This book serves several purposes:

(1) It teaches us what transpersonal psychology and therapy are.

(2) It gives specific examples of this therapy in action.

(3) It shows us how Eastern spirituality equates to our Western transpersonal psychology.

(4) It shows us transpersonal reality in perfect paradigms and metaphors like the elephant.

Khier blends Plato's Allegory of the Cave with the Chinese parable of the nine blind men and the elephant in a giant paradigm that includes us all.

He raises questions and offers possible answers that make clear the great issues of the spiritual life, and he supports these responses with the views of the greatest minds of our age--Jung, Assagioli, Wilber, Rudhyar, et al. The work is filled with scholarship but reads sometimes like a novel, sometimes like an easily understood discussion of what makes us strive for our highest good.

Yet the ego is not neglected either. It is viewed from angles that stretch from behavioristic and Freudian (but briefly because these viewpoints are seen unfavorably) to the transpersonal psychologies like that found in the spiritual work, A Course in Miracles.

Khier has strong background that prepared him for writing this book in terms of credentials. He has a PhD in English and a second Master's in transpersonal psychology.

He's practiced private counseling since 1976 after studying Eastern psychology in stints in India in 1974 and 1975. He's taught A Course in Miracles since 1984.