Albert Einstein is often cited as an agent of pure science and an antithesis to spirituality and religion. He and Darwin are used as examples of champions of science by those looking to disprove religion, Christianity in particular.

But as we all are, the real Albert Einstein was a much more complex man spiritually than the posters would have you believe. A new biography on Einstein called “I Am a Part of Infinity: The Spiritual Journey of Albert Einstein”  explores Einstein’s search for meaning that led him down different paths of exploration, taking cues from geniuses of the spiritual persuasion including Plato, Baruch Spinoza, and Mahatma Gandhi.

The book is a departure for author Kieran Fox PhD, a neuroscientist whose past works include chapters in academic books with titles such as The Neuroscience of Creativity, The Cognitive Neoruscience of Metacognition and The Oxford Handbook of Spontaneous Thought. 

Fox fashions Einstein as an imperfect spiritual leader whom we can learn a great deal from. 

While it’s not often talked about, Einstein was known in his younger days as a serial philanderer who abandoned his children and treated his wife poorly. His personal doctor even theorized that he probably died as a result of syphilis.

While Fox doesn’t ignore Einstein’s self-proclaimed “naughtiness”, he uses this book to explore his own search for meaning as he examines Einstein’s.

“Einstein asked us to commune with the cosmos, to treat every living creature with compassion, to channel the power that permeated all things and put it to use for pure purposes,” the book description reads. 

In his lifetime, Einstein was less successful as a spiritual leader than he was as a scientist, founding a movement he called the Cosmic Religion in his later years. Although raised by Jewish parents, Albert Einstein once said, “I believe in Spinoza’s God,” referring to  belief in a divine presence revealed through the order and harmony of the universe rather than a personal deity involved in human affairs.

Einstein said he was not an atheist, and acknowledged the idea of a “lawgiver” responsible for the universe’s order. He didn’t believe in an afterlife, stating that “one life is enough for me.” He  rejected the idea that science and religion are in conflict, asserting that a sense of cosmic religion is essential to scientific inquiry.

Reviews of the book on Amazon have been stellar and “I Am a Part of Infinity: The Spiritual Journey of Albert Einstein”  is currently the No. 1 new release in Science and Religion. 

“In the vast sea of books on Einstein, many of which I have read, second to none is Kieran Fox’s I Am a Part of Infinity: The Spiritual Journey of Albert Einstein. I had no idea how deep and fully developed Einstein’s thoughts were on religion and spirituality, and never have they been more relevant than in our time of spiritual seeking by so many people. Read this book and become part of infinity yourself.”―Michael Shermer, PhD, author of The Moral Arc and publisher of Skeptic magazine