Dialogues With the Lord of Time

by John Roger Barrie

Overview

In the spiritual novel, Dialogues With the Lord of Time, a wise teacher brings authentic spirituality and inspired teachings into many seekers' lives.

Are you searching for God? This book is filled with practical advice to help dedicated aspirants find God.

Includes a treasure trove of profound teachings from Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Sufism, and Taoism. The spiritual teachings are so realistic and authoritative, you'll forget you're reading a novel.

FATHER CHRISTOPHER, a respected, retired priest and university professor who taught courses in comparative religion, lives in Northern California's remote coastal region. Endearing yet tough, approachable yet scholarly, the charismatic Father Christopher is in his twilight years. A group of seekers gathers at his cabin in the early 1990s to converse with him on spiritual topics. Well-versed in world religions and always a bit of a rascal, Father Christopher's profound, transformational dialogues frequently leave his listeners spellbound and their lives changed.

We follow along through the eyes of the author, who wrestles with various issues in his life. During the course of several visits, we witness his inner metamorphosis as he learns how to integrate the secular and spiritual aspects of his daily life. Join him and other seekers as they explore the mysteries of spirituality on a magical journey of enlightenment with Father Christopher, whose wise teachings provide insight-filled antidotes for our spiritually challenged times.

In addition to nine lively dialogues with Father Christopher, sixty entries are included from Father Christopher's Journal, which is filled with inspired spiritual counsel.

This book takes an interfaith, harmony-of-all-religions approach. Discussions range from in-depth meditation techniques to the highest non-dual experiences; from clear explanations of esoteric spiritual phenomena to soaring passages on devotional mysticism. Aspirants are taught how to discern legitimate teachers and paths from questionable ones. Many secrets of spirituality are revealed.

Take an inspirational and transformational spiritual journey in the novel, Dialogues With the Lord of Time.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798986650609
Publisher:	Sky Parlor Publications
Publication date:	03/10/2023
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.67(d)

About the Author

John Roger Barrie has served since 2001 as literary executor of influential author, historian, and philosopher Gerald Heard (1889-1971). He has overseen reissues of 18 classic Gerald Heard titles. For more than four decades, he has practiced spiritual disciplines from many different religious traditions, and he has studied with and received blessings from numerous spiritual teachers. His interfaith approach incorporates teachings and practices from several spiritual paths, including the rich mystical traditions from his native Catholicism, and the universal principles advanced by the respected, interfaith-oriented Ramakrishna-Vedanta tradition, of which he is an authorized lay instructor. For more information, visit his website, "Explorations in Contemporary Spirituality," at johnrogerbarrie.com.

Editorial Reviews

08/14/2023

“The true spiritual giants want nothing from you,” says Father Christopher, the fictionalized retired Catholic priest, teacher, and inter-faith mystic at the heart of this collection of searching spiritual inquiry and colloquy. “They simply radiate the light of God.” That light—and that ideal of egoless spiritual instruction—shines throughout Dialogues With the Lord of Time, which offers a series of six discussions between Father Christopher and a group of seekers in the early 1990s. The form is novelistic, with a narrator who’s not exactly Barrie recounting the conversations, his own spiritual journey, and the sustained effort that enlightenment demands.

Throughout, among many heady concerns, Christopher and Barrie both emphasize the distinction between the “two types” of spiritual leaders: “those who spiritually empower others, and those who seek to control others.” As he lays out in clear and inviting language a path of his own that draws on a host of religious and spiritual traditions but is fully indebted to none, Father Christopher reveals himself as the empowering type of leader, one eager to guide others toward a “responsible freedom” and a “wholehearted love for one’s chosen form of God, and unlimited, unconditional love toward others.” Achieving this, he posits, means that one must recognize and respect our place in “the limitless interconnectedness among all things,” pray with ceaseless devotion, and not take the material world and its concerns as “real”—it is instead a “platform where we enact our desires and emotions, likes and dislikes.”

Readers whose minds bustle with questions or objections after an assertion like that will appreciate that, throughout, Father Christopher entertains his interlocutors’ concerns. Admirably, he leans into the complexities and paradoxes of such beliefs, explaining that “one can be inwardly surrendered while outwardly assertive at the same time.” These rich, engaging discussions, alive with fresh insights and challenges, will reward readers eager for connection to “a universal spiritual self—God—that contains all individual souls and every particle of the universe.”

Takeaway: Inviting interfaith colloquies of enlightenment and connection to the universal.

Comparable Titles: Linda A. Mercadante’s Belief without Borders, June McDaniel’s Lost Ecstasy.

Production grades Cover: B+ Design and typography: A Illustrations: N/A Editing: A Marketing copy: A

BookLife Reviews

"An engaging and illuminating trek into the multiple religious understandings that foreshadow a new universalism." -Philip Novak, PhD, best-selling author of The World's Wisdom

"Dialogues With the Lord of Time is a thoughtful, engaging fruit of the spiritual imagination, a work of fiction that nonetheless bears within it many simple, powerful truths. It is beautifully written, concrete and free of pretense." -Francis X. Clooney, SJ, PhD, Harvard Divinity School

"The book shows a very good example of interfaith dialogue ... It incorporates a mystical perspective into situations in everyday life ... Useful for students of religion who have learned about the political and institutional side of religion, and wish to learn about the experiential and mystical side at its best." -June McDaniel, PhD, author of Lost Ecstasy

"John Roger Barrie's luminous text takes the reader on a voyage into the heart of the world's great religious traditions. Told with humor and gentle wisdom ... It is a timeless parable of seeking, finding, and then integrating spiritual wisdom into human life." -Elizabeth M. G. Krajewski, PhD, World Religions Instructor

"A refreshing and much-needed return to spiritual basics. John Roger Barrie has produced a captivating, timeless story that should be required reading for any modern-day spiritual seeker." -William H. Forthman, PhD, co-author of the textbook Religions of the World

"Dialogues With the Lord of Time is part memoir and part guide for those seeking a deeper spiritual path in life-both beginning and experienced practitioner. ... This text provides a beginning for a life of spiritual exploration." -Charles G. Krajewski, MDiv, Ordained Pastor with the American Baptist Churches USA (retired)

"Inviting interfaith colloquies of enlightenment and connection to the universal. ... These rich, engaging discussions, alive with fresh insights and challenges, will reward readers eager for connection to 'a universal spiritual self-God-that contains all individual souls and every particle of the universe.' "-BookLife Review by Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher