The Inner Journey Home: The Soul's Realization of the Unity of Reality

by A.H. Almaas

What's the soul? How to know it? What's its journey in life? What stages & obstacles are encountered along the way? These questions are explored here in detail according to the Diamond Approach, a spiritual path that combines systematic inquiry into personal experience, the practice of traditional spiritual methods & the application of modern psychological research. The Inner Journey Home is the centerpiece of the Diamond Approach literature, providing a complete overview of the teaching with references to the author's other books for more details on certain topics.
Preface
Introduction
1 Soul
Soul or Self
Organ of Experience
Organism of Consciousness
2 Properties & Functions of the Soul
Noesis
Potential
Morphing Dynamism
Impressionability of Soul
Living Presence
3 Essence & Soul Development
Soul & Essence
Animal Soul
Normal Development of the Soul
Ego Development of the Soul
Liberating the Soul
Primitive Structures of the Soul
4 The Inner Journey of the Soul
The Inner Journey
True Nature
5 Dimensions of True Nature
Divine Love & Light
Being & Knowledge
Awareness & the Nonconceptual
Logos & Creative Dynamism
The Absolute & Emptiness
6 Actualization of Reality
The Journey of Descent
Reality
Objective Service
Separation of Soul, God & World
Appendix A Western Concepts of Soul
Appendix B Eastern Concepts of Soul
Appendix C Soul in Sufism
Appendix D Essence in Childhood Experience
Notes
References
Index

Genres: Spirituality

750 pages, Paperback

First published April 27, 2004

About the author

A.H. Almaas is the pen name of A. Hameed Ali, the creator of the Diamond Approach to Self Realization. The Diamond Approach is a contemporary teaching that developed within the context of awareness of both ancient spiritual teachings & modern depth psychological theories.

Reviews

[Dc · Rating 3 out of 5]

Took me twelve months to get through, VERY heavy going - but as with all of Almaas's big books, it got easier as the book went on. The notes were like a second book, and very interesting.

Probably my least favourite Almaas book, as it really was hard going. Still, one I will no doubt re-read in the future, and it has led me to purchasing numerous other books referenced in the extensive bibliography.

For me Almaas is a real spiritual heavy weight... The Don.

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although this book is roughly seven-hundred pages, it looks at the human soul and what it is. However, A.H. Almaas writes this in such a tender way by looking at the soul and God in a feminine light.

[Jordan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is extremely hard to rate: on the one hand, I got some wonderful, deep state transmissions. The whole idea of basic knowledge landed and helped me recognize and share this more easily. Almaas clearly can speak from his experience about a wide range of mystical and nondual experiences. He also draws extensively from a ton of varied religious traditions and writings, and integrates a lot of early childhood developmental psychology (without being explicitly wilberian-integral). And he has the life-affirming embrace of the world of form as an expression of divinity, which I guess for him comes from the Sufi tradition.

On the other hand, I want to rate it lower because: it's long. It's hard to read. It's confusing. Why all these distinctions? It makes a lot of objective reality claims that I'm pretty sure are purely subjective. All the diamond vehicle stuff and the various colors are poetic and nice but he writes them as if they're facts of anyone experiencing this stuff, which doesn't seem to fit my experience or most of the other writing I've seen on the subject. So it's difficult to translate into seeing what he's seeing.

These parts were so bad that it put me off the book only a third of the way in and I stopped reading for over a year. I only started back up because intuitively I picked it up and thumbed through and saw the gems in the passages I'd underlined. Skipping through all the other stuff, I was struck by the depth and clarity of the message. This helped me read the rest of the book with this kind of discernment, but man I had to throw a lot out.

So yeah, even though it's deep, and I got a lot from engaging, I can't recommend this book. If you're called to it, you'll get something powerful from it, just like I did.

[Willa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hmmm... I need to read more in order to give a balanced view. I thoroughly disagree with many of the fundamental positions, and am reading it because I want to get more clear on ideas about Soul, the relationship between spirituality and psychology, and the (in my view extremely confused) concept of The Fall.
If Evolution wouldn't exist, and if we wouldn't already have the privilege of evolutionary spirituality (Aurobindo, Cohen, Teilhard the Chardin) this book would probably be a masterpiece, but given that we're moving on I think there are many fundamental problems with it.