnam, to sucess in Hollywood, and finally to a Gnostic Awakening. His great vision and insight is to see that the mystical core of all the world's great religions are pointing to the same Ultimate Reality, which is God, Brahman, Nirvana, or Allah-call it whatever you like.

I found this simple, yet profound story to be very inspiring. The Truth is there for all of us to recognize, and the insights Joel gained continue to help me as I walk my own spiritual path.

As a sometimes member of the study group at the Center for Sacred Sciences where Joel Morwood is spiritual director, I've read this book four or five times. Not once has it been the same book!! How can this be? It is the story, warts and all, of the author's spiritual trek, not one to India or Tibet, but a meandering through spiritual communities in the western US, where Joel, a then-filmaker, was recording the lifestyles and values of various spiritual centers. Certainly he was on his own quest but anchored by an expectation that he would win the heart of a friend who influenced him or challenged him in spiritual directions. The story culminates in his seemingly sudden, spontaneous, joyful awakening in an entirely unexpected way in 1983.

Later, he spent a year working with and studying with Franklin Merrell-Wolff in his retreat near Bishop, California. No longer a filmmaker, Joel has been teaching spiritual practice and awakening practices. The Center for Sacred Sciences website has more details and some recordings you can hear at no charge. The Center library has 4,000 books and about 2,000 other items, all focused on the teachings of the mystics, and grounded in the shamanic traditions, and with emphasis and focus as well on quantum physics and the changing paradigms of understanding.

Joel's story is fascinating for his candor and ease with expression. He shares a great deal. How does the book become new each time I read it? I think it grows me and that awakened teachers are living scriptures. They can change us. Maybe we rise to meet them. Maybe the vibration throws light. Who knows. Well, Joel does.

His later works are also excellent. Through Death's Gate is a guide for those facing death and those helping someone who is facing death. Selflessness is a seeker's manual. How to and it is upliftingly peppered with beautiful insights of mystics, saints and sages of all the great world traditions.

Joel like many people started out with grave doubts about organised religion. But this is an amazing story of how a Californian 'New Ager' started by tasting various meditation techniques and mythical traditions rather as some people taste wine, and ended up becoming a serious scholar of mystical literature from almost every religion that has any. His own ingenious form of retreat into the wilderness, giving up his Hollywood career to travel round making a film about America's spiritual communities, makes the story all the more interesting. He went on to write 'The Way of Selflessness' which I would also recommend.

I read this book many years ago when I was studying with Joel. Looking back, I feel that I was given a real opportunity to work with a master. His story is an odd one, and yet has a universal appeal.

With warmth to you all, Bruce Gibbs