Texts by the American mystic, Catholic monk, and religious writer Thomas Merton (1915 - 1968) began to appear in Russian only in the early 1990s, but have already found their reader. Published several years ago, “Lonely Thoughts” (2003), “Philosophy of Loneliness” (2007) and “Seeds of Contemplation” (2009) sold out in a matter of weeks. I am posting the first chapters of Merton’s book “Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation,” which has not yet been translated into Russian.