Vernon Howard in 1965 (The Regents of the University of California/ Creative Commons)

The Greatest Metaphysical Philosopher You’ve Never Heard Of

And that’s just how Vernon Howard wanted it

Mitch Horowitz
11 min readMay 26, 2023

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By the mid-20th century, prosperity ministries and extreme motivational seminars created a chasm between the ideals and reality of popularized metaphysics and positive-thinking spirituality.

Yet one of the most distinctive and skilled spiritual thinkers of the era deftly avoided this pitfall. He was a man who began his career in the tradition of the success gospel but eventually distanced himself from it. Leaving behind his old life, and with it the ethical and material dilemmas of spirituality-for-sale, he defined a wholly fresh concept of mind-power.

His name was Vernon Howard (1918–1992). While this mystical writer and philosopher lacked fame, following, or renown, he possessed an extraordinary, and probably singular, gift for distilling the complexities of the world’s religious and ethical philosophies into aphoristic and ardently practical principles.

Indeed, Howard, a California transplant born in Haverhill, Massachusetts, was probably the most remarkable and independent voice to emerge from America’s culture of practical spirituality; though as his outlook matured, it became impossible to pin any label on him.

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Mitch Horowitz

"Treats esoteric ideas & movements with an even-handed intellectual studiousness"-Washington Post | PEN Award-winning historian | Censored in China