Lewis Thompson's journals allow the reader access to a man of action and a poet deeply committed to his search for the highest realization of Truth in and through Hindu spiritual practice. 2009 marks the centennial of the birth of English poet, Lewis Thompson, and the sixtieth anniversary of his untimely death in India in 1949 at the age of forty. As such, Integral Realist is a commemorative event that will surely place Lewis Thompson in a league with powerful spiritual figures of the twentieth century, and establish him among the great English writers and poets whom he admired. This very private companion to Lewis Thompson, Journals of an Integral Poet, Volume One 1932-1944, reveals a mature Thompson at the height of his commitment to Absolute Perfection - an ideal by which every object is completed as symbol in all domains by resolving the antithesis of Sensuality and Intellect within the context of integral, flexible, incalculable and organic Poetry.

Volume One of Lewis Thompson's journals takes us into the everyday world of India's sub-continent in the 1930's and 40's through the prism of a fierce spiritual aspirant and intellect. "The whole in this atmosphere," he writes, "suggests a superhuman discipline and dignity, a passion, a sensuality, for what is prior to Being and Non-being-astringent like the taste of iron." We share his meetings with Sri Aurobindo, Sri Ramana Maharshi, J. Krishnamurti, Anandamayi Ma and Sri Krishna Menon.. We experience his attempts to integrate a Western heritage-Christ, Blake, Yeats, Rimbaud, Pascal-with the exigencies of Indian gnosis. We marvel at his self-invented writing yoga, whose bold vocabulary juxtaposes many levels of consciousness - waking, dreaming, visionary, bhakti yoga, jnana yoga, tantra and vedanta. This is a jewel of a book for those interested in "the power which consecrates us beyond ourselves." For the intimate context these journals provide, this book is a must for readers of Thompson's aphorisms (Mirror to the Light) and poetry (Black Sun). Edited with an introduction and commentary by Richard Lannoy. Foreword by Dr. Harry Oldmeadow, LaTrobe University.