The Unknown She

The Unknown She: Eight Faces of an Emerging Consciousness

by Hilary Hart  

Golden Sufi Center, Point Reyes Station, California  © 2003   355 pp. 

As a first-time writer, the author of this biographical anthology explores the emerging of a mystical consciousness through women, or through what is identified as ‘female’ qualities of men and women alike.  

She interviews eight modern mystics (Ani Tenzin Palmo, Angela Fischer, Andrew Harvey, Virginia Matthews and others) from various spiritual traditions about their direct experience of the cosmic feminine principle as it is revealed in their everyday life activities. They express this feminine consciousness as one of receptivity, openness, deep inner silence and surrender, one which makes no distinction between that which is sacred and that which is ordinary. “It is a part of feminine wisdom that the spiritual world and the material world come together in the wholeness of life where neither is sacrificed for the other.” (p. 29)

This book may not necessarily be for beginning seekers, but worth a read for those who have some background in meditation and nonduality.

                                                                         -- reviewed by Mona Bronson