Suicide or Samadhi book by Zachary Feder
Suicide or Samadhi book by Zachary Feder

Advance Praise

“Gripping and brilliant.”

Howard Bloom, author of The God Problem and The Lucifer Principle

“A marriage of avant-garde literature and powerful dharma.”

Jeff Carrera, Spiritual teacher and author of The Path of Spiritual Breakthrough

“Zachary gifts us with a vulnerable and vibrant storytelling of the most profound and timeless human journey. Riveting.”

Sarah Marshank, author of Being Selfish: My Journey from Escort to Monk to Me

“A glorious ride! I was caught in the story, in the stream, in the love of transformation and what it takes to really transform. The incredible humor of it! It made me remember the horrible experiences of shedding conditioning. I didn’t want to put it down.”

Shannon Pernetti, co-author of The Treasure Within: An Archetypal Unfolding to Your Infinite Potential

“A capitulation of the ultimate journey that few of us recognize within ourselves, and even fewer dare to traverse. Zachary describes a life that many of us dream for and the eventual realization that those fantasies never fill the wounds we carry, leaving us in a perpetual state of dissatisfaction. His tome will hit you where it hurts—and that’s a good thing.”

Dave Markowitz, 2x bestselling author of Self Care for the Self Aware and Empathapedia

“This is truly the best description I’ve ever read of this process. The most beautiful writing.”

Hilary Stuart, Naturopathic Physician and Creator of Illuminated Healing Systems

“Zachary takes us along on a hero’s journey on the path to enlightenment. This labor of love is fully consummated—thoughtful, intense and richly developed. Through sensitive and selective attention to detail he succeeds in evoking both the external, physical and the internal, mental context of the stations along the way. It is the next best thing to being there.”

Dr. Gerry Brown, former Director of the L.P. Cookingham Institute of Public Affairs, Henry W. Bloch School of Management, University of Missouri-Kansas

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A Memoir of Dying Before You Die

Suicide or Samadhi is a raw spiritual memoir of existential despair, psychological suffering, spiritual reckoning, and ultimate surrender to the Self.

When the book opens, I am in my early twenties and already suffering from a chronically abusive mind that appeared to have no other agenda than to spend its every waking moment condemning me.

“The vitriol seemed to have no bounds, no center of gravity, no singular defining feature, except that it refused to stop debasing me, my life, all life, everything. My mind was a cancer, a psycho-verbal invasive tumor that I had never been told I could radiate, lance, starve, transfigure.”

At the time I did not realize that suicide is often a “literalization” of the samadhi process. A reductive interpretation of annihilating the persona, transcending the ego, and surrendering to the divine – what the Sufis call Fana, and what is more commonly known as dying before you die – so that in St. Francis’s words, “the second death shall do you no harm.”

This is not a traditional self-help book. It is not a step-by-step guide to awakening. There are enough out there, many of which are good. This is a book for those who want to know what real transformation actually feels like when you are in it.

Not the polished version at the end,

but the blow-by-blow account of what it demands when you are on your knees

and the only way out

is the path you least want to take.