"It is said that the Buddha recognized only one miracle - the transformation of human consciousness. This book describes the processes of individual evolutionary transformation. These descriptions will prove useful to those who are just beginning a transformational phase in their lives and to those who find themselves in the midst of one and are perhaps searching for signposts and conceptual tools. The central thesis of this work is that metaphor, symbols, and analogies are essential to describing this process and that there appear to be about a dozen or so key ketaphors - from dream to awakening, from captivity to liberation, from fragmentation to wholeness - and symbols for transformation that occur over and over in all major cultures and sacred traditions throughout the world. This is the common language of humanity's transformative process: the language of symbols, the language that we know in dreams, in poetry and art, in the visions and voices that tell us of nonordinary realities, of the sacred, of the mystery. Opening to Inner Light draws on the writings of Eastern and Western mysticism, comparative mythology, literature and poetry, and those of philosophers and teachers in the esoteric, shamanic, yogic, and hermetic traditions. It incorporates the formulations of modern depth psychotherapy, anthropology, and transpersonal psychology. Rich in scholarship, in symbolic imagery, and the personal experience of the author's colleagues, clients, and students, as well as related published accounts, Opening to Inner Light is a book for all those who have undergone any deep personal change, from a born-again religious conversion to the extended, expanded consciousness of spiritual illumination."--back cover.