Swedenborg & Gurdjieff: The Missing Links (Anti-Intuitive Essays for Personal Transformation) [Paperback]

Edward F. Sylvia (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2012

A potent little book for those who feel that the currently available spiritual paths are not enough. The author does not sugar-coat the process of true spiritual transformation. You will be called upon to come to terms with yourself as you discover the things that always get in the way of your true spiritual progress. Armed with this special knowledge, you can gain the inside track and have a fighting chance toward reaching your God-given human potential.

These essays offer many stinging revelations that will challenge your strongest beliefs to the very bone and take you completely out of your comfort zone. Such anti-intuitive revelations will convince you that:
- Being famous or enjoying elite status won't help you!
- Going to church won't help you!
- Eating healthy foods and exercising won't help you!
- Living an outwardly civil or moral life won't even help you!

This book is not about becoming a citizen of the world; it's about becoming a citizen of heaven, which is why God created each of us. We have failed to grasp this divine goal as a personal obligation and responsibility in our own lives.

Modern life has provided humankind with knowledge about practically everything. But we really don't know ourselves. Because of this, the world is full of perplexing problems and atrocities. Even seemingly rational and good-natured individuals have no clue as to the real obstacles that stand in the way of harmonious living.

Based on the spiritual influences of Emanuel Swedenborg and George Gurdjieff, the ideas in this book will help you identify what these obstacles are. These new insights will have an unsettling effect on your self-image, but allow you to rise above your current biological self. An essential read for anyone who takes their spiritual transformation seriously.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Award-winning author Edward F. Sylvia, M.T.S. has had a most unique spiritual journey; a journey that is by no means over. He has studied various approaches to spiritual transformation for over 40 years and has embraced the systems of Emanuel Swedenborg and George Gurdjieff. Both men are little known. Their ideas would remain strange and lost to the world if some individual did not emerge from their challenging influences to demonstrate their positive mutual effect both now and for the hereafter

Mr. Sylvia is the author of Sermon from the Compost Pile Seven Steps Toward Creating an Inner Garden and Proving God: Swedenborg's Remarkable Quest for the Quantum Fingerprints of Love. He also shares his insights regularly on his blog as TheGodGuy. He and his wife currently live on an 11-acre homestead in southern Illinois. They have been married and contributing to each other's spiritual growth for 36 years. He is a former volunteer at the Missouri Botanical Garden, past president of the St. Louis Publishers Association and enjoyed a long and prosperous career in advertising. The author feels that his successful marriage is his most important credential for attempting this current work.

Product Details

• Paperback: 120 pages
• Publisher: Staircase Press (June 1, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0970252722
• ISBN-13: 978-0970252722
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #957,111 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Philosopher/Theologian Edward F. Sylvia attended the School of Visual Arts in New York. After a long career as a copywriter for some of the world's largest advertising agencies in New York, St. Louis and Chicago, he now "advertises for God," sharing insights daily in his blog as TheGodGuy. He received his Master of Theological Studies from the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, CA and a Certificate of Swedenborgian Studies from the Swedenborgian House of Studies. Mr. Sylvia is a member of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences (CTNS) and the Swedenborg Scientific Association (SSA).

Author of "Sermon From the Compost Pile: Seven Steps Toward Creating An Inner Garden," his newest book, "Proving God," fulfills a continuing vision that God's fingerprints of Love can be found everywhere in the manifest universe. He has been a student of the ideas of both Emanuel Swedenborg and George I. Gurdjieff for over thirty years.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars The God Guy regenerates us July 26, 2012

By Linda Austin

Format:Paperback

Sometimes I stop by The God Guy's blog because he's personable and writes some thoughtful "kidlit sermons" that I'm always charmed by, these embedded among the usual mind-expanding, intellectual, spiritual posts about the nature of God and love and physics that my little brain can't always get around. One day he sent me this book with the intriguing cover of wasps, which I hate. He assured me I would find this book easy to understand, although possibly painful. Lo and behold, I enjoyed it very much, and it only stung me a little and in exciting ways. Most important for me, it contains only a little quantum physics! (See Proving God: Swedenborg's Remarkable Quest for the Quantum Fingerprints of Love.)

Ed Sylvia specializes in the study of Emanuel Swedenborg, Swedish philosopher-theologian-scientist, and is equally interested in George Gurdjieff, an Armenian spiritual teacher who talked about humanity's spiritual potential despite us sleeping through our lives (you should look him up). In this book he explores their similarities and differences, except you don't really have to know much about these men (I know little) to totally "get" the messages of what Mr. Sylvia goads us with for our own little self and spiritual transformations.

This book contains a lot that pastors and other religious leaders could throw at their congregations now and then because a little "irritation is what causes an oyster to make a pearl." We all need a little sting now and then to open our eyes to what our human and spiritual potential is. Get us to jump off our comfort wagons and grow on our God journeys. If you believe in God and want to challenge yourself a little, both intellectually and spiritually, this book is for you. Oh, and watch out for those wasps crawling around the pages.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting December 24, 2012

By Bengt Ingemar De Paulis

Format:Paperback

After reading I find it most interesting how Edward Sylvia
managed to merge two great spiritual seekers from so far apart
as Sweden and Russia.
And almost 200 years apart.

Gurdjieff taught that the vast majority of humanity lives their entire lives in a state of hypnotic "waking sleep," but that it was possible to transcend to a higher state of consciousness and achieve full human potential.

I agree with the expression "waking sleep"
though I find a more exact spiritual explanation
in the fall of man narrative in Divine Principle.
Google for Divine Principle Chapter 2.

Quote from the book:
Swedenborg assures us that even if we succeeded in becoming angels of the highest
heaven, we would still be playing a role and acting "as if" good things originated from our being...

Also this is challenged by new spiritual teaching
Google for Divine Principle Second Advent.

It would be interesting to see Edward Sylvia incorporating
this latest and new deep insights into the thinking of Swedenborg and Gurdjieff.

A good book as a starter into 2 spiritual giants it is though.

/Bengt
Finland