Anne Baring's Website

The One Work - An intense mystical experience seems to most people incomplete without some form of record. Even Pascal felt obliged to sew a cryptic message into his garments. Miss Gage has read so deeply in the literature of mysticism as to have reproduced, throughout these pages, a testimony much like a poem in the gnostic tradition. British Book News 1962
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I have just finished reading this remarkable book. I know nothing of the author, but she has left me in no fit state to write anything which I shall be likely to approve in the cold light of tomorrow morning. At the moment, I cannot even make a guess as to the impression this - work - I can call it no less - is likely to make on a sober and sophisticated person unmoved by anything this side of the theorems of Stokes and of Green.
----- It is an expensive and time-consuming occupation to scour India in quest of - perhaps the Self, perhaps Higher Beings, or perhaps just India with its ancient monuments. The book is very moving. One has the impression of a deeply religious nature that has now found within itself something that renders further search unnecessary.
----- I do not trust myself to say more than this: there must be many who, like myself, feel very alien to Indian religious thought - at least as it is usually put over - perhaps one should say to Indian gnosticism, and especially to Indian words and expressions, since one does not know the language or the country: it is to the attention of such that I would bring this book with its poetry, its beautiful photographs, beautiful writing, and a youthful enthusiasm and intelligence that help one to take it all in one's stride.

Deriving its title from the remark of a Buddhist monk to the author that "There is only one work - to find the Self", this book presents a refreshing record of the spiritual quest of a young woman from the West.
----- Anne Gage has stirrings of the soul from her very infancy. She turned East as the West could hold no candle for her search. Her first encounter was with the Buddhist monks in Bangkok who admitted her into their Meditation exercises which she describes with enthusiasm. The insight she gained there into the practical dynamics of spiritual life was deepened during her visit to India where she found 'a climate of revelation'. Arunachala beckoned to her with the 'feeling of ancientness - as if the place were as old as the earth itself'. The talented author then describes her visits to other notable centres in India, Cambodia, Java, Bali and notes their impact on her sensitive mind and soul. Her reactions to the art, music, dance, temple architecture, her study of the mores of the people of these ancient lands, as set down in these pages will be an eye-opener to many to the profundities that underlie the diverse manifestations of the Life-Spirit in the East.
----- It is most gratifying to follow the author in her interpretation and reconciliation of the teachings of the major religions of the world, notably, Hinduism, Buddhism and Christianity. Each gives her the clue to the meaning of the other. She sums up the fundamentals of Indian Yoga philosophy with clarity and brilliance in a few pages in Part Five. A genuine work, a lamp that will light many others. M. P. Pandit

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If a book could be said to have been written to measure for the majority of "Voice" readers, it would be this delightful work by Miss Anne Gage, who takes her readers over the greater part of the world with her in her physical and spiritual journeys in search of her- and our - true selfhood. Her prose is that of a poet and her descriptions of the countries to which she travels are so vivid that the reader feels himself to be actually living among the people whose religion she describes. The reading of such a book is at once a geographical and spiritual adventure and does much to confirm the faith of those who believe in the unity of all things and the universality of Truth. Voice 1961
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