About Philip

As a college student in the 1960’s, Phil shuttled uncertainly from one major to another while carrying out more important work outside the classroom: expanding his mind in various ways, deciphering love, trying to end racism and war, and relentlessly searching for higher truths. In retrospect, what seemed like confusion was an idealistic young man scratching his way to passions that would mark his adult life: spirituality and writing.

After giving up on academia and taking his first job (creating a halfway house for developmentally disadvantaged youth), Phil pursued answers to the Big Questions that conventional religion, psychology, politics and philosophy had failed to provide. Despite having been raised by atheists who disdained religion — or maybe because of it — he was drawn to the pragmatic mysticism of the East, at first through public thinkers like Alan Watts and Aldous Huxley, and then directly from the texts of Buddhism, Taoism and Hinduism — especially the systems of Vedanta and Yoga.

This led inexorably to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Transcendental Meditation, either because of its Beatles-inspired notoriety or in spite of it. Phil spent much of the 1970’s teaching TM (changing the world, one mantra at a time, as he thought of it) and working for that organization in other capacities.

Eventually, he stepped onto an independent spiritual path as a pragmatic mystic — a freelance yogi in the world, for whom transcendence is a means, not an end — and also began his career as a professional writer. Throughout his chaotic academic life, the one consistent element was Philip’s writing skill. He got good grades despite lazy study habits because he wrote so well that teachers thought he knew more than he did. Sometimes, he would fantasize about living the writer’s life. In 1972, he was asked to write an article on TM for Seventeen magazine. It was his first paid writing gig. Two years later, thanks to some fortuitous events, he was offered a contract to write a book. It tanked in the marketplace, but he learned that he had the necessary skill and inclination to write professionally.

For a while, Phil’s spiritual pursuits and his writing career ran on separate tracks, coming together only on occasion. In his books, he was able to indulge his interests in psychology, human potential, and holistic health. Early on, to pay the bills, he accepted offers to collaborate with experts with good ideas but neither the capacity nor inclination to write. That led to his version of a day job — ghosting, collaborating, editing, coaching — while working on his own books and enough screenwriting to acquire a sobering dose of Hollywood frustration.