Lucy Oliver

I was introduced to meditation and systematic inner work by an unknown but inspirational teacher in 1975 when I was researching for a D.Phil at Oxford University on sacred symbolism. However, my 'field work' into the esoteric roots of the sacred took over from the academic approach, and I ended up finally moving to London and dedicating my life and activities to a path of Knowledge in the circumstances of everyday life in the great metropolis. Himalayan cave or exotic Temple it was not --- just a suburban street, two small children and a mortgage. However, with others, and under the guidance of an extraordinary sage, it was a profound training in all aspects of the esoteric (ie. hidden) side of inner work.

The practice of Meditation is the foundation for all such inner development. My book, The Meditator's Guidebook, published in 1991, considers what is essential to meditation, and has been described as a classic of the meditation genre for its clear and profound approach to meditation, deriving from this lineage of oral transmission.

Tessellations: Patterns of Life and Death in the Company of a Master is an insider's view of 40 years of working within the Esoteric Tradition, part memoir, biography, wisdom teaching and metaphysical philosophy, to illustrate how an oral tradition of Knowledge can be transmitted in modern Britain. It is the first direct and personal account of this authentic Teacher, who insisted on obscurity while he lived, and brings to life some founding principles of spiritual teaching, removing some of the mystique and superstition which have encrusted traditional esoteric work.

The Diaries of a Young Mystic is an unusual autobiography in that it is genuinely an intimate first-person chronicle of soul-search from my six years living and studying in the university town of Oxford in the late 1970’s. For fifty years the diaries lay forgotten in a trunk, until I found them again at the age of 72. I have added a contemporary narrative to what was an intense maturing process to find and articulate a meaningful framework for life and loving, so the voices of Youth and Age intertwine throughout a narrative, of love, loss and spiritual growth, in the "town of dreaming spires".

I still live in London. My children are grown, and I like to sit by the pond at the end of the garden and watch my fish gleaming in the water, and meditate.

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