Beatrice Bruteau is an American philosopher and author best known for her work in spiritual evolution

Spiritual evolution

Spiritual evolution is the philosophical, theological, esoteric or spiritual idea that nature and human beings and/or human culture evolve, extending from the established cosmological pattern or ascent, or in accordance with certain pre-established potentials...

.

With a background in Vedanta

Vedanta

Vedānta was originally a word used in Hindu philosophy as a synonym for that part of the Veda texts known also as the Upanishads. The name is a morphophonological form of Veda-anta = "Veda-end" = "the appendix to the Vedic hymns." It is also speculated that "Vedānta" means "the purpose or goal...

, Catholicism

Catholicism

Catholicism is a broad term for the body of the Catholic faith, its theologies and doctrines, its liturgical, ethical, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a whole....

, and the natural sciences, Bruteau has advanced a “global spirituality” in which social inequities are examined through a metaphysical

Metaphysics

Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...

 lens with the intent of creating mutual respect within communities.

Dr. Bruteau’s philosophy might be characterized as nondualist, though she has said that it is a “complex non-dualism” rather than monism

Monism

Monism is any philosophical view which holds that there is unity in a given field of inquiry. Accordingly, some philosophers may hold that the universe is one rather than dualistic or pluralistic...

. Rather than feeling the self engulfed into the whole of the universe, the goal of the spiritual search is recognize that spiritual evolution is unending. Her writings have appeared in International Philosophical Quarterly

International Philosophical Quarterly

The International Philosophical Quarterly is a peer-reviewed academic journal edited by a group of academics at Fordham University, with the collaboration of the Facultés universitaires Notre-Dame de la Paix. It was established in 1961 to provide a publishing forum for the international exchange of...

, Cross Currents, and Cistercian Studies.

Works

• The Psychic Grid: How We Create the World We Know (1979) ISBN 0835605310
• Radical Optimism (1992), Sentient Publications, 2008, ISBN 1-59181-001-9
• What We Can Learn from the East (1995), ISBN 0824514572
• The Other Half of My Soul (ed.) (1996), ISBN 0835607178
• God’s Ecstasy (1997), ISBN 0824516834
• The Grand Option (2001), ISBN 0268010420
• Jesus Through Jewish Eyes (ed.) (2001), ISBN 1570753881