The Accidental Immigrant

The Accidental Immigrant is a late-career work by sociologist Kyriacos C. Markides, drawing on more than fifty years of searching for an authentic understanding of the nature of Reality. It begins in 1960, when he arrived as a teenager at the docks of New York. He meant to earn a business degree and go home to his native Cyprus. A string of uncanny coincidences soon convinced him that the real purpose of his Atlantic crossing was to develop his social awareness and spiritual consciousness rather than to gain practical skills.

The memoir follows several threads. He describes his hard struggle to fit into American society and culture, his peace activism aimed at healing the wounds of ethnic strife in Cyprus, and his persistent pursuit of spiritual fulfillment inside the secular, agnostic world of modern academia.

As a field researcher, he also recounts meetings with remarkable people. They include Christian shamans and healers with paranormal gifts, as well as charismatic monks and ascetics who introduced him to the spiritual wisdom of Eastern mystical Christianity. Step by step, these encounters led him to the conviction that a deeper Truth lies beyond the physical, sensory universe and is the source of everything that happens in our three-dimensional lives. He argues that this awareness could help bring the best of science and the best of religion together, which he sees as important for the long-term survival of humanity.