What We Lost When We Lost Jacob Needleman

Remembering a philosopher of esotericism

Philosopher and author Jacob Needleman died at age 88 on November 28, 2022. With his passing, our culture lost not only a distinguished and widely published scholar of religions, but one of the few writers of our age who proved capable of communicating the nature of inner experience.

In more than twenty books, spanning from 1970 to 2016, Jerry, as he was known to friends, defined the interior life of the mind, emotions, and body — the fears, frivolities, and moments of resplendent awareness — and the individual’s fitful ability to see, to relate to life in fleeting ways that affirmed the human striving, and warranted belief in, the presence of a greater dimension of existence.

Indeed, Jerry’s fullest gift as a writer was the capacity to compellingly describe inner contradictions and strivings — a quality possessed by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Krishnamurti, and very few other modernist spiritual figures. Topics that would implode on other writers were perfectly molded in his hands.

I had the opportunity to witness Jerry’s abilities closely from when I first began publishing him at Penguin Random House with the appearance of one of the books of which he was justly proudest, The American Soul in 2002 to An Unknown World in 2012. His…