From a small-town New Jersey girl to a world-renowned new age teacher, Elizabeth Clare Prophet underwent a remarkable transformation. At age twenty-four, she began taking "dictations," or messages, from a group of saints and sages known as the ascended masters. By age forty, she was called Mother and Guru Ma by thousands of followers, and also known as a prophet (her real last name). She had also begun to be labeled a controversial cult leader. Now at the age of seventy, she publishes a memoir of her early years.

In never-before-released material from interviews, letters and diaries, she explores her spiritual quest from birth through age twenty four. Part I describes a conventional upbringing in 1950s small-town America. But, as she reveals, the roots of her spiritual quest were there from an early age, expressed in childhood in her remarkable devotion to the proto new age Christian Science. She tells how her religion helped her to cope with her father's alcoholism and the childhood onset of epilepsy. Part II reveals her teenage ups and downs, experiments with Eastern thought and modern philosophy, and an early marriage to a fellow Christian Scientist. Finally, she describes her choice to make the radical change of leaving that marriage to follow Mark Prophet, who became her teacher and second husband.

The work is threaded with her descriptions of the presence of God that she believes overshadowed her from the moment of birth. She tells how that presence led her into a spiritual work that touched the lives of thousands. This revealing, personal journey probes the very essence of spirituality.

From a small-town New Jersey girl to a world-renowned new age teacher, Elizabeth Clare Prophet underwent a remarkable transformation. At age twenty-four, she began taking "dictations," or messages, from a group of saints and sages known as the ascended masters. By age forty, she was called Mother and Guru Ma by thousands of followers, and also known as a prophet (her real last name). She had also begun to be labeled a controversial cult leader. Now at the age of seventy, she publishes a memoir of her early years.

In never-before-released material from interviews, letters and diaries, she explores her spiritual quest from birth through age twenty four. Part I describes a conventional upbringing in 1950s small-town America. But, as she reveals, the roots of her spiritual quest were there from an early age, expressed in childhood in her remarkable devotion to the proto new age Christian Science. She tells how her religion helped her to cope with her father's alcoholism and the childhood onset of epilepsy. Part II reveals her teenage ups and downs, experiments with Eastern thought and modern philosophy, and an early marriage to a fellow Christian Scientist. Finally, she describes her choice to make the radical change of leaving that marriage to follow Mark Prophet, who became her teacher and second husband.

The work is threaded with her descriptions of the presence of God that she believes overshadowed her from the moment of birth. She tells how that presence led her into a spiritual work that touched the lives of thousands. This revealing, personal journey probes the very essence of spirituality.