Luminary: Andrew Harvey

Luminary: Andrew Harvey

Andrew Harvey is a poet, writer, teacher, and mystic. He was born in South India where he lived until the age of nine, a period he credits with shaping his vision of the inner unity of all religions. He left India to attend private school in England, and entered Oxford University in 1970 to study history on a scholarship. At the age of 21, he became the youngest person ever to be awarded the Fellow of All Souls College, England's highest academic honor.

In 1977, Harvey became disillusioned with life at Oxford and returned to India to begin his spiritual search. He has since lived in London, Paris, New York, and San Francisco, and has continued to study a variety of religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity. Harvey has written and edited over 30 books. Honors he has received include the Benjamin Franklin Award and the Mind Body Spirit Award (both for Mary's Vineyard: Daily Readings, Meditations, and Revelations - photographs by Eryk Hanut), and the Christmas Humphries Award for A Journey In Ladakh.

Among Harvey's well-known titles are: The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, edited with Patrick Gaffney and Sogyal Rinpoch; Dialogues with a Modern Mystic; The Way of Passion : A Celebration of Rumi; Hidden Journey; The Essential Gay Mystics; and Son of Man.

He has written for publications such as The New York Times Book Review, Yoga Journal, Body Mind Spirit, Common Boundary, and Quest. He has taught at Oxford, Cornell and Hobart and William Smith College, and was the subject of the 1993 BBC documentary "The Making of a Mystic."

Andrew's website: www.andrewharvey.net

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"Every age has its teachers, who keep the eternal truths alive for all of us. And when a generation is very, very lucky, it encounters a teacher so illumined that the words he delivers must be illumined as well. In the case of Andrew Harvey, the light he sheds is like a meteor burst across the inner sky." --- Marianne Williamson