Return with Elixir: Four Maps for the Soul's Pilgrimage through Death and Rebirth

by Miles Neale, Robert Thurman (Foreword by)

Overview

A step-by-step guide to reclaiming the soul

• Shares four maps for spiritual rebirth based on Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, Tibetan Buddhist philosophy, and the precession of the equinoxes

• Traces the author’s journey of rebirth, covering his transformation through a spiritual crisis and the creation of a more meaningful life

• Provides visualization practices based on ancient Tibetan wisdom to support you on the path of self-realization

Exploring wisdom from mystical traditions and perennial philosophy on "dying before you die," Buddhist psychotherapist Miles Neale shares his own hero’s journey of rebirth, providing a detailed roadmap for the pilgrimage through dissolution, into the great mystery, and back again to the world. He shares his transformation through a spiritual crisis and, ultimately, his creation of a more meaningful life. He provides four intersecting maps to help guide readers through the experiential process of metaphoric death, reclaiming the soul, and sharing one’s genius with others. These four maps—the cosmological map, psychological map, alchemical map, and mythopoetic map—draw on the mythological stages of Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung’s process of individuation, the Tibetan Buddhist alchemy of conscious rebirth, and the astrological phenomenon of the precession of the equinoxes, offering a detailed philosophical underpinning for the soul’s journey to immortality. He also provides in-depth visualization practices based on ancient Tibetan wisdom to support you on the path of self-realization.

Integrating Tibetan Buddhism with psychology, trauma healing, neuroscience, and mythology, along with profound personal experience, Neale provides a step-by-step manual for spiritual rebirth, revealing how to reframe life’s unrelenting challenges and transitions as opportunities for psychological growth.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781644118436
Publisher:	Inner Traditions/Bear & Company
Publication date:	04/01/2025
Pages:	440
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Miles Neale, Psy.D., is a psychotherapist, teacher of Tibetan Buddhism, and founder of the Gradual Path, where he leads pilgrimages of spiritual transformation around the world. He trained intensively with Buddhist scholars Robert Thurman and Joseph Loizzo as well as Tibetan master Geshe Tenzin Zopa and has taught meditation and integrative healing at Harvard, Columbia, and Cornell university hospitals. The author of Gradual Awakening and co-editor of Advances in Contemplative Psychotherapy, he lives in Bali, Indonesia.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE

FROM KNOWLEDGE TO WISDOM
In the months before the pandemic of 2020, I had a series of three more visions that became the impetus for this book. The first occurred while I was visiting the island of Ithaca in Greece, made famous as the home and primary destination of Odysseus. I learned an incredible new word while I was there: nostos. Lexicographers may refer to this as an acquaintance or something known, but in the epics of Homer, nostos refers to the love for and longing to return home. After the Trojan War and what we will see was his Hero’s Journey of separation, initiation, trial, and treasure, Odysseus persisted for ten years before he returned to Ithaca and his beloved wife and son.
The power of myth is that it allows us to walk in a hero’s footsteps, so think about what home means to you—the place, people, and state of mind. If you were separated from them for a long time, what creature comforts would you surrender, what unimaginable challenges might you face, in order to return? Put in the context of the soul, we’ve been on a journey since beginningless time, yearning, seeking, but not arriving home. Yet, against unfathomable odds, we have earned this precious human life endowed with liberty and opportunity, and all the internal resources and external conditions are ripe for us to return to the headwaters from which we sprang. Every myth, religion, philosophy, or story throughout time and culture has this archetype of nostos at its thrust: to return home, to return to our spiritual source.
If you visit the Greek island of Ithaca, you’ll find the ruins of Agios Athanasios or Homer’s school, a place of higher learning during antiquity built on the remains of the Odyssean Palace that sits below a more recently constructed Byzantine Church. Within a crumbling third-century BCE stone chamber overlooking Afales Bay, I had my second vision, one that inspired me to shift direction from the two-year curriculum of Buddhist studies I had recently launched. As I was recording a video there to include in our program, I experienced a powerful intuition that caused me to change course, pivoting on a dime. It was the call of the mythic dimension of life. I realized then and there that myths are the archetypal narratives that underlie our rational experiences, connecting us with transpersonal, ancestral, and universal realms, nourishing the soul with symbols and wisdom, which, if applied skillfully, can transform the everyday muck of human misery into the mulch of spiritual maturity. Without the mythological dimension, the soul is trapped behind a perceptual filter, reducing a spectrum of reality into a narrow band of matter that we can only perceive with our five senses—in the same way human eyes see only a fraction of the spectrum of light.
I realized I had been omitting a crucial element from my teaching and—in the video I was recording—I articulated to my students how important it was to include mythology in their studies. Consequently,
I rebuilt my Contemplative Studies Program (CSP), changing the curriculum by integrating three seemingly disparate threads of knowledge: 1) Tibetan Buddhism, 2) the mythological perspective of Joseph Campbell, and 3) the analytic psychology of Jung.
First, the Tibetan Buddhist alchemical art of rebirth, which involves mastering the cycle of three phases: conscious death, sublime liminality, and altruistic rebirth. This Buddhist framework follows the transmigration of consciousness across lifetimes and dovetails with a distillation of Campbell’s mythological cycle, called the monomyth or Hero’s Journey, which offers a neophyte a rite of passage through the three phases of separation, initiation, and return. Both models align with the psychological process of individuation articulated by Jung, which can also be condensed into three phases: from ego, deepening into shadow of the personal unconscious, to the Self in the collective unconscious. These three distinct systems—each divided into three phases—would guide my students and me in a natural progression from the ordinary into the magical world from which we can all return as transformed beings, each a map for navigating the human landscape from delusion to awakening—and it was my hero’s call, a concept I will explore in depth in this book, to synthesize them.
I wasn’t pursuing this convergence of ideas as artifacts of passive interest in the same way people might amuse themselves in an art gallery or museum. What drove me wasn’t knowledge for knowledge’s sake, but creating a practical, unified map that could help us all navigate the actual terrain of life’s struggles, chaos, and uncertainty.
INITIATION INTO THE MANDALA
Despite the consternation of a quarter of my students (who had rightfully expected the original Buddhist course direction) dropping my class, I continued to follow my intuition, a lesson for anyone caught at the crossroads between comfort and uncertainty, loyalty and independence. If we betray our passion to meet the fickle expectations and needs of others, we send ourselves to the cross for crucifixion. As I learned the hard way, we must be willing to disappoint, even disobey, others to follow the never-before-tread path of authenticity. Throughout my teaching career, I had been well-acquainted with the topic and prepared before class, but for this new version of the course, I gave myself over to the unconscious and allowed intuition to be my guide in realms hitherto unfamiliar. I was following the hero’s thread into the labyrinth, and being summoned by some mysterious force from the depth of my psyche towards revealing.
Normally I began each class with a traditional Buddhist visualization, but on the evening before the first course resuming the new term, while alone in my Manhattan office gazing down onto the rush hour streets congested with pedestrians mindlessly circumambulating the concrete towers of financial institutions, I had my second vision. There I saw a mandala—which I later crudely sketched as a series of concentric circles, one within the other, surrounding a central axis and representing the relationship between the cosmos and the psyche. The outermost circle was the ouroboros, the universal motif of the serpent eating its tail, a Chinese, Mayan, and Greek symbol of infinity, the timeless nature of ultimate reality. Within that was the zodiac, with its twelve archetypal symbols and the water bearer Aquarius strategically positioned at six o’clock. Puzzlingly to me was how the zodiac unveiled over time, mysteriously began rotating counterclockwise, yet I persisted in flowing with the vision. This is how the journey of the soul goes—no neat and well-tread passageways to follow. No familiar roadside neon signs.
Within this series of circles was a topical view of the Mahabodhi temple in Bodhgaya, India, the site of the Buddha’s enlightenment. The temple is built in the classical Buddhist style, structured like a mandala or cosmic palace with four gateways in each cardinal direction surrounded by a series of three concentric square walkways descending toward the inner sanctum at the center. There we find what is known as the Diamond Throne, both a physical site and a universal symbol. The diamond thrown is positioned within the sanctum sanctorum of the Mahabodhi Stupa flanked by the Bodhi tree to commemorate where the young prince Siddhartha Gautama sat and discovered the nature of reality, the actual seat upon which he claimed Buddhahood. As a metaphoric symbol the diamond throne represents the innate potential within each of us to awaken at any moment, reclaiming our royal sovereignty from the tyranny of samsara.
In the vision, I saw the procession of the equinoxes (the zodiac) in its rotation of the Great Year (an approximately 25,800-year cycle—I’ll talk more about this later) spinning counterclockwise. Within the cycle of the Great Year I saw myself walking with pilgrims, circumambulating the Mahabodhi temple three times as we descended together into the inner sanctum. During our first circumambulation we experienced the dissolution of the four elements, one element and phase of dissolution occurring in each of the four directions respectively: earth dissolving into the East, water into the South, fire into the West, and air into the North. As the elements dissolved, our physical bodies died, releasing free-floating consciousness from the binds of material form.
The second circumambulation was a dissolving of the three mental afflictions expressed in Buddhism, the instinctual drives, which contaminate consciousness and distort perception—grasping, aggression, ego-centrism and transforming these base instincts into luminance, radiance, and imminence, and culminating in the pure, clear-light nature of mind known as transparency or dharmakaya.
During the final circumambulation, we took refuge in the three jewels of Buddhism—Buddha, Dharma, Sangha—and generated altruistic intent (bodhicitta) as we continued circling each of the four directions, before entering the final threshold of the Mahabodhi Temple. After making extensive offerings to the Buddha sitting on the Diamond Throne in the inner chamber—reconceived as an alchemical crucible or pregnant womb—we took his nectar blessing in the form of rainbow lights that entered our crown, throat, and heart, purifying body, speech, and mind, transforming us into the future Buddha.

Table of Contents

Foreword Ambrosia: Elixir of Immortality
By Robert A. F. Thurman, Ph.D.

Acknowledgments

PART I

Ground

1 Visions: Third Eye Intuitions

2 Panorama: As Above, So Below

3 Soul: Imbibing the Elixir

4 Solve et Coagula: Dying to be Reborn

PART I I

Path

5 Pilgrimage: There and Back Again

6 Departure: Fall from Grace

7 Initiation: Rite of Passage

8 Ordeal: Taming the Dragon

PART I I I

Fruition

9 Treasure: Claiming the Sword

10 Return: Bestowing the Boon

11 Therapeia: Pilgrimage & Psychedelics

12 Reunion: End of Separation

Afterword Nostos: The Return of Longing
By Phil Cousineau

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Editorial Reviews

My teacher said: ‘One should not discard his maps until the destination is within sight.’ At this point in history, most people don’t even know they need maps! Miles is a mapmaker and guide who has seen the rocky shoals. Read this book!

author of Lost Star of Myth and Time and producer Walter Cruttenden

A fascinating exploration of cosmic, societal death and rebirth. The author’s traumatic journey of self-discovery is the compelling thread that skillfully weaves together Jungian psychology, mysticism, astrology, and Tibetan Buddhism into one cohesive pilgrimage of the soul. It provides a map for seekers of meaning and purpose to navigate not only the big issues of life and death but also the fears and beliefs that prevent us from realizing our full potential. A wonderful modern addition to a genre that is as old as humanity itself.

Tony Steel

Miles Neale masterfully weaves this universal quest with alchemical lore, Buddhism, Gnosticism, mythology, Western and Eastern esoteric knowledge, astrology, Balinese traditions, and more into a deeply heartfelt personal biography of rebirth. His work is invaluable to seekers on the journey to find the elixir of the True Self.

Tjok Gde Kerthyasa

A masterful synthesis of Eastern and Western esoteric teachings. Miles beautifully weaves together disparate threads from various sources—including mythology, Jungian psychology, and Tibetan alchemy—to focus on the growth of the soul. This will be of great interest to anyone on the perennial search for meaning. For them, this book will be a revelation.

author of The Waking Dream Ray Grasse

Miles Neale embarks on a bold journey to resurrect what has been lost in the West, reminding us of a time when medicine was experiential and deeply connected to our inner landscapes. Through visualization, pilgrimage, and psychedelics—practices that modern standards might find suspect—Miles offers a transformative process of healing that arises from within and is not reliant on external authority. He is an exceptional guide, one with whom I have walked into the darkness and for whom I am deeply grateful

John W. Price

Hearing the drumbeat of universal spiritual teachings and the wisdom song of the sacred feminine, Miles Neale offers himself into the reservoir of omniscient, timeless awareness. Return with Elixir is a deeply personal and inspiring account of the awakening path and finding freedom from a world of mass delusion. It shares the extraordinary magic and meaning that occurs when we melt into the clearlight network of the Dakini and reemerge as a sublime avatar of compassion in the world. It gives us practical tools to access this most valuable treasure within us all.

coauthor of The Yoga of Niguma and founding direct Michele Loew

Miles Neale takes us on an extraordinary odyssey of exploration and transformation born out of his own inner call to awaken through misfortune. This fascinating synthesis of Eastern and Western wisdom illuminates a profound and ancient mystery of transformation still alive and relevant today.

author of The Wisdom of Imperfection and Tasting t Rob Preece

“Return with Elixir is far more than a manual for rebirth, blending esoteric traditions East and West; it is a deeply personal and relatable story of transformation. With this map of the inner landscape in hand, led by such an expert guide, you too can embark on the sacred pilgrimage to face your worst fears, taste the nectar of compassion at your heart, and return home for the benefit of others. It reveals the secret path of converting obstacles into opportunities and making meaningful whatever miseries arise along life’s unpredictable journey.

teacher at the Foundation for the Preservation of Geshe Tenzin Zopa

Miles’s account of his inner and outer pilgrimage through the dark depths of angst and into the light of the sacred is one that can motivate us all to embark on a journey toward meaning and wholeness. Return with Elixir illustrates the basic human need for authentic and embodied spiritual experience that has existed throughout time and across cultures and encourages us today to join the great heroes, yogis, and seekers of the past in facing adversity to heal our soul and find freedom.

director of Pure Land Farms and Sowa Rigpa Institu Christiana Polites

Miles dives deeply into the nature of pilgrimage, traversing the universal and time-tested path for self-inquiry, healing, and purpose that is born from our innate desire to go home, to find our way back to our true, human nature. For the life-affirming pilgrim en route to this sacred destination, this is more than a book; it is a spirit guide.

cofounder and conscious CEO of the Transformationa Jake Haupert

This heartfelt exploration of the possibilities for personal and planetary healing through a fusion of ancient esoteric traditions and modern psychotherapy is itself an elixir, one that can help bring about the transmutations we need during this turning of time’s wheel.

author of The Twilight of Pluto and The Occult Phi John Michael Greer

“Return with Elixir is a wonderful literary pilgrimage, taking the reader through the channels and chakras of the Tantric subtle body to taste the nectar of immortality. It is both an excellent example of comparative mysticism and a gripping personal tale of transforming human adversity into spiritual awakening.

Glenn H. Mullin

Miles Neale’s brilliant account of the inner quest brings together the compelling voices of mystical Christianity, esoteric Buddhism, shamanism, Jungian depth psychology, alchemy, and the cries of pain in living an authentic life right now. The reader will not only find a set of maps for the journey but also a guide to learning the taste and texture of what truly heals the human spirit as it attends, moment to moment, the passage from death to life.

author of Rainbow Body and Resurrection Rev. Canon Dr. Francis V. Tiso

Miles Neale offers readers a series of maps to help them successfully navigate their own inner states of being and thus overcome their fear, anxiety, and apathy. Learning to ‘die before you die’ is one of the primary pathways emphasized in the book as a way to triumph over yourself. Conquering oneself is the first act of every aspiring warrior of light.

host of the podcast What Is Money? Robert Breedlove

The elixir of immortal life is the secret of both Eastern and Western esoteric traditions. Miles Neale guides us through cross-cultural mysteries of life, death, and psycho-spiritual transformation on an alchemical journey that leads us through the subtle pathways of our embodied being toward the ultimate ambrosia that flows from the fully awakened human heart and, in so doing, unbinds the mind and body and renews the world. This book is itself an elixir. Read it and be transformed!

author of The Heart of the World and Tibetan Yogat Ian A. Baker

Amidst the collapse of civilizations past, ancient cultures once turned to cosmology and mysticism to illuminate the journey from darkness to light. In Return with Elixir, Miles revives these sacred teachings—from circumambulating the Borobudur mandala to channeling the serpent energy within our subtle body nervous system—guiding us on the soul’s pilgrimage from crisis to clarity. For those seeking a manual of rebirth and ready to heed the revolutionary call to consciousness awakening, this book offers life-affirming nectar to savor.

Patrick Vanhoebrouck

“Return with Elixir is a thoroughly engrossing journey. This book is for everyone. In a time where we’re all asking questions, this book will give answers and have us concentrating on what really matters.

author of High Magick Damien Echols