When, at age 39, the author is diagnosed with a life-threatening illness for which there is no cure or treatment, he joins his best friend, Claire, on a vision quest to New Mexico, where, at The Light Institute – a pioneer in past-life regression therapy – he relives a harrowing past-life in a Nazi concentration camp that illuminates the dark fate joining that lifetime with his current one, sowing the seeds for a broader personal inquiry into the spiritual meaning of suffering. That age-old dilemma sends him to modern-day Germany, into the arms of a great Indian avatar, known as “Mother Meera.” She gives him the courage to forge ahead in his search for a cure, motivating him to undertake an experimental, highly-sought-after therapy in Italy. In due course, he is compelled to let go of everything he thought he knew and surrender to the terrifying path his life has put him on. Although he is shattered on every imaginable level, the transformation he undergoes opens the author to an ecstatic vision of wholeness that quite literally changes his life.