"For many years, I have been a student of spirituality and states of consciousness. For many more years than that, I've been a student of dogs," says bestselling author Jean Houston, whose study of this subject is the basis of Mystical Dogs. Houston has spent a lifetime bridging the worlds of animals and humans, exploring a realm that pet owners have glimpsed and indigenous peoples have known for millennia. The author identifies dogs, with their deceptively uncomplicated, joyous, loving nature, as custodes animi, guardians of our souls. She shows how animals, particularly dogs, are often the best spiritual teachers. For example, in Houston's hands, a seemingly simple story, such as a man saying goodbye to his beloved dog, becomes a striking metaphor about personal and planetary transformation. Jean Houston tells us how her animals are not only companions in life but spiritual teachers to enlightenment.
Jean Houston is a writer, scholar, and researcher in human capacities. In 1965, along with her husband, Dr. Robert Masters, Dr. Houston founded the Foundation for Mind Research. She is also the founder and principal teacher since 1982 of the Mystery School, a school of human development, a program of cross-cultural, mythic, and spiritual studies, dedicated to teaching history, philosophy, the New Physics, psychology, anthropology, myth, and the many dimensions of human potential. Her books include A Mythic Life and The Possible Human. She lives in Ashland, Oregon. "Jean Houston's Mystical Dogs makes us realize how profoundly our beloved pets can keep us in touch with the oneness that is Nature and Divinity. All this and lots of chuckles."
