My Interview with Andrew Harvey on Betrayal

Listen to my twelve-minute interview with Andrew Harvey here:

Andrew Harvey

Andrew, why do you consider betrayal to be one of the most difficult forms of adversity to overcome?
Betrayal is quite simply the most devastating experience that anyone can live through, especially if it’s betrayal as I went through it — betrayal from a teacher whom I loved with all my soul and heart and who had been an immense source of strength and revelation for me.

Betrayal dissolves every kind of concept that you have of reality and plunges you into a groundless abyss. This, of course, is an appalling experience, but it’s also… if you can stay in love with love in the dark, this experience can lead to a massive revelation of the presence of the Divine in and through everything, which permanently transforms you.

I wouldn’t wish the experience of betrayal that I’ve had on anyone, but looking back I realize it was absolutely essential for my evolution. The betrayal I had at the hand of my teacher, which I wrote about in Sun at Midnight, was a betrayal that ended one life. I died when I realized that I’d been hopelessly sold down the river in a very dangerous way. But that death wasn’t into chaos. It was into a much larger, more spacious realization. Also, I believe that betrayal isn’t just the most difficult experience that a human being can go through. It’s also an

Andrew Harvey’s Transformation in an Indian Church

Andrew Harvey

Andrew Harvey told me a powerful story of faith and transformation for my book, Sixty Seconds: One Moment Changes Everything. Here is an excerpt from his story, beginning with his bio.

Harvey, an author, teacher, and mystical scholar, has written and edited more than thirty books. His own works include Son of Man: The Mystical Path to Christ, The Sun at Midnight: A Memoir of the Dark Night, and A Walk with Four Spiritual Guides: Krishna, Buddha, Jesus, and Ramakrishna. Click here to visit Andrew’s website.

In 1997, my mother sent me a fax from Coimbatore in southern India, where I was born, saying that my father was dying and that I should get there as quickly as possible. I was living in San Francisco at the time. I managed to get a visa within two days and got to his bedside in the next week.

What followed was the most beautiful week of my life, because my father and I were able to communicate at a level and depth and true spiritual height that we had never managed before. All our political and personal differences were drowned in great sweetness and tender communication. And I realized how finely and absolutely he had always loved me, and how much he had always held me in his heart. This was in itself a huge healing. But another healing on an even larger scale was going to take place.

During our time together, my father and I did not talk about anything that had ever happened between us. What we talked about was Jesus. My father spoke out of the depth of his passionate and simple faith in Jesus. Now that he was facing death, he was speaking inwardly to Jesus in Gethsemane—because, as he said, Jesus