FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT:
Jocelyn Godfrey
Spiritus Communications, Inc.
919-732-5549ph/919-321-4797fax
jgodfrey@spirituscommunications.com

Joel Goldsmith and I Follows Successful Broadway Producer, Naval Officer, and Entrepreneur Walter Starcke, Through his Mentored Transformation into a “Practical Mystic.”

"With simple and deeply personal eloquence, Walter Starcke explores for us a way out of and above the finally fatal world of materialism."
- Tennesee Williams

Boerne, Texas- At 86, former Broadway producer and current spiritual author and speaker Walter Starcke provides a newly-released book, Joel Goldsmith and I, offering a long-awaited autobiographical peek into his life-altering, “father-son” type relationship with Joel Goldsmith, a renowned spiritual practitioner and Christian mystic.

Starcke was once known primarily for his success on Broadway, where he became one of the youngest ever to receive the New York Drama Critics Award for his production of I Am a Camera, which later became Cabaret. His social circle included literary giants such as Tennesee Williams and Gore Vidal, and the director and playwright John van Druten, who introduced Starcke to Goldsmith, instigating the beginning of his spiritual quest and career.

Goldsmith's mystical message is described by some as among the most important contributions of the 20th Century, yet few know anything of the man and the price he paid to bring forth his great teaching. Now, 42 years after Goldsmith’s death, Walter Starcke, who was at his side for 18 years, traveled with him, and introduced him from the platform on his first talks in New York and London, paints an intimate picture of the ups and downs of his personal relationship with Goldsmith.

Born into a Jewish family, Goldsmith eventually turned to Christian Science, where he became a successful and respected practitioner, only to lose favor with the denomination when his own spiritual convictions began to filter into his teachings. He went on to found “The Infinite Way” method, centered on the concept that the truth is found only by becoming one with the subjective through meditation and contemplative practices.
Starcke feels that as the time has come when we must close the gap between our divinity and our humanity, it is important to reveal the personal side of Goldsmith in order for his message to be fully appreciated.
As Catherine Ponder, author of Dynamic Laws of Prosperity, states, “This book reads like a novel—only it’s all true. The author’s life reads like a legend, mixed with both the famous, even glamorous people and way of life he has experienced by practicing ‘The Infinite Way.’ No matter where you are in life, this book is a ‘must read.’”

Starcke’s past books include such national best-sellers as The Ultimate Revolution and The Gospel of Relativity, published by Harper & Row. Today, Walter heads his publishing company, Guadalupe Press, and travels the world providing retreats and lectures in which he shares the spiritual principles that have transformed his life.

For more information, or for an interview or review copy, visit www.walterstarcke.com, or contact Jocelyn Godfrey at (919)732-5549 or jgodfrey@spirituscommunications.com.

BIO:

Walter Starcke's own extraordinary life reaches across a variety of careers and reads like fiction. After serving as a naval officer in the World War II, he began a career on Broadway. Starcke collaborated with the playwright and director John van Druten, becoming his assistant director on the original production of Rogers and Hammerstein's musical, The King and I. Next, Starcke co-produced I Am a Camera, the play that brought Julie Harris to stardom and was later made into the musical and film Cabaret, leading to him becoming one of the youngest producers ever to receive the New York Drama Critics Award.

Starcke's friends in his theater days ranged from such literary giants as Noel Coward, Cole Porter, and his is own peer group friends- Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, and Tennessee Williams. All of his life, Starcke felt an all-consuming desire to find spiritual answers. Simultaneously, with his work in the theater, he began to study the major world religions, hoping to find universal truths that were true because they turned up in all of them. In this pursuit, he traveled extensively, going around the world a half dozen times. Starcke visited Lama Govinda in his ashram at the border of Tibet, and spent a considerable amount of time at the Vedanta monastery in Southern California in the great days when Aldus Huxley, Christopher Sherwood, Swami Prabhavananda, and others were there.
Paralleling Starcke's study of the major world religions was his close and personal association with the Christian mystic and author, Joel Goldsmith, an association that began in 1946 and lasted until Goldsmith's death 18 years later. Starcke traveled extensively with Goldsmith, introduced him from the platform at his first talk in New York and in London, and led many of his meditations.
Pursuing his quest for ultimate answers, Starcke left the theater in the early ‘60s and centered his life in Key West, Florida, where he helped form the Old Island Restoration Foundation, which has been greatly responsible for Key West's current popularity. For his accomplishments, in 1962 he was named Key West's Industrialist of the Year.
In 1976, Starcke wrote his first book, The Double Thread, which was published by Harper and Row. Its success led to their publishing Starcke's The Ultimate Revolution and The Gospel of Relativity, all of which became best sellers.
In 1974, Starcke returned to his native Texas for a self-imposed sabbatical and retreat from writing and lecturing. He discovered and purchased a 360 acre ranch on the Guadalupe River in the Texas Hill Country and developed the property into an exclusive seminar center and resort, Guadalupe River Ranch. His ranch become internationally successful, not only as a spiritual retreat but also as a training center where many Fortune 500 companies such as Motorola, Dell, IBM and others send mid and upper-level management for a variety of programs.
In 1989, Starcke broke a 14-year long silence and wrote Homesick for Heaven: You Don't Have To Wait- his most autobiographical book. At the insistence and direction of Dr. Tadashi Akaishi, his editor and later vice-president of Harper and Row, Starcke began his own publishing company, Guadalupe Press.
With the publication of his next book, It’s All God: The Flowers and the Fertilizer, which made the distributor’s best-sellers list, Starcke began lecturing and giving seminars extensively here and abroad, a practice which has continued. He also produces a quarterly news and inspirational letter.
While Starcke’s message is simple, to embrace the subjective, he is also quick to explain that in doing so, he can also experience what the physical world has to offer. “I’m not a man of earth or a man of God,” he says, “I’m both. And my job unto life is to make those two me’s communicate and get along together. Anybody who is all this or all that is missing the boat.”
So whether he is hanging out with his dog Hugo, quoting Scripture, or driving his new tomato-colored Saab, Walter Starcke is at peace on his spiritual journey.