Jacob Needleman is professor of philosophy at San Francisco State University and former director of the Center for the Study of New Religions at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. Needleman is the author of many books including Why Can't We Be Good? and The American Soul. He is also one of the Living Spiritual Teachers on this website.
Needleman takes on the challenge of bringing some clarity and freshness to the still raging debates between atheists and believers about the existence of God. Despite having a mystical experience at the age of nine and an encounter with the Zen master D. T. Suzuki, the author had atheistic inclinations when he began his career as a professor of philosophy. In his preparations for a course "The History of Western Religious Thought," Needleman immersed himself in Judaism and Christianity and found unexpected philosophical riches and a view of the mind as a blend of intellect and general feeling (heart).
The author explores the further dimensions of the mind discovered through his studies of Gurdijieff. He comes to see the validity of what he calls "inner empiricism" that goes beyond the rigid facts of science. He gains further revelations from Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience. From these teachings, Needleman finds a path to God through inner experience, an ongoing quest for Truth and the practice of non-egotistic emotions such as compassion, humility, wonder, sorrow, grief, and empathy. Along with that comes an appreciation of the wisdom traditions of all faiths. And best of all, the realization that "the proof for the existence of God is the existence of people who are inhabited by and who manifest God."
