The Simple Road: A Handbook for the Contemporary Seeker

This elegant, concise guide by the founder of the University of Philosophical Research distills a lifetime of spiritual seeking into one beautiful, unforgettable blueprint for inner growth. 

"When you grow exhausted with all of today’s spiritual programs, axioms, seminars, and techniques; when you feel fatigued from searching and cannot find a way forward; when it seems that years of seeking have netted so little – throw yourself upon the essential truths in this book…It can be lifesaving." --Mitch Horowitz, from the introduction

For more than a half-century, Obadiah Harris has studied the spiritual path, holding ministerial pulpits in traditions ranging from Pentecostalism to New Thought, and directing programs in continuing education, community-outreach, and distance-learning at major universities.

He has worked with the ideas and legacies of spiritual icons ranging from Manly P. Hall, author of the landmark The Secret Teachings of All Ages, to Ernest Holmes, founder of the Science of Mind movement, America's most successful and intellectually rigorous New Thought congregation. When he was growing up in rural Oklahoma, Harris's family provided the first pulpit to internationally known televangelist Oral Roberts.

As a scholar and seeker, Harris has traversed and helped shape broad swaths of our modern spiritual landscape. Now, he distills the insights he has found -- all of them potent, powerful, and, above all, useful -- in The Simple Road.

The Simple Road is more than a book. This concise statement is a spiritual GPS that guides the earnest seeker past dead-ends and switchbacks to locate the path that most intimately and directly connect us with the Source of all life. The methods and ideas in this book can help rescue you from a crisis and provide a daily source of practice. 

This brave work addresses head-on topics that are often shunned or ignored in works of "proper" theology, including the question of physical healing by spiritual means -- a topic treated with deepest seriousness -- and with the existence of hostile forces that test us on the spiritual path. 

The Simple Road is balm for parched souls. Whatever tradition you belong to, or if you belong to no one tradition, The Simple Road helps you locate the thread of universality that runs through all faiths, and leads you to practices, prayers, methods, and parables that lift your daily journey to a higher, better place.

This brief, powerful book can bring you literally life-saving solace when facing life's entanglements.

Obadiah Harris is the founder and president of the University of Philosophical Research (www.UPRS.edu), an accredited distance-learning college that grants graduate and undergraduate degrees in consciousness studies, transformational psychology, and liberal arts. The school is built upon the intellectual traditions of independent scholar of religion Manly P. Hall (1901-1990), who founded its landmark Los Angeles campus, the Philosophical Research Society.  Also president of the Philosophical Research Society, Harris has a long and storied career in both mainstream academia and the American metaphysical culture.  He holds a Ph.D. in education administration and supervision from the University of Michigan and an MA in education from Arizona State University, where he was an associate professor of education and director of community education. For almost two decades at Arizona State he designed programs in community outreach and in adult and continuing education. Harris has held numerous ministerial pulpits and collaborated with figures of major influence in contemporary spirituality, including Ernest Holmes (1887-1960). Born in northeastern Oklahoma, he lives in Los Angeles.