Love Is Stronger Than Death: The Mystical Union of Two Souls

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Summary: The ability of human & spiritual love to transcend death
Review: Essentially a powerfully moving love story of two aging individuals, Love Is Stronger Than Death: The Mystical Union Of Two Souls by resident teacher for the Contemplative Society and spiritual retreat authority Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault, is drawn from the life and experiences of Brother Raphael (Rafe) Robin, an Episcopalian priest, author and a Trappist hermit. The ability of human and spiritual love to transcend death and open the way to joyous bliss is superbly presented in this highly recommended and heartwarming tale of building an emotional, personal, and loving relationship for the future that transcends all earthly limitations.

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Summary: A Grain of Salt
Review: I happen to have known the author very well for several years. She is audacious in nature, and her spirituallity is mixed with great ambition. A careful look at her personal past, her three marriages, and intense desire for spiritual recognition all suggest care should be taken.

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Summary: Compelling book to expand our spiritual edges.
Review: The poet, Rilke, once said; "The two greatest gifts given in life are love and death, neither often opened"! This is a story about how two people, from a serendipitous and chance meeting, learned to open love and death and to keep both open in the process of spritual transformation and their own eternal connection. This is a beautiful and compelling story, poetically told of not falling in love but being given love for much higher purposes. And it is about a love relationship that embarks on new and uncharted territory in which the two partners muster their considerable spiritual experience and instincts to negotiate life's circumstances as the process involves. The reference points, guideposts, exist in the realm of Esoteric Christianity, long studied by both, independent of each other and before their chance meeting. Jung once commented that there are three kinds of relationships, "those of destruction, those of well being and those of transfomation". This is a story of a marriage of transformation. And although a poignant and life changing story it is not some remote love story set in an esoteric setting familiar to a few and of interest to slightly more. It is a story that may well be the most generic of tales. Unknown lands and lesser known people grow and evolve amdist their courage and shame, advances and regressions to forge a tale that drives like a lasar beam to the deepest fathoms of the yearnings of the collective human heart; To be loved and known unconditionally by another and to return that love. And in the living of this in life and in death, experience the incredible transformation that emerges for higher purposes.

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Summary: A world of sacred and mysterious possibility
Review: The text of this book is consequential, even critical; love survives death in a paradigmatic form: personal, vital, affecting all our relationships in time and beyond it. The subtext of this book is even more crucial; esoteric Christianity possesses a force capable of transforming the universe and each individual in it. The power of spiritual life expressed in these pages takes us beyond the mere surface of conventional religion and plunges us into an understanding and a practice that will revolutionize life itself, if we will but let it. This book, understood and lived, has the potential to transform not only the individual,but the creation as well. Cynthia Bourgeault's book is an adventure into possibilities and dimensions that have remained closed and unknown to most religious literature. Here new worlds are explored thematically and autobiographically.

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Summary: A guide for living, loving, and dying
Review: There are few books to compare with this one. The nature of death and the power of love are explored from so many directions that, in the end, we are given a spiritual guide through life and beyond. Ms. Bourgeault shows us that we do not need to be limited by the generally accepted truths of the major spiritual traditions, nor by those of various esoteric teachings. Her personal experience speaks in every word so that, instead of an abstract treatise on inner work, we are shown a road map marked out by someone who has been there. This is the perfect book for anyone who has recently lost a life partner. It is also the perfect book for anyone who has just found a life partner.

Rating:
Summary: A Grain of Salt
Review: This love story of eternal beauty guides us in the natural evolution of our loving relationships. We are encouraged to consider the boundless possibilities of 'love' and 'relationship'. With that comes the profound responsibility to recognize how vastly important each individual is in the grand scheme of life. The combination of the scholarly and spiritual delving in this story is such a workout that I would suggest reading the book once for the love story, and again and again for an ever-deepening exploration of our relationship to one another, to the earth, and to whatever lies beyond. Of paramount importance we must learn to listen and open our hearts. Cynthia Bourgeault offers a way to follow this simple yet challenging path.

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Summary: A story that mesmerizes into theTranscendence of 2 Worlds!
Review: Who could resist reading this book after seeing that awesome subtitle of "The Mystical Union of Two Souls?" Especially when it is told from a perspective of such compelling Theology as this intimacy of love between two persons! From the beginning of the "Preface to the Second Edition" by Cynthia Bourgeault and the Introduction by David Steindl-Rast, OSB, I became aware of her depth of this "Mystical Union of Two Souls!"

Nothing said by friends who recommended and loaned me their book even slightly prepared me for the powerful building blocks of this book! It kept me leaping from one level to another, almost as thrilling as shooting the rapids or going from low altitudes in a Jet Fighter Plane up to 35,000 feet level, without getting the bends! I ran through several examples of descriptions:

Chapter 3 on the "Mystical Completion of Souls": "These building blocks come mostly from the Christian esoteric (inner) tradition-- The Fourth Way of G.I. Gurdjieff--plus Christian hermeticism coming further from Jacob Boehme. The four building blocks are: 1) The union of souls 2) The idea of second body 3) The vow, or promise 4) "The wonders."

Later in the same chapter she describes "the time of bodily life the soul has earnestly pledged itself [to another] but has not forsworn that promise." During the last few weeks of Rafe's life before his death, he began "his crash course in enhancing his second body-- primarily through practice of "true resignation!" Although she describes theirs as a Physical Love story, it is totally without maudlin, syrupy-sweet, love scenes or the usual sexuality.

My understanding was a bit illuminated from reading from both Jacob Boehme and G.I.Gurdjieff. It came again from, "the laying down of one's personal will, in order to be unconditionally present to the will of God. [Not all-together new!]

After three short chapters in "Wrestling with an Angel" she uses a profound quote from a distinguished Psychaitrist, Helen Luke, saying, "Wholeness is born of the acceptance of the conflict of human and divine in the individual psyche." Immediately, she quotes Dylan Thomas: If the principal office of "love in this life is to unbolt the dark," to release its prisoners of shame, it seems that our wedding garments in eternity are spun... Here I glimpsed her hazy picture of that second body as a spiritual body close to the description of St Paul in I Corinthians!

Cynthia stretches us into her own understanding of "The Mystical Union of Two Souls," from her deepening spiritual love for her Hermit Monk, Raphael Robin. Joyfully, Retired Chaplain Fred W Hood