The Work began on a February morning in 1986, when Byron Katie woke up on the floor of a halfway house, at a complete dead end in her life, and began to laugh. She had woken up without any concept of who, where, or what she was. She awoke to the fundamental, luminous state of being that is without any separation, that experiences itself as pure love. Like great spiritual masters from many traditions, she knew she had reached the end of confusion and suffering. That was the moment she burst into laughter. Determined to give people a way to discover for themselves what she had realized, Katie developed a simple method of self-enquiry that she called The Work, a life-transforming system for discarding the stories we tell ourselves, which are the source of suffering, and replacing them with the truth ("what is") and a life of total joy. She began teaching The Work wherever she was invited - at first in small, informal gatherings and eventually to packed workshops around the world. The Work consists of only four simple questions that you can apply to any problem. It is so easy and practical - but also profound in its application.

Byron Katie lives in Los Angeles. Stephen Mitchell's widely acclaimed translations of the Tao Te Ching and the Bhagavad Gita (Rider 2000) are respected the world over. He lives in California.

A major work by spiritual teacher Byron Katie: a simple, straightforward system for achieving inner peace