Spacecruiser Inquiry

Overthe past twenty-five years A. H. Almaas—widely recognized as a leader inintegrating spirituality and psychology—has been developing and teaching theDiamond Approach, a spiritual path that integrates the insights of Sufism,Buddhism, Gurdjieff, and other wisdom traditions with modern psychology. Inthis new work, Almaas uses the metaphor of a "spacecruiser" todescribe a method of exploring the immediacy of personal experience—a way ofinvestigating our moment-by-moment feelings, thoughts, reactions, and behaviorsthrough a process of open-ended questioning. The method is called the practiceof inquiry, and SpacecruiserInquiryreveals what it means to engage with this practice as a spiritual path: itsprinciples, challenges, and rewards.

Theauthor explores basic elements of inquiry, including the open-ended attitude,the focus on direct knowledge, the experience of not-knowing, and the processof questioning. He describes the experience of...