Paul Brunton was born in London in 1898 and after having served in the First World War, started to devote himself to mysticism. He came into contact with Theosophists. In the early 1930s, Brunton embarked on a voyage to India, which would bring him into contact with such luminaries as Meher Baba, Sri Shankaracharya of Kancheepuram and Sri Ramana Maharshi.

Through his books "A Search in Secret India" and "The Secret Path", he is credited with almost singlehandedly opening up to the west to the experience and knowledge of Enlightenment, Awakening, the Absolute, Zen and with introducing Ramana Maharshi to the West.

One day, sitting with Ramana Maharishi, Brunton had a mystical experience which changed him forever. Brunton describes it in the following way:

I find myself outside the rim of world consciousness. The planet which has so far harbored me disappears. I am in the midst of an ocean of blazing light. The latter, I feel rather than think, is the primeval stuff out of which worlds are created, the first state of matter. It stretches away into untellable infinite space, incredibly alive.

After two decades of successful writing, Brunton retired from publishing books and devoted himself to writing essays and notes. Upon his death in 1981 in Vevey, Switzerland, it was revealed that in the period since the last published book in 1952, he had rendered about 20,000 pages of philosophical writing.