Francis Bennett was an ordinary, sociable young man who answered the call to a life of spiritual adventure as a contemplative in the monastery of the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance, commonly known as Trappists. Thomas Merton, the pioneering Christian mystic of the twentieth century, was Bennett’s inspiration, and it was Merton’s influence that led Bennett to explore the deepest reality of being, within the frameworks of Christianity, Buddhism, and Advaita Vedanta or non-duality.

Bennett has worked with the sick and dying in parishes, hospitals, and hospices since he moved away from the monastic life. In 2010, while in the middle of mass, there came what Bennett describes as “a radical perceptual shift in consciousness” that made it clear that the pure awareness at the heart of all is no different from the presence of God, which he had been seeking outside himself for so long.