Gary Zukav

Zukav's third book, Soul Stories (2000), provides examples of people creating what he calls "authentic power." Thoughts from the Seat of the Soul: Meditations for Souls in Progress (2001) offered daily quotes for meditation. The principles in The Seat of the Soul were elaborated in The Heart of the Soul: Emotional Awareness (2002), The Mind of the Soul: Responsible Choice (2003) and Self-Empowerment Journal (2003), a journaling workbook co-authored with Zukav's wife, Linda Francis, and intended as a companion volume to The Mind of the Soul. Soul to Soul: Communications from the Heart (2007) addresses questions about love, fear, choice, responsibility, and intuition. Spiritual Partnership: The Journey to Authentic Power (2010) suggests guidelines for individuals engaged in relationship for the purpose of spiritual development.

In 1999 Zukav and Linda Francis co-founded the Seat of the Soul Institute. It offers programs and tools to develop emotional awareness, responsible choice, intuition, trust, and spiritual partnerships. Events and programs include an annual retreat, lectures, and workshops.

In 1998 Zukav began an ongoing conversation with Oprah Winfrey, appearing on her television show 35 times – more than any other guest. Oprah, who keeps a copy of The Seat of the Soul at her bedside, proclaimed: "The Seat of the Soul is my favorite book of all time, except for the Bible." Her favorite quote from The Seat of the Soul: "Every action, thought, and feeling is motivated by an intention, and that intention is a cause that exists as one with an effect.... In this most profound way, we are held responsible for every action, thought, and feeling, which is to say, for our every intention."

Zukav's next book, The Seat of the Soul, published in 1989, was a No. 1 New York Times Best Seller for 31 weeks and remained on the list for three years. In an interview by Jeffrey Mishlove, for the popular Public Television series Thinking Allowed, Zukav summarized the concepts presented in The Seat of the Soul.

Christopher Lehmann-Haupt reviewed The Dancing Wu Li Masters in The New York Times March 28, 1979.

Robert H. March, Professor of Physics at the University of Wisconsin, wrote in Physics Today in August 1979, "Dealing with general relativity [Zukav] manages to convey the profound mental shift required to reduce physics to geometry. This is a neat trick, considering that he addresses an audience familiar with neither physics nor non-Euclidian geometry."

Zukav returned to the U.S. in 1970 and moved to San Francisco, California. He recounts this period as an emotionally volatile time of sexual addiction, motorcycles, anger and drug-abuse. This continued until 1975 when his roommate, Jack Sarfatti, took him to visit the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory where Zukav became intrigued by quantum physics. He began writing his first book, The Dancing Wu Li Masters, written with extensive help from Jack Sarfatti and other physicists he met through Sarfatti, as described in David Kaiser's book How the Hippies Saved Physics. He later described this book as his "first gift to Life". In 1987 he moved to Mount Shasta, California, where he lived in a cabin as a self-described "secular monk" and spent time in the surrounding wilderness. In 1993 he met and later married Linda Francis. They co-founded the Seat of the Soul Institute in 1998 and moved to Ashland, Oregon, in 2000.

In 1959, Gary received a scholarship to Harvard and matriculated high school in 1960. In his junior year at Harvard he left to motorcycle in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East before returning the following year. In 1964, he was deeply moved by the murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner in Philadelphia, Mississippi, and worked as a summer volunteer for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Jackson, Mississippi, under the direction of Charles Evers, brother of the slain Medgar Evers. In 1965, he graduated from Harvard. That same year he enlisted in the U.S. Army and entered U.S. Army Infantry Officer Candidate School. He was made a second lieutenant in 1966. He volunteered for the U.S. Army Special Forces (Green Berets), completed parachute training (Fort Benning, Georgia), and U.S. Army Special Warfare School (Fort Bragg, North Carolina), then served as a detachment executive officer in Okinawa and Vietnam, participating in top secret operations in Vietnam and Laos. He left Vietnam after the Tet Offensive of January 1968 and was discharged from the army in 1968 as a first lieutenant.

Gary Zukav was born in Port Arthur, Texas, the elder of two children of Morris Luis "Morey" and Lorene (née Weinberg) Zukav. His father owned a jewelry store in Pittsburg, Kansas, and his mother was a housewife who raised him and his younger sister. Gary spent his early childhood in San Antonio and Houston. His family moved to Pittsburg, Kansas in 1952, while he was in fourth grade. In 1960, he graduated from Pittsburg High School as valedictorian. During that time he became an Eagle Scout, Governor of Kansas Boy's State, President of the Student Council, and Kansas State Debate championship team member twice.

Gary Zukav (born October 17, 1942) is an American spiritual teacher and the author of four consecutive New York Times Best Sellers. Beginning in 1998, he appeared more than 30 times on The Oprah Winfrey Show to discuss transformation in human consciousness concepts presented in his book The Seat of the Soul. His first book, The Dancing Wu Li Masters (1979), won a U.S. National Book Award.