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Giving Myself Away, From Beat Generation Protégé To Metaphysical Social Critic

Giving Myself Away, From Beat Generation Protégé To Metaphysical Social Critic

A Cultural History of America through Fifty Years of Spiritual Seeking

By Charles Upton

608 pp

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About the Book

Giving Myself Away is the autobiography of an American poet, Catholic school boy, spiritual seeker, metaphysical writer, social service worker, and political activist—an “intellectual Forrest Gump” who found himself part of various significant events in American history, from the post-war, pre-counterculture era through the “spiritual revolution” of the 1960’s; the San Francisco poetry scene of those times; the U.S. peace movement of the 60’s, the 80’s and the 2010’s; the New Age; the emergence of Islam as a cultural force in North America; and the attempt from the 80’s to the early 2000’s, by some serious seekers, to return to Tradition. 

It is at once a cultural history; a psychological analysis, individual and collective; a record of paranormal events; a meditation on how metaphysical principles work themselves out in human experience; a story of spiritual seeking through many faiths, including 35 years of Sufi practice; an intimate view of the cultures, religions, and folkways of both California and Kentucky; and the record of a period of unprecedented cultural, technical, spiritual, and environmental breakdown, not just for the United States, Islam, and the Catholic Church but for the whole world. 

This work can be seen as a kind of summing-up of the Baby Boom’s relationship to Art, Religion, and Politics, illustrated by the author’s meetings with remarkable and famous people in those fields, including Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gary Snyder, Lew Welch, Yogi Bhajan, Rev. Gary Davis, Country Joe and the Fish, Peter Coyote, Chögyam Trungpa, Swami Mukhtananda, the 16th Gyalwa Karmapa, Charles Bukowski, Jerry Brown, Huey Lewis, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Carlos Castaneda, Wendell Berry, Kathleen Raine, Jack Kornfield, Javad Nurbakhsh, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, and Huston Smith.



Praise

“Charles Upton is a serious thinker from whom I have learned much. His writing merits close attention.”—HUSTON SMITH, author of The World’s Religions

“Giving Myself Away is a literary gift and a godsend. Aesthetically beautiful, it is also philosophically profound, engaging, thought-provoking, intriguing, puzzling, and perplexing. Filled with didactic stories, deep moral lessons, metaphysical insights, amusing anecdotes, flashes of inspiration, and cautionary tales, it chronicles the socio-political and spiritual underbelly of America. In many ways, it supports the view of Ralph Waldo Emerson and T. S. Eliot that what matters most is not the destination but the journey.”—JOHN ANDREW MORROW, academic, author, and activist 

“Charles Upton tells all and tells it like it is, from an insightful double, poetical and spiritual perspective. The book tracks a poet-pilgrim’s progress out of the 20th century into now and makes it timeless. Highly recommended.”—MICHAEL WOLFE, author of Digging Up Russia: Selected Poems, 1968-2010



About the Author

Charles Upton, born in San Francisco, California in 1948, is a poet (a protégée of the Beats), a veteran of the peace movement, an activist, and a lifelong student of metaphysics and world religions. His entire formal education, from nursery school through high school, was provided by the Catholic Church. He has published four books of poetry and many others in the genres of metaphysics, mythopoetic exegesis, spiritual psychology, Islam, Sufism, and “metaphysics and social criticism.”

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