move in that direction. This is my second time around in tracing the development of Merton’s understanding of contemplation. This book is an extensive revision of my very first book about Thomas Merton which was entitled Thomas Merton’s Dark Path. It is a completely new edition of a book which I wrote in the first flush of a budding friendship with Merton: a friendship built solely through reading his works, as I never had the opportunity of meeting him. By the time I came to study his writings in