Fully Alive is a new, previously unpublished collection of talks by one of the 20th century's most influential spiritual teachers: the Benedictine monk, John Main OSB, who reintroduced the practice of contemplative prayer to the church in the West - lost since the era of the Desert Fathers. While living as a monk in India, he was struck by the meditative quality of Eastern religions and sought to introduce the prayer of silence into his own Benedictine tradition. In what was a radical move at the time, he created an open monastic community where lay people came to learn meditative prayer. This, like his other bestselling books, is made up of the simple and inviting talks that drew hundreds of groups right up to his death in 1982. Today, through the worldwide network he founded (the World Community for Christian Meditation) and other emerging groups like Young and Contemplative, many people continue to discover the transformative power of being silent before God.