What contexts and processes in education might liberate teachers and learners so that they become catalysts for the new human – one whose integral relationship with Gaia is bound by right-action and love? This book integrates decades of the author's experience in holistic and Montessori education with Eastern thought in an essential dialogue for seekers everywhere. In what reads like a love letter to the Universe, Gang's work is equal parts memoir, practical experience, mysticism, and deep science. Within its pages, readers discover insights and tools in response to the driving question that birthed the book. Complete testimonials and Dagaz Press.

Imagine sitting in nature one day pondering your life's work, thinking about your life as an educator, and having a question fully formed leap into your mind with as much power as Athena springing fully formed from the head of her father, Zeus. In taking stock of his life's work, holistic and Montessori education, Eastern thought, and the work he has created with his wife and soul mate, Marsha Morgan, the following question leaped from Philip Gang's mind word for word: What contexts and processes in education might liberate teachers and learners so that they become catalysts for the new human – one whose integral relationship with Gaia is bound by right-action and love? This lofty question is answered with stunning clarity by the author. Many authors have an epiphany and develop a question as a way to provide the answer. In this case, though, the book's driving question came to Gang in question format. He was left to puzzle out the answer. Ultimately, the answer was both uncovered and discovered by integrating decades of the author's experience in holistic and Montessori education. Eastern thought offered keen insights. Gang also pulled from the work of his partner in love and in work, Marsha Morgan. After Maria Montessori’s son, Mario, passed away, his widow sent the author a letter in which she expressed concern that the movement might get lost in the details and lose the essence. This book is a quest for that essence.

In what reads like a love letter to the Universe, Gang divides his work into four components: 1) memoir, 2) practical experience, 3) mysticism, and 4) deep science. Within its pages, readers discover insights and tools in response to the driving question that birthed the book. It is not often that an author presents a question, answers that question, and then turns to readers and says, "What is your answer?" Most authors don't offer readers that level of deep engagement. Early in the book, Gang discusses the idea of Indra's Net, which in brief says that each of us is a pearl attached to a cosmic net that reflects every pearl around us. Therefore, rather than encouraging readers to believe as he does, Gang asks them to locate their spot on Indra's Net and shine. Remarkably, Gang doesn't just tell readers how to find these answers. In his sharing, reviewing his early (not always easy) years, his understanding of education that works, learning from the love of his life and then losing her to Alzheimer's Disease, and in his continued work, Gang shows readers how he found his spot on Indra's Net. This book is not a "here's how" or a "you must." This book is an invitation to take Gang's hand through a journey that very well may stop at the point where you, in all your miraculous individuality, with all the unique gifts you have to offer the world, reflect all points of light.

Philip Snow Gang, Ph.D. is Founder of The Institute for Educational Studies (TIES) and its graduate programs in Integrative Learning and Montessori Integrative Learning. He is a pioneer in the field of integrative, systemic and transformative approaches to education. He is the author of Rethinking Education and co-author of Conscious Education: The Bridge to Freedom, and developer of the mobile mind-mapping simulation, Our Planet, Our Home. Dr. Gang has been a Montessori school head, consultant and educator of teachers. In 1978 he helped initiate the National Erdkinder Consortium – a group dedicated to founding Montessori secondary schools. He was the co-organizer of two International AMI Montessori Study Conferences: Adolescence and Exploration (1981) and Education and Peace (1985). He had close ties with Dr. Maria Montessori's son, Mario Sr., and her grandson, Mario Jr. served on his doctoral committee. From 1987 through 1991 he was a citizen diplomat, joining a small group of American educators who visited Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), Moscow and Tbilisi in Georgia. He lectured at the Soviet Academic of Sciences where he introduced the Montessori approach to life. He also lectured and worked with a large contingent of ecological Soviet educators at Lake Baikal, Siberia. In 1990 he helped organize the Global Alliance for Transforming Education (GATE) – an alliance of holistic educational leaders from around the world. During this time he collaborated with Robert Muller, Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations, and conversed with cultural historian and geologian, Thomas Berry in Costa Rica as well at his New York home. In response to what he learned as GATE's Executive Director, Gang developed the TIES' graduate education programs, now serving students in more than 40 countries. In 1990 he was named Executive Director for the Global Alliance for Transforming Education, a worldwide effort to define and promote the principles of holism. From 1992-1996 Gang was on the faculty of California Institute of Integral Studies as a professor-mentor to students engaged in doctoral studies in the School of Transformative Learning. This was the first collaborative on-line program of its kind. For the last 30 years he has been an avid woodworker.