A Long Letter to a Friend

Sarada (Ruth Ingeborg Folling Tate) tells the story of her life, her spiritual adventures and misadventures the form of a long letter. Her spiritual quest to to see into the heart of things led her into the Vedanta Society at age 17 and onward to encounters with Swami Prabhavananda, Aldous Huxley, Christopher Isherwood, Alan Watts, Chogyam Trungpa and others, over the course of sixty years. Like the Hindu saint, Ramakrishna, whom she once followed, her quest has led her through several religions. Now 83 (in 2005), she is drawn to the gentle Zen of Thich Nhat Hanh and has renewed her interest in the consciousness insights of General Semantics (an analysis of how language works to confuse us, and what is beyond language).